Gersthof cemetery

View from the Gersthofer Friedhof on the Schafberg

The Gersthofer Friedhof is a communal cemetery in the Gersthof district of Vienna's 18th district , Währing .

location and size

The Gersthofer Friedhof is on the edge of Gersthof on a slope of the Schafberg called Alsrücke . It is located at Möhnergasse 1, directly on the border to the 17th district, Hernals, to the south . Not far from the entrance, tram line 40 , which starts at Schottentor in the city center, has its north-western terminus, Herbeckstraße.

The cemetery area covers an area of 31,714 square meters with 4,590 grave sites.

history

First Gersthof cemeteries

Inspired by the Josephine reforms , a cemetery was built in 1785 at the exit of the village of Gersthof on the mountain side. It was built at the point where Messerschmidtgasse joins Gersthofer Strasse today. Today the parish kindergarten is located on the premises.

In the middle of the 18th century, the area around the cemetery was already densely built, which is why the cemetery was no longer open from 1845. The municipality of Gersthof left the cemetery and built a new cemetery on an 11- acre property in Ried Hagenau, north of the village. The parish had received the property from the rulership of Gersthof, who left the area at today's Bischof-Faber-Platz to the parish in return for the assignment of the old cemetery property and permission to build a family crypt at the new cemetery. The community took over the fencing of the new cemetery; it was initially designed as a picket fence . The consecration of the new cemetery took place on January 14th, 1846. The overcrowding of the cemetery and the rapid growth of Neu-Gersthof made it necessary to close this cemetery as early as 1877. After the opening of the new cemetery, the cemetery property was left to the church building association , which built the Gersthof parish church on it.

Today's cemetery complex

mausoleum

Russian military cemetery at the Gersthofer Friedhof

The last re-establishment of the Gersthofer Friedhof took place on a slope of the Schafberg, the so-called Alsrücke, southwest of the place. The cemetery was inaugurated on October 27, 1880. The people who died between the closure of the second cemetery and the opening of the third cemetery had to be buried at the nearby Hernals cemetery . The remains from the second local cemetery were buried in a mass grave to the right of the newly built mausoleum .

In 1892 Gersthof was incorporated into Vienna with other places than the 18th district, Währing . Responsibility for the cemetery was thus transferred to the Vienna city administration.

The third Gersthof cemetery was first expanded in 1899 by an area of 20,000 square meters. At the beginning of the 20th century, the construction of an administration building and the adaptation of the existing grave digger's house were approved. In 1903/1904 a waiting hall was built, the conversion of the sanctuary into a chapel, the relocation of the entrances to the infectious mortuary chamber and the installation of a protective roof were approved. The cemetery chapel was consecrated on April 11, 1907 and the cemetery was expanded twice in the 1910s.

After the south side of the cemetery facing Czartoryskigasse was provided with an architecturally structured enclosure wall in 1938, the city administration had the funeral hall renovated between 1945 and 1951 and parts of the cemetery wall renewed.

In 1952 the allocation of new and abandoned graves was stopped. A year later, the Vienna City Council decided to close the Gerstofer Friedhof and other small cemeteries until 1975. In 1957, however, the reallocation of fallen graves was approved on the condition that the right of use would expire at the end of 1975. The local council stopped this new allocation again in 1965, but had the blocking period for the cemeteries concerned extended until the end of 1985.

In a referendum carried out in 1980 , the majority of voters decided in favor of retaining the cemeteries threatened by closure, which is why the local council lifted the closure decision on September 26, 1980. After a confiscation procedure carried out in 1982/1983, new graves could be allocated again. In 1983, the laying out room was reopened after renovation and conversion work.

The Gersthofer Friedhof is also the location of a Russian military cemetery that was made up of a mass grave occupied in 1945. The number of fallen soldiers buried here is not known.

Graves of important personalities

Graves dedicated to honor

The Gersthofer Friedhof has eight honorary graves .

Surname	Life dates	activity
Emil Karl Blümel	1881-1925	Writer, cultural historian
Gustav Gugitz	1874-1964	Art historian, local historian and folklorist
Ludwig Hirsch	1946-2011	Songwriter and actor
Wilhelm Pollauf	1878-1916	Reichsrat member
Walter Strzygowski	1908-1970	geographer
Theodor Taube	1840-1904	writer
Franz Vogl	1861-1921	sculptor
Theodor Windbrechtinger ("Turl Wiener")	1875-1971	Folk actor and comedian

Graves of other personalities

Adolf Robitschek

Other personalities who are buried at the Gersthofer Friedhof:

Surname	Life dates	activity
Josef Argauer	1910-2004	Soccer player and coach
Otto Bolesch	1918-2005	actor
Ludwig Castagna	1867-1944	Mechanic and inventor
Gernot Eder	1929-2000	physicist
Hans W. Fasching	1923-2009	jurist
Heinrich Fuchs	1923-2000	Art lexicographer
Fritz Fuhrich	1937-2005	Theater scholar
Anton von Kenner	1871-1951	painter
Otto Lutz	1869-1947	Politician
Albert von Margutti	1869-1940	General and writer
Leo Navratil	1921-2006	psychiatrist
Josef right	1871-1927	Actors and singers
Christoph Reisser	1836-1892	Book printer
Maximilian Ronge	1874-1953	Colonel in the Austro-Hungarian Army
Adolf Robitschek	1853-1934	Music publisher
Johannes Michael Schnarrer	1965-2008	Social ethicist
Josef Schneeweiß	1913-1995	Resistance fighters
Alexander Tollmann	1928-2007	Geologist and politician
Lore Trenkler	1914-2002	cook
Eva Twaroch	1963-2018	Journalist , foreign correspondent
Emil Vetter	1878-1963	Linguist
Josef "Joschi" Weidinger	1923-2002	European boxing champion
Edmund Wengraf	1860-1933	Narrator, poet and essayist, President of the Concordia Press Club
Karl Wurmb	1850-1907	Railway engineer
Johanna von Trapp	1919-1994	singer
Ernst Florian Winter	1923-2014	Historian, political scientist