French cemetery (Hanau)

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The French cemetery in Hanau is a historical cemetery that has only survived in ruins.

Current condition, view from the north

It was set up at the end of the 16th / beginning of the 17th century west of the city fortifications in the immediate vicinity of the Frankfurter Tor and the Canal Gate for the residents of Hanauer Neustadt, which was founded in 1597 and settled with Dutch and French- speaking Walloons .

The name French cemetery came about because a - then - new German cemetery was laid out about a hundred meters north in 1633 for the residents of the old town of Hanau. Two separate cemeteries were created because different churches were responsible for the funeral system in the two cities. In the old town it was the Marienkirche (in the second half of the 17th century the Johanneskirche was added), in the new town the Walloon-Dutch church .

Changes in hygienic ideas in the 19th century made it necessary to relocate the burial site: The French cemetery was now too close to the city and also in the Kinzig floodplain . It was therefore replaced in 1846 by the Hanau main cemetery located far east of the Nuremberg Gate . The numerous tombs were initially standing fell over time in part and also suffered losses in the air raids of World War II in Hanau, leaving only 20 today tombs remain.

In 1894 the abandoned French cemetery was converted into a park, possibly by Heinrich Siesmayer . Nothing of that can be seen today. It is a green area with trees mainly from the period after 1945. complemented the facility in which it was post-war period in 1958 by a memorial against oppression, dictatorship and war and another for the expellees from the German eastern territories . Today the area is called Martin-Luther-Anlage . The senior citizens' residential complex of the same name owned by the Martin Luther Foundation is directly adjacent .

literature

  • Caroline Krumm: cultural monuments in Hesse - city of Hanau = monument topography Federal Republic of Germany - cultural monuments in Hesse. Wiesbaden 2006. ISBN 3-8062-2054-9 , pp. 241f.
  • Eckhard Meise : A court of death for every community. Historic cemeteries in Hanau. In: KulturRegion Frankfurt RheinMain gGmbH (Hrsg.): Garden RheinMain. From the monastery garden to the regional park. Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt 2006 ISBN 3-7973-0981-3 pp. 180f.
  • Eckhard Meise: Hanau's old cemeteries and the collections of the Hanau history association. In: New Magazine for Hanau History 2008 pp. 3–70.
  • Ursula Zierlinger: The French cemetery . In: The bridge. The magazine of the Martin Luther Foundation , No. 244. Hanau, November 2010, p. 8f.

Web links

Coordinates: 50 ° 8 ′ 0.8 ″  N , 8 ° 54 ′ 32.7 ″  E