Protestant cemetery Mönchengladbach

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Cemetery chapel

The Protestant cemetery at the water tower is in Mönchengladbach ( North Rhine-Westphalia ), Viersener Strasse 71.

The cemetery , which was laid out in 1610, is entered under no. V 031 on May 4, 2011 in the monuments list of the city of Mönchengladbach .

location

The cemetery is outside the medieval town center on Viersener Strasse. It is bordered by Viersener Strasse, Lindenstrasse and Klagenfurter Strasse. On its south side, the site connects to the Bethesda Hospital. The design of today's cemetery complex goes back to the middle of the 19th century. The main entrance is at Viersener Straße 71.

history

In the middle of the 16th century, Anabaptists ( Mennonites ), sacramentarians and Reformed people settled in Gladbach. Before 1610, however, there was no independent Reformed congregation in Gladbach with its own preacher . The Reformed in Gladbach, Dahlen and initially also Rheydt formed the so-called Gladbacher Quartier, which must have been built around 1572 and which was headed by a district consistory comparable to the presbytery.

The Mennonite community in Gladbach and Rheydt came into being during the Reformation, but was exposed to massive state persecution . In 1537 Veit Pilgrims was arrested, tortured and finally burned at the stake in Gladbach on May 26th . According to a decree from 1599, all Anabaptists were expelled from Gladbach and their property was confiscated, but the Mennonites were able to stay in Gladbach until the middle of the 17th century. After an expulsion decree in 1652, however, the Mennonites had to leave Gladbach permanently. Many settled in Dahlen and Rheydt, where a new independent community was able to establish itself. In 1694, however, the authorities used a city fire as a pretext to force the Mennonites out of Rheydt. The Mennonites were mostly linen weavers and merchants. The communities in Gladbach and Rheydt are part of the liberal group of High German Anabaptists. A well-known preacher was Matthias Servaes von Ottenheim .

With the death of the childless Duke Johann Wilhelm , the family of the Catholic dukes of Jülich-Kleve-Berg died out in 1609 and the first phase of the Counter Reformation ended. The Lutheran princely houses of Brandenburg and Pfalz-Neuburg prevailed as heirs, granting their subjects freedom of belief and conscience. In 1610 the first Reformed congregation came into being, the preacher of which was Henricus Wullius, who came from Hamm to Gladbach. He did create a church book for baptisms, weddings and for the taking of the creed. However, funerals have not yet been recorded.

Together with the Mennonites, the Reformed built a new Kirchhoff around 1611/12 on the Hondtsberg (Fliescherberg) . As early as 1636 an expansion became necessary, for this purpose the Gladbach merchant and Mennonite Henrich and his wife Treintgen Hanssen sold land to the Reformed and Mennonite community. Burials took place at Fliescherberg until 1854 . The conversion of Count Palatine Wolfgang Wilhelm from Lutheranism to Catholicism in 1614 ushered in a second phase of the Counter-Reformation, with effects on the Reformed in Gladbach. They were banned from worshiping for over 50 years ; they had to go to Rheydt to preach. It was not until 1672 that peace returned due to the comparison of religions between Brandenburg and Palatinate , and the practice of the Reformed creed was permitted again. In 1675, for example, the Reformed asked the city council for permission to build a church within the city, but the latter refused. After his election, the preacher Peter Herminghausen (1658–1749), who came from the Siegerland, began building a preaching house next to the cemetery on Hondtsberg - for example in the area of ​​the present-day Recreation House or the Old House of Zoar.

The church was put into use in 1684. The question of where Reformed and Anabaptists were buried before 1610/11 remains unanswered, especially since a consistorial record for 1612 shows that burials took place on the Hondtsberg on the so-called newen Kirchhoff . Since burials within the city, which is dominated by the Benedictine abbey , do not seem realistic, there are some indications that there must have been an older cemetery. This may have been on the property between today's Lindenstrasse and Viersener Strasse and appears to have been reactivated in 1854 for resumption of use. This view corresponds to the tradition and is supported by a survey book from the years 1730–40. An entry from the year 1666 in Gladbacher inheritance books speaks of a Calvin cemetery property in front of the Marder Pfortzen (Vierscher Tor or Viersener Tor). Accordingly, the history of the cemetery on Viersener Strasse goes back to the Reformation.

When the Christ Church on Kapuzinerplatz was put into use on October 28, 1852, the Reformed community gave up the dilapidated old church on Fliescherberg. Together with the church building, the cemetery was soon abandoned, because as early as 1853 a commission came together to buy the fields of Johann Meyer, Thomas Herfs and the heirs of Konrad Kauertz on Viersener Straße. They were surrounded by a massive wall and could be locked with an iron gate. On October 11, 1854, the royal government in Düsseldorf and on November 7, 1854 the city approved the project. The first burial took place on November 15, 1854, the wife of the President of the Gladbach Chamber of Commerce and City Councilor Johann Peter Boelling. The first 3.5 acres were expanded in 1863 by purchasing land worth 1,800 thalers. Around 1867 a new morgue and a sermon hall - now called the cemetery chapel - were built.

After the Franco-German War, an obelisk was erected as a memorial in 1872. The area reserves shrank, so that in 1883, against the declared will of the authorities, plans for a second expansion were taken up. On July 8, 1887, the Düsseldorf government approved the renewed cemetery expansion. On August 25, 1888, a third land was purchased on Klagenfurter Strasse. The ministerial approval was delayed until 1903, but burials had already taken place on the area beforehand. The last expansion in 1907 was completed with the construction of a brick wall, which reveals the quality of the craftsmanship and high design standards. The size of the cemetery is now around 4,100 square meters.

During the Second World War , the city was on 19./20. Bombed in September 1944, which led to considerable destruction of the morgue and sermon hall. The degree of destruction of the sermon hall is, however, controversial. The roof is said to have been destroyed while only the outer walls remained. In the years 1951/52 a new morgue, gardening center, greenhouse, shed and toilet facility were built, and the chapel was rebuilt. In 2004 the 150th anniversary of the cemetery was celebrated.

architecture

The cemetery is accessed through an orthogonal system of paths. There are mostly right-angled burial fields between the paths. There are individual monuments at two prominent intersections of the main routes: an obelisk erected in 1872 as a memorial for the Gladbach soldiers who died in the war of 1870/71 and a monumental Christ monument. Four more roundels in the younger western part of the cemetery have been planted. An old tree population gives the complex a high picturesque charm. A high wall made of bricks surrounds the complex on Viersener Straße, Lindenstraße and Klagenfurter Straße. Square brick pillars with capital-like heads frame wall panels, which over a flat wall support an arched frieze with cornice and a gently sloping, roof-shaped end.

The cemetery complex has a high level of historical authenticity and its structure can be clearly recognized from the middle of the 19th century.

Important Mönchengladbach families found their final resting place in the cemetery.

literature

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Individual evidence

  1. ^ Monuments list of the city of Mönchengladbach , November 16, 2018, accessed on July 29, 2019
  2. ^ Mönchengladbach (North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online, accessed July 19, 2015 .
  3. ^ Rheydt (North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online, accessed July 19, 2015 .
  4. ^ Matthias Servaes von Ottenheim (1536-1565). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online, accessed July 19, 2015 .

Coordinates: 51 ° 12 ′ 0.9 ″  N , 6 ° 25 ′ 31.3 ″  E