Friedental cemetery
The Friedental Friedhof is a cemetery on the outskirts of the city of Lucerne . It lies on a high moraine plateau above the deeply cut Reuss valley in the west and the Rotsee with the Rontal valley in the east.
History and design
The cemetery was opened in 1884/1885 because the old cemetery at the court church of St. Leodegar in the courtyard had become too small. The cemetery was planned by the architect and construction director of the city of Lucerne, Othmar Schnyder († 1928). The main entrance is strictly symmetrical in a classical style with two temple pavilions, an abdication hall on the left and a house of the dead on the right, to which arcades for hall graves are connected. The first Jewish cemetery in Lucerne was located on the left in the continuation of the arcade. In 1907 a children's chapel was built.
A cremation association was founded in 1905 to set up its own crematorium . Today it is called the Lucerne Cremation Foundation. In 1911 the Lucerne government donated the building site required for this purpose, whereupon the Catholic population protested against the donation. In 1915 the appeal was rejected by the Federal Council . After further approvals and rejected appeals, the construction of the crematorium could begin in 1923. The planning was entrusted to the architect Albert Froelich , who had already planned the crematoria in Aarau ( Rosengarten cemetery ) and Zurich ( Sihlfeld cemetery ). Eduard Renggli (1882–1939) painted sixteen allegorical figures between the skylight windows of the crematorium . The crematorium was inaugurated on September 14, 1926. The cost of building the entire system came to 400,000 Swiss francs, of which around half was covered thanks to a number of patrons.
In addition to the crematorium, an urn cemetery with an urn hall was built. A final renovation took place in the 1960s when the house of the dead was enlarged and fitted with modern air conditioning systems. In 2017 the abdication and the consecration hall were renovated.
In the cemetery there is a grave memorial for the victims of the two world wars. Most of these are German soldiers who died as internees in Lucerne. On three pages are the names of the soldiers mainly killed in World War I, some with details of the regiment. However, there were also Germans who lived in Switzerland but had to go to war for Germany. Another grave memorial is for the soldiers from France who died in World War I and who were interned in Lucerne.
Tombs from the period 1900 to 1920 were often designed in marble by well-known Lucerne and central Swiss artists. They testify to important Lucerne families. From 1900 every decade is represented by tombs.
In 1998, the cemetery administration of the city of Lucerne began to draw up an inventory of tombs, which a specialist committee considered worth preserving. This includes the tombstones of well-known personalities or those who convince for design reasons. Around 1200 objects were then put on the inventory list. That is between 10 and 15 percent of all graves in the city of Lucerne. These small monuments can be found across the entire Friedental cemetery - marked by signs.
Graves of important personalities
- Anton Schrafl (1873–1945), engineer and SBB General Director
- Alfred Sidler (1905–1993), painter
- Armin Meili (1892–1981), architect and politician
- Arnold Ott (1840–1910), doctor and poet
- Berthe Widmer (1924–2012), historian
- Carl August Hegner (1880–1964), ophthalmologist and founder of the Swiss Aid Committee for Starving Peoples
- Carl Spitteler (1845–1924), writer and Nobel Prize winner for literature
- Caspar Hermann (1885–1955), painter
- Cécile Lauber- Dietler (1887–1981), writer
- Ernst Hodel (Junior) (1881–1955), painter
- Ernst Hodel (senior) (1852–1902), landscape painter and panorama modeler
- Franco Annoni (1924–1992), sculptor, draftsman and designer
- Franz-Joseph Bucher (1834–1906), hotelier, railway pioneer and entrepreneur
- Friedrich Frey (1882–1953), businessman and company founder (Elektrowerke Reichenbach)
- Friedrich Wüest (1843–1902), politician, member of the board of the Gotthard Railway Company and co-founder of the Friedental cemetery
- Fritz Klein (1863–1923), entrepreneur, founder and director of the Helvetia sewing machine factory
- Hans Rudolf Meyer (1922–2005), lawyer, National Councilor and Mayor of Lucerne
- Hermann Dietler (1839–1924), engineer and politician
- Konstanty Rokicki (1899–1958), Polish Vice Consul and Holocaust savior
- Horst Gnekow (1916–1982), actor, dramaturge and theater manager
- Hugo Siegwart (1865–1938), sculptor and painter
- Jean Renggli (1846–1898), painter and teacher
- John Volkmann (1855–1928), merchant and inventor of the New York chocolate machines
- Josef Zingg (1863–1953), President of the SBB General Management
- Joseph von Moos (1859–1939), director of the Lucerne School of Applied Arts
- Leopold Häfliger (1929–1989), painter and sculptor
- Leopold Häfliger (senior) (1906–1974), sculptor
- Lucien Emile Abry (1863–1937), decorative painter
- Max Sigmund Wey (1892–1953), politician
- Michael Danioth (1832–1908), last Gotthard Post conductor
- Philip M. Jones (1928–2000), musician, trumpeter, founder of the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble
- Roland Duss (1901–1977), sculptor
- Rolf Brem (1926–2014), sculptor, draftsman and graphic artist
- Seraphin Xaver Weingartner (1844–1919), founder and first director of the Lucerne School of Applied Arts
- Willem Mengelberg (1871–1951), conductor and composer
Box 21
Grave monument for interned French soldiers
Grave monument for the interned German soldiers of the two world wars
Tree grave field with gravestones worth protecting
Tree burial ground
View of Rotsee , Rigi , Cantonal Hospital
crematorium
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See also
literature
- Carl Seelig : The Lucerne Crematorium. In: Architektur und Kunst, Vol. 13, 1926, pp. 301–307.
- Elisabeth Schleich: The Friedental Cemetery in Lucerne. In: Swiss Society for Garden Culture, Vol. 16, 1998, pp. 86–92.
- Pia Amstutz: The renovation of the historic Friedental cemetery. In: Architecture in everyday life in Central Switzerland, Issue 35, 2016, pp. 22–23.
- Gottlieb Halder: The cemeteries of the city of Lucerne (= Lucerne through the ages. 42, ZDB -ID 2170926-9). Commission publisher Eugen Haag, Lucerne 1968, pp. 17–24.
- César Callisaya, Rainer Knauf, Kathrin Krüger, Mathias Steinmann: Culture of remembering. The Lucerne cemeteries Hof and Friedental. History and grave design. Offizin, Zurich 2001, ISBN 3-907496-06-X .
- Georg Anderhub: Temporary monuments. A guide through the Lucerne Peace Valley. Beag Kunstverlag, 1998.
Web links
- Friedental cemetery on the website of the city of Lucerne
- Cemetery plan (PDF)
- Lucerne Cremation Foundation
- Ismail Osman: How tombstones become monuments. In: Luzerner Zeitung , October 28, 2018.
Individual evidence
- ^ Iten Genealogy: Memorial Interned Germans Lucerne. Retrieved November 18, 2019 .
- ^ Iten Genealogy: German internees in Switzerland during World War I. Retrieved November 18, 2019 .