Bergfriedhof (Heidelberg)

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Entrance to the Heidelberg Bergfriedhof in Rohrbacher Strasse with a view of the crematorium

The Bergfriedhof Heidelberg is one of the 17 cemeteries in the city of Heidelberg . The mountain cemetery, opened in 1844, was the first municipal cemetery in the city. It is located in the south of Heidelberg on a former vineyard area rising to the east at the northern end of the Südstadt district , it borders the Weststadt and the Gaisberg . The cemetery is cross-denominational, part of the complex is also designated as a Jewish cemetery . The Heidelberg Cemetery of Honor was laid out from 1933 to 1935 on a terrace to the south-east above the mountain cemetery .

investment

Attached to the south of the cemetery is the Jewish cemetery with many new occupancies in recent years
View of the Jewish cemetery in Heidelberg

The Heidelberg Bergfriedhof extends over an area of ​​14.4 hectares east of Rohrbacher Straße, rising towards the east, irregularly delimited. In the north it is bounded by a railway line that connected the Neckar Valley Railway with the city's former freight and marshalling yard , in the northeast by a valley cut through which the Steigerweg runs uphill, in the east by forest on the steep slope, in the south by residential developments Görresstrasse and Panoramastrasse.

The main entrance to the cemetery is on the side of Rohrbacher Straße, from where a straight path leads east to the crematorium built in the classicism style . The cemetery has six further entrances, three of them in the northeast on Steigerweg. Mainly the cemetery fleet runs through the northern two of these and they serve as access to the cemetery administration, both of which are housed in buildings in the northeast area. The administration building was built in a simple, rural style. The upper of the entrances on Steigerweg is the access to the morgue and the approach to the cemetery chapel. The so-called Professorenweg runs between the chapel and the crematorium , on which the Friedrich Ebert memorial, a war memorial and the grave sites of university honors are located.

Up on the high slope in the south-east of the cemetery area, in the forest section, which is accessed via steep paths with stairs and sandstone steps, there are many more than 100 year old graves, often adorned with head-high granite boulders. More recently, tree burials have also been carried out in this part of the cemetery . The names of those buried in this way are engraved in brass plates on sandstone blocks.

In the southern part of the site there is the Jewish cemetery, which can be closed separately due to special religious regulations . To the south of the Jewish cemetery area, Department W, the youngest department of the cemetery, was set up in the 1950s due to a lack of space. Urn niches were built into a small old sandstone shed standing there and a wrought-iron door was installed as an entrance; it now serves as a columbarium .

The cemetery comprises a total of 17,405 grave sites, the entire network of paths is over 20 kilometers in length. Due to the vastness of the facility and the steep paths, a cemetery mobile has been available for some time, especially for older and disabled visitors.

history

Entrance to the mourning hall of the cemetery chapel built in 1842
The crematorium from 1891 is the second oldest in Germany

The landscape architect Johann Christian Metzger planned the almost 15 hectare cemetery complex and was in charge of the execution from 1842. The cemetery was inaugurated in 1844. Johann Christian Metzger managed to give the cemetery a "romantic" overall appearance by leading many paths along hillside terraces and having the area planted with native and exotic deciduous and coniferous trees, which blends harmoniously into the wider landscape.

The cemetery chapel, located in front of a steep hill on the ridge, was built in 1842 according to the designs of the Heidelberg city architect Heinrich Greif. Pilasters and pilaster strips made of red sandstone structure the walls of the building. Window reveals and cornices are also made of red sandstone. Parts of the structure are clinkered. The belfry on the roof of the chapel is a wooden structure. The portal of the chapel is provided with multi-leaf, glass-pierced oak doors and protected by a canopy made of wrought iron and glass. Towards the mountain, attached to the back wall of the chapel, there are utility rooms and ancillary rooms of the chapel and, in a transverse axis, the morgue with its individual chambers lined up. The cemetery chapel and in particular its important ancillary areas have been partially rebuilt and expanded over the course of time and their economic efficiency has been repeatedly adapted to the latest technical standards. The chapel bell rang at every funeral until the early 1850s. From the mountain side of the chapel, the bell ringer entered the bell stalls via an outside staircase.

In 1891 the newly built crematorium went into operation at the Bergfriedhof , the second oldest in Germany after the Gotha crematorium . In the years 1990/91 it was completely modernized. The cremations are carried out in state-of-the-art electric ovens. In 2000, a new emission-reducing filter system was installed.

The Jewish cemetery with its historically significant tombs is documented to this day.

As in many other places, there has been a so-called “butterfly grave for stillborn children” ( premature babies under 500 g) at the Heidelberg Bergfriedhof since 2005 , for whom there is a right to be buried in Baden-Württemberg. Here parents find a quiet place to mourn.

On May 13, 2006, a memorial for those who died of AIDS was inaugurated (see below ).

For a number of years now, tombs that are important in terms of art history and are worthy of preservation have been re-occupied as part of a monument protection concept. By adopting a grave sponsorship, interested parties acquire a right of occupancy. Because the construction times of the tombs that are still used in this way extend over the long period of around 150 years since the opening of the cemetery complex, each of the sponsored graves is unique.

Sculpture made of marble : Morpheus (with capsules of the opium poppy in hand) in the form of a female angel

Site plans

  • Map of the departments marked with letters

  • Site plan with marking of the graves of well-known personalities

  • Excerpt:
    selection of important grave sites
    (list with names)

Monuments

Franco-German War Memorial

Monuments commemorate the victims of the Auschwitz and Ravensbrück concentration camps , the Jewish community in Heidelberg destroyed during the Holocaust , the resistance group of the so-called Goerdeler Circle around Karl Friedrich Goerdeler , and the fallen in the Franco-German War of 1870/71. At the memorial for the victims of National Socialism, 27 anti-fascist resistance fighters are remembered.

List of important people buried in the mountain cemetery

The many personalities who have found their final resting place in the Heidelberg Bergfriedhof include the Reich President Friedrich Ebert , the conductor and composer Wilhelm Furtwängler , the poet and literary scholar Friedrich Gundolf , the chemists and researchers Robert Bunsen and Carl Bosch , the surgeon and cancer researcher Vincenz Czerny , the astronomer Max Wolf , the anthropologist and prehistoric Otto Schoetensack , the poet and translator Johann Heinrich Voss , the theologian Martin Dibelius , the inventor Felix Wankel , the legal philosopher Gustav Radbruch , the constitutional and international lawyer Georg Jellinek , the legal scholar Oskar von Bülow , the sociologist Max Weber , the priest Alfons Beil , the poet Hilde Domin , the architect, Nazi armaments minister and convicted war criminal Albert Speer and many others (see list below).

Location of the graves

Mausoleum of the Bartholomae family
Grave of Robert Wilhelm Bunsen
Vincenz Czerny's grave
Friedrich Ebert memorial
Grave of Wilhelm Furtwängler
  • CD
    • Moritz Cantor (1829–1920), mathematician, honorary professor in Heidelberg (Dept. Q)
    • Maximilian Joseph von Chelius (1794–1876), ophthalmologist and surgeon, professor in Heidelberg, honorary citizen of Heidelberg (Dept. H new)
    • Julius Curtius (1877–1948), lawyer, Reich Foreign and Economic Minister (Dept. B)
    • Theodor Curtius (1857–1928), chemist, professor in Heidelberg (Department WA)
    • Vincenz Czerny (1842–1916), surgeon, professor in Heidelberg (Dept. T)
    • Herbert Derwein (1893–1961), historian, head of the Heidelberg City Archives (Dept. J)
    • Martin Dibelius (1883–1947), theologian, professor in Heidelberg (Dept. D)
    • Albrecht Dieterich (1866–1908), philologist, professor in Heidelberg (Dept. Y)
    • Hilde Domin (1909-2006), writer (Dept. WA)
    • Friedrich von Duhn (1851–1930), archaeologist, professor in Heidelberg (Dept. O)
    • Alexander von Dusch (1789–1876), Baden Foreign Minister (Dept. E)
  • L-M
    • Theodor Leber (1840–1917), ophthalmologist, professor in Heidelberg (Dept. R)
    • Ernst Anton Lewald (1790–1848), theologian, professor in Heidelberg
    • Hans Lewald (1883–1963), German legal scholar
    • Hermann Lindrath (1896–1960), politician, Federal Minister 1957–1960 (Dept. V)
    • Franz von Liszt (1851–1919), criminal lawyer, international lawyer, professor series of members of the Reichstag (Dept. D)
    • Albert Mays (1818–1893), local politician, local historian and art collector (Dept. D)
    • Carl Metz (1818–1877), entrepreneur, founder of the voluntary fire service (Dept. L)
    • Victor Meyer (1848–1897), chemist, professor in Heidelberg (Dept. N)
    • Johannes Minckwitz (1812–1885), writer (Dept. D)
    • Johannes Minckwitz (1843–1901), chess journalist
    • Karl Josef Anton Mittermaier (1787–1867), legal scholar, honorary citizen of Heidelberg (Dept. E)
    • Franz Moufang (1893–1984), cultural advisor, justice of the peace, art collector (Dept. D)
    • Nicola Moufang (1886–1967), art historian and art collector (Dept. D)
Gustav Simon's grave
  • R-S
    • Gustav Radbruch (1878–1949), legal philosopher, professor in Heidelberg (Department WA)
    • Hans Reffert (1946–2016), musician, composer and visual artist
    • Otto Regenbogen (1891–1966), classical philologist, professor in Heidelberg (Dept. Y)
    • Erwin Rohde (1845–1898), classical philologist, professor in Heidelberg (Dept. N)
    • Michael Roscher (1960–2005), astrologer (Dept. WB)
    • Harry Rosenbusch (1836–1914), geologist, professor in Heidelberg (Dept. U new)
    • Hans Runge (physician) (1892–1964), German gynecologist and obstetrician, professorial series (Dept. D)
    • Alexander Rüstow (1885–1963), economist, professor in Heidelberg
    • Wilhelm Salomon-Calvi (1868–1941) rests in Ankara, in his memory his life dates are carved in the family's tomb, in the (Section Y)
    • Gustav Simon (1824–1876), surgeon, professor in Heidelberg (Dept. H new)
    • Albert Speer (1905–1981), architect and Nazi Reich Minister, war criminal convicted in 1946 (Dept. O)
    • Karl Bernhard Stark (1824–1879), archaeologist, professor in Heidelberg (Dept. D)
    • Hugo Swart (1885–1952), Lord Mayor of Heidelberg (Dept. F)
  • W – Z
    • Eduard Wahl (1903–1985), lawyer, professor in Heidelberg, Member of the Bundestag 1949–1969 (Dept. H)
    • Max von Waldberg (1858–1938), linguist and literary scholar, professor in Heidelberg (Dept. D)
    • Ernst Walz (1859–1941), Lord Mayor and Honorary Citizen of Heidelberg (Dept. D new)
    • Felix Wankel (1902–1988), mechanical engineer and inventor of the rotary engine (Dept. V new)
    • Georg Weber (1808–1888), historian and classical philologist (Dept. L)
    • Marianne Weber (née Schnitger, 1870–1954), women's rights activist and legal historian (Dept. E)
    • Max Weber (1864–1920), sociologist, lawyer, national and social economist (Dept. E)
    • Robert Weber (1906–1987), local politician, 1958–1966 Lord Mayor of Heidelberg (Dept. R)
    • Johannes Weiß (1863–1914), Protestant theologian (Dept. L)
    • Carl Theodor Welcker (1790–1869), lawyer, university professor and liberal politician (Dept. R)
    • Karl Wilckens (1851–1914), local politician, Lord Mayor of Heidelberg 1885–1913 (Dept. Y)
    • Ludwig Wilser (1850–1923), writer and race historian (Dept. Y)
    • Wilhelm Windelband (1848–1915), philosopher, professor and founder of the Southwest German or "Baden School" (Dept. X)
    • Max Wolf (1863–1932), astronomer (Dept. WB)
    • Reinhold Zundel (1930–2008), local politician, Mayor 1966–90 and honorary citizen of Heidelberg (Dept. O)

Memorial for those who died of AIDS

Memorial with obelisk
Plaque on the obelisk
Bench and obelisk at the memorial

On May 13, 2006, the memorial for those who died of AIDS was inaugurated. The city of Heidelberg has set up this place of remembrance in cooperation with the property office, the landscape office and the cemetery administration at its own expense and thereby honors the committed work of AIDS-Hilfe Heidelberg. Once a year, on the occasion of World AIDS Day on December 1st, AIDS-Hilfe Heidelberg organizes a small celebration at the memorial for relatives and friends of the deceased.

In the middle of the small square is an obelisk made of black granite . The red AIDS ribbon can be seen on the top of the obelisk . A bronze plaque with words of remembrance is attached to the base:

We hold hands and weep for ...
our friends,
our partners,
our loved
ones and everyone we have lost to AIDS.
We will never forget you!
AIDS-AID HEIDELBERG

The floor area around the obelisk was up to the limiting planting out with old sandstone - cobbled designed. A granite bench was set up especially for the memorial site (the granite comes from the overburden of an old grave complex). Relatives and friends can place painted and labeled stones in a square around the obelisk to commemorate the deceased (see pictures below).

  • III. At the place of remembrance at the Heidelberg Bergfriedhof, the names and a final greeting painted on stones by friends and relatives remember those who passed away. JPG
  • IV. At the place of remembrance in the Heidelberg Bergfriedhof, the names and a final greeting painted on stones by friends and relatives remember those who passed away.JPG
  • V. At the place of remembrance at the Heidelberg Bergfriedhof, the names and a final greeting painted on stones by friends and relatives remember those who passed away.JPG
  • VI. At the place of remembrance at the Heidelberg Bergfriedhof, the names and a final greeting painted on stones by friends and relatives remember those who passed away. JPG

literature

  • Elisabeth Gass : Hike through the Heidelberg Bergfriedhof. A souvenir picture. 2nd Edition. Hoerning, Heidelberg 1933.
  • Erwin Kiefer : Grave inscriptions in the Heidelberg mountain cemetery. An epigraphic study. Brausdruck, Heidelberg 1966 (numerous illustrations).
  • Hanna Grisebach : The Heidelberg Bergfriedhof. Graves and memorial stones. Photos by Peter Seng. Heidelberger Verlagsanstalt und Druckerei, Heidelberg 1981, ISBN 3-920431-12-X .
  • Leena Ruuskanen: The Heidelberg Bergfriedhof, cultural history and grave culture (= book series of the city of Heidelberg. Volume III: Selected graves ). Brigitte Guderjahn Verlag, Heidelberg 1992, ISBN 3-924973-45-8 .
  • Leena Ruuskanen : The Heidelberg Bergfriedhof through the ages . Verlag regionalkultur, 2008 (around 200 graves from A [Karl Abel] to Z [ Reinhold Zundel ] are presented); 2nd edition, Ed .: Peter Blum. ISBN 978-3-89735-518-7 .
  • Fritz Quoos: Heidelberg owes a lot to the Graimbergs. In: Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung . Heidelberg, 2007, No. 111, p. 5 (Heidelberger Nachrichten) of May 15, 2007 (in the series on the city graves of honor , volume 5).
  • Rudolf Schuler (photos), Richard Henk (text): Heidelberg. Braus, Heidelberg 1990, ISBN 3-921524-46-6 .

Web links

Commons : Bergfriedhof Heidelberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Memorial to the Victims of National Socialism , website of the VIA MONUMENTUM association
  2. ↑ Memorial for those who died of AIDS. In: aidshilfe-heidelberg.de, accessed on October 12, 2018.

Coordinates: 49 ° 23 ′ 50 "  N , 8 ° 41 ′ 25"  E