Bremerhaven cemetery in Wulsdorf
The Wulsdorf cemetery is located in Bremerhaven's southern district of Wulsdorf . The plot is 93,660 m².
history
The population in Bremerhaven rose sharply from the middle of the 19th century. After the city was founded, the Bremerhaven residents had the right to be buried in the neighboring municipality of Lehe since 1827 . That was now void. The soil and the limited areas of Bremerhaven did not allow a new installation in Bremerhaven. The construction of a cemetery outside of Bremen's territory required the approval of Prussia . In 1870/71, for example, the cemetery in Wulsdorf on Weserstraße was laid out for the deceased of the Bremerhaven municipality .
The cemetery was built according to plans by the garden architect Wilhelm Benque . Like the Bremen cemeteries in Walle and Riensberg , which he also planned , it was designed in the landscape style of a park cemetery. The aim was not to make the most economical use of the area, but to place the graves in a varied park landscape with lots of trees and rhododendrons . The property, which was around five and a half hectares in size at the time, was located in an area between Geestendorf and Wulsdorf, which was sparsely populated at the time and mainly used for agriculture . The first burial took place on May 5, 1871.
The Prussian regulations applied to the construction and funeral services and supervision of the funeral procession. Consideration also had to be given to the train traffic at the old Geestemünder Bahnhof in Klußmannstrasse (Bahnhofsallee). Bremerhaven therefore built the chapel in the neo-Romanesque style in the cemetery in 1888, designed by the city architect Luis Löschner . The actual chapel is on the first floor of the building.
The enclosure wall instead of a hedge was built in 1914. After the First World War, the Bremerhaven City Building Authority built a residential building for the gardener on Weserstrasse based on designs by the City Planning Councilor Julius Hagedorn in 1919/20 . The new house at the main entrance also took on the function of a waiting hall and a shop as well as the public toilets.
In 1930 a crematorium was integrated in the basement of the cemetery chapel. The last cremation took place here on April 17, 1990. In the same year it was replaced by today's Bremerhaven crematorium in the Spadener Höhe cemetery.
Graves and monuments
Map with all coordinates of this section: OSM
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Directly behind the chapel you can see the entrance of the now completely overgrown, pyramid-shaped family crypt Sprickerhoff (field 6, → Lage ). To the north of it stands the neo-Gothic style mausoleum by Hermann Ahlers (field 5, → location ) on a large green area . Today the building is in a rather poor condition: the windows have been partially destroyed and some Gothic ornaments are already missing.
In the rear part of the cemetery, a strikingly large pyramid made of brick bricks was erected in 1919 in honor of the fallen soldiers of the First World War (field 18e, → Lage ). There are more graves of fallen soldiers from both world wars in the vicinity, as well as a memorial for those who fell in the Second World War , which is, however, rather inconspicuous. The urn grove is located on another adjacent green area (field 18b). The memorial for the victims of the bomb attack on the Mosel ship , also known as the Thomas catastrophe , is also in the vicinity (field 15, → location ). According to the inscription, 43 of the 83 victims were buried here. According to a note in the cemetery, the body of the assassin William King Thomas is said to have been buried in a different location and without a tombstone. His severed head was in the Bremen Crime Museum until 1945 and was destroyed in an explosion.
There is also a memorial obelisk in honor of the soldiers who perished during the China expedition against the Boxer uprisings in 1902 (field 20, → location ). To the dead of the terrible bombing night on 18./19. September 1944 is a simple memorial. The foreign workers who perished in the process are also remembered. The victims of the air raids on Wesermünde during the Second World War lie in an oak grove . A stone with the inscription reminds us today:
Also noteworthy are the figurative tombs Märcker (field 3/5, → location ), the Seedorff family (field 10, → location ), the RC Rickmers family (see also under personalities; field 6/10, → location ), the Busse family (see also under personalities) and the Scheller family (field 2, → location ), Anna Pane geb. Talamo (field 4/5, → location ), Kapt. Hans Tiemann (field 3/5, → location ) and the communal grave for the pastors of the Catholic community in Bremerhaven (field 6, → location ).
Personalities
- Waldemar Becké (1878–1947), City Director and Lord Mayor of Bremerhaven
- Friedrich Busse (1835–1898), founder of German deep-sea fishing; the Busse family grave is decorated with a stone angel on a base with a bronze relief (see photo)
- Benno Eide Siebs (1891–1977), lawyer, civil servant and local writer; the Eide Siebs family owns a large family grave near the Busse and Scheller family graves .
- Carl Friedrich Hanckes (1829–1891), hydraulic engineer and port construction director
- Gerhard van Heukelum (1890–1969), Lord Mayor and Honorary Citizen of Bremerhaven
- Josef Lechnir (1898–1982), diver and urologist
- Hermann Noë (1879–1961), engineer and shipyard director
- Siegmund Oss (1865–1920), businessman
- Rickmer Clasen Rickmers (1807–1886), shipyard owner, shipowner and rice merchant; the large RC Rickmers hereditary burial (see photo) is separated from the adjacent burial ground by rhododendrons
- Peter Rickmers (1838–1902), shipyard owner, shipowner and rice merchant, son of RC Rickmers; his grave is in his father's hereditary burial complex
- Wilhelm Anton Riedemann (1832–1920), businessman and shipowner
- Bernhard Scheller (1852–1907), building contractor and architect
- Hinrich Schmalfeldt (1850–1937), cigar maker, politician (SPD, USPD) and trade unionist; Honorary citizen of Bremerhaven
- Wilhelm Schuchmann (1858–1943), shipowner
- Arthur Seidel (1883–1964), Member of Parliament (SPD)
- Rolf Störmer (1907–1982), architect on the family grave of Brauns Störmer
Monument protection
In 2010, the entire Wulsdorf cemetery was placed under monument protection. The chapel and the gardener's house were also placed under protection as individual monuments.
literature
- Gerd Schwemer: The Bremerhaven cemetery in Wulsdorf. History - nature - culture . Bremerhaven 1998.
Web links
- List of names of the gravestones of the Bremerhaven-Wulsdorf cemetery on grabsteine.genealogy.net
Individual evidence
- ^ Peter Raap : The East Asian Expeditionary Corps. An obelisk in the Bremerhaven cemetery and its history . In: Men from Morgenstern , Heimatbund an Elbe and Weser estuary e. V. (Ed.): Niederdeutsches Heimatblatt . No. 742 . Nordsee-Zeitung GmbH, Bremerhaven October 2011, p. 3 ( digital version [PDF; 1.4 MB ; accessed on April 9, 2020]).
- ↑ Susanne Schwan: Law protects tombs and graves. (No longer available online.) In: Website Nordsee-Zeitung. January 5, 2011, archived from the original on February 11, 2013 ; accessed on April 9, 2020 .
- ↑ Monument database of the LfD (complete system)
- ↑ Monument database of the LfD (chapel)
- ↑ Monument database of the LfD (gardener's house)
Coordinates: 53 ° 30 ′ 48.5 " N , 8 ° 35 ′ 47.5" E