Old Bockenheim cemetery
The Alte Friedhof Bockenheim is a former cemetery in Frankfurt am Main that has been converted into a public park . The cemetery used from 1825 to 1898 belonged to the city of Bockenheim, since 1895 incorporated as Frankfurt-Bockenheim . The property has been used as a public park since 1916, managed by the City of Frankfurt.
Location and layout
The property with the park is located in the western part of today's Bockenheim district. It is located on the eastern edge of the City West commercial and residential area . The property, which was reduced in size twice in the 20th century, today borders on Solmsstraße to the south - at its eastern end and where it joins Kreuznacher Straße . Immediately to the west of the park is the church of a Greek Orthodox parish on Solmsstrasse , while residential buildings are adjacent to the park property in the south and east.
The park and former cemetery has had three entrances since the second downsizing of the property in the 1950s: The northern entrance to the park is close to the position of the original, non-preserved cemetery portal on Solmsstrasse. From the south a staircase leads from the end of Pfingstbrunnenstraße about five meters up to the park area. On the east side of the property there is another entrance, which leads from Ohmstrasse to the south over a footpath between several residential properties into the park.
The larger, northern and western part of the property is designed as a park with a central meadow, a small population of individual trees, mostly oaks ( Quercus ), and walking paths. The historical tombstones from the 19th century stand individually or in groups on the southern and eastern edge of the property; a design as grave sites is no longer recognizable in the majority of them due to overgrowth with ground-covering plants .
history
The cemetery from inauguration to closure
The cemetery was established in the early 1820s on what was then Rödelheimer Sandweg (today Solmsstrasse) after the cemetery at Bockenheim's St. Jakobs Church had become too small. The facility was designed by the Frankfurt city gardener Sebastian Rinz (1782–1862). The new burial site was laid out on an area previously used as a Schindanger , which was used to bury dead cattle - which initially prevented Bockenheim citizens from being buried in this cemetery. This only changed when the wealthy Bockenheimer trader Johann Conrad Rohmer had designated the cemetery as the site of his and his family's grave and after he was buried there in 1825. In 1853 the cemetery was provided with an enclosure wall made of basalt stones (see photo on the right).
In addition to several graves of members of the Rohmer family, some of which have survived to the present day, the graves of the Frankfurt engraver and painter Friedrich Wilhelm Delkeskamp (1794–1872), by Carl Wilhelm , were located in the Old Bockenheimer Friedhof Ferdinand Guhr (1787–1848), from 1821 until his death Kapellmeister of the Frankfurt State Theater and of Anton Schindler (1795–1864), music writer and biographer of Beethoven. In the cemetery there is also a war memorial erected in 1875 in the form of an obelisk made of red Main sandstone , which commemorates three Bockenheim victims of the Franco-German War of 1870/1871 .
After a few final burials after the incorporation of Bockenheim, the cemetery was given up in 1898 in favor of the New Bockenheim Cemetery established in 1878 , and in 1905 the maintenance of the property was transferred to the Frankfurt city nursery. As part of a widening of the north bordering Solmsstraße and the south of the cemetery located Ohmstraße 1908-1910 the property was first reduced. In 1916 the cemetery was rededicated to a public park.
The property as a public park
A second, much more extensive reduction of the property by more than half of the original cemetery area took place in 1950/1951. The Trinity Church (now the Greek Orthodox Church) was built on the northwestern part of the cemetery, while the southwestern part was converted into a children's playground. The oldest, northeastern part of the former cemetery was redesigned into a landscape park. Some of the historical personalities buried there, including those of Delkeskamp, Guhr and Schindler (see above), had to give way to the changes. Since 1953, a memorial plaque, attached to a wall in the southwest corner of the neighboring church property and accessible from Ohmstrasse, has been a reminder of their former burial sites.
Some of the historical tombstones from the 19th century, mainly in the southern and eastern parts of the cemetery, have been preserved, although not all of them on their former grave sites. Several of these old stones have been overgrown by scrub over the years, which makes it difficult to locate the gravestones of some of the personalities buried there. In 2012 the green area was completely renovated by the Frankfurt Green Spaces Office, and since 2013 a text and picture board has been providing information on the site about the history of the property. The board shows reproductions of historical images and maps from the Frankfurt Institute for Urban History and contains a list of the personalities buried in the former cemetery, sorted by date of death.
Gravestones in the cemetery
Due to the downsizing of the property and its remodeling into a park, only a relatively small number of the gravestones of the people buried in the Old Bockenheimer Friedhof have been preserved on site. The following list of these tombstones is based on a list published by the Frankfurt Green Space Office in 2013, sorted chronologically according to the date of death of the named persons.
- Johann Conrad Rohmer (1796–1825), Bockenheimer businessman
- Ann Mohr (* 1775 in London , † 1827 in Bockenheim)
- Heinrich Adam Bauer († 1827)
- Johann Wilhelm Harth (1801–1829)
- Friedrich Martin Uber (1789–1830), Mayor of Bockenheim
- Maria Schappel (1817–1836)
- Hilarius Hahn (1764–1839), church elder, tailor and grocer
- Anna Katharina Elisabetha Müller, b. Hahn (1790–1841)
- Peter Wichelhausen (1761–1842), Royal Prussian Commerzienrat and consul
- Johanette Forell, b. Wagner (1785-1851)
- Johanna Dorothea Sophia Rohmer, b. Peters (1787-1858)
- Heinrich Rohmer (* 1815 in Hamburg , † 1867 in Bockenheim)
- Philipp Lenz (1808–1879), painter
- Johanna Helene Thiele, b. Rohmer (* 1860 in Manchester , † 1887 in Berlin )
- Ewald Alfred von Kries (1852-1893), Corvette Captain
Transport links
The nearest public transport stop to the Old Bockenheim Cemetery is the Frankfurt-West train station, which is adjacent to the property . Trains of the S6 line of the Rhein-Main S-Bahn as well as local and regional trains on the Homburg Railway stop there . The Solmsstraße exit of the Westbahnhof is directly opposite the northern entrance to the park. The nearest stop of the Frankfurt am Main tram is the Kuhwaldstraße stop , which is served by line 17 of the Frankfurt transport company VgF .
Web links
- Peter Rutkowski: Left War Graves Care . Article about the old cemetery Bockenheim from July 10, 2008 on the Frankfurter Rundschau Online website , accessed on October 5, 2014
- Kim Behrend: Green escape cemeteries - a series. Relax at the Schindacker . Article about the old Bockenheim cemetery from July 16, 2009 on the Frankfurter Rundschau Online website, accessed on September 22, 2014
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b City of Frankfurt am Main, Environment Agency (ed.): The Green Belt Leisure Card . 7th edition, 2011
- ↑ a b Peter Rutkowski: Left War Graves Care . Article from July 10, 2008 on fr-online.de, accessed October 5, 2014
- ↑ a b c d e City of Frankfurt, Grünflächenamt (Ed.): Board on the park area with extensive information on the history of the property
- ↑ a b Kim Behrend: Relaxing at the Schindacker . Article on fr-online.de, accessed on September 22, 2014
- ↑ The war memorial at the old Bockenheim cemetery on denkmalprojekt.org (accessed on September 22, 2014)
- ↑ Friedhof Bockenheim at par.frankfurt.de , the former website of the city of Frankfurt am Main
- ^ Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbund (RMV): General route plan Frankfurt am Main 2012
Coordinates: 50 ° 7 ′ 5.9 ″ N , 8 ° 38 ′ 20 ″ E