Geusenfriedhof

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The Geusenfriedhof in Cologne-Lindenthal is the oldest Protestant cemetery in the Rhineland. When it was first used in 1584, it was outside the city gates of Cologne and initially offered the only possibility of burying Protestant Christians during the Counter-Reformation .

The name can be traced back to Dutch Protestants who came to Cologne as religious refugees and were called Geusen . Geusen (derived from French gueux , "beggar") called themselves the Dutch freedom fighters during the Eighty Years' War (1568-1648).

Panorama view of the Geusenfriedhof

history

The oldest preserved large grave slab from 1597

In Catholic Cologne in the 16th century, people who openly professed the writings and teachings of Martin Luther were subject to persecution by the influential clergy . In 1529 Protestant reformers like Adolf Clarenbach and Peter Fliesteden were executed by burning. The supporters of the Reformation who lived in Cologne - in addition to the Dutch -speaking “Geusen” who immigrated as religious refugees, there were also German-speaking Lutheran and Reformed congregations as well as a French-speaking Reformed congregation - practiced their faith largely covertly in view of the hostile conditions in Cologne. It is considered likely that pastors from the city of Mülheim on the right bank of the Rhine, which was more tolerant in matters of faith at the time, initially looked after these early Cologne Protestants with pastoral care.

Also under the Archbishop of Cologne Salentin von Isenburg , the “wrong-minded people” were fought from 1570 in the course of the Counter Reformation - citizens who did not take part in the Catholic worship service or did not take part in the flower decorations in the processions were threatened with interrogation, imprisonment or expulsion from the city . In addition to the open organization of a Protestant church service, Protestant burials were also unthinkable in what was then Cologne and had been banned by the city council since 1583. At most , a burial of “non-Catholics” was permitted in the misery cemetery alongside suicides and the “dishonorable”. Since July 23, 1570, there have been repeated expulsion orders for "Geusen", "foreign Kalviner" and Lutherans in Cologne , for example in the summer of 1582. After the Catholic Ursula von Gohr zu Kaldenbroek - daughter of the Imperial Chamberlain Ailf von Wyenhorst - 1576 der City had donated a 2700 m² plot of land in front of the Weyertor (southwest of the city), a Protestant cemetery was opened on June 24, 1576. The people of Cologne named it "Geusenfriedhof" after the Protestant Geusen, the Dutch freedom fighters of the Eighty Years' War . The city council issued strict funeral rules for this, funerals should be inconspicuous and small, because only between six and a dozen mourners were allowed to accompany the funeral cart. The first burial took place here in 1582, the cemetery was expanded in 1584. Hermann von Weinsberg reported in 1598 that the Protestant scholar Jakob Leichius was buried there in 1584 and the Protestant engraver Frans Hogenberg in 1590 . The merchant Nicolaus Spillieur (1603) and the painter Gottfried von Wedig (1641) also found their final resting place here. The citizen Johannes Böcking was buried here in 1792, his tombstone is still preserved today. There were burials until 1829, individual cases after that until 1875. Since 1829 Protestants have been allowed to be buried in the Melaten cemetery , which has since been non- denominational. One of the last funerals was that of mathematician Franz Taurinus in 1874 .

In the course of the Enlightenment movement of the 17th / 18th The first improvements arose for the Protestant citizens of Cologne in the 19th century: After the Cologne tolerance dispute of 1787, which was unsuccessful from the Protestants' point of view , Empress Maria Theresa allowed the Lutherans and Reformed people to have a “quiet house of Beth, school and preachers” in 1788, although this minority did this out of caution initially made no use. In the absence of a burial permit in Cologne, occupancy of the Geusen cemetery continued. It was only when the French revolutionary troops occupied the city on the Rhine in 1794 and guaranteed the citizens of Cologne the right to religious freedom that the hitherto secret communities celebrated their first public service in the rented hall of the brewers' guild on Schildergasse . They got their first church, the Antoniterkirche , from the French city ​​administration in 1802 .

present

In the 1980s, with the support of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Evangelical Congregation began restoring gravestones and preparing the site.

The property with its old stock of trees is now safely accessible thanks to the involvement of volunteers on a circular path and two cross paths. The individual graves are no longer accessible with paths, between them the ground is thickly overgrown with ivy . Some of the old, lying tombstones have been preserved and placed on new bases, others are overgrown and weathered. The facility has been a listed building since 1981 .

Today the Geusenfriedhof is a valuable testimony to Cologne's history, it has 144 horizontal slabs, around 50 low spots and around 30 tombs from the classical period.

Art historical importance

Detail of the grave slab Johannes Böcking (1737–1762): Grim Reaper prays with the deceased, angel with a flaming sword guards the paradise above

Many of the grave monuments in the Geusen cemetery are very remarkable both artistically and in terms of community history. Before the advent of classicism , the early tombstones had a distinctly different design language compared to the contemporary Catholic grave complexes, insofar as they largely dispensed with cross-shaped stones and instead used inclined rectangular or square tombstones, which are reminiscent of memorial stones in a church crypt . After that, an approach to traditional forms can be observed , for example in the use of upright classical steles and obelisks .

Pictorial representations of saints are rarer than in Catholic burial culture. The depiction of coats of arms, house brands , professional symbols or image metaphors for death, impermanence and resurrection such as skeleton, grim reaper , skull or angel is often found, with the religious reference being underlined by quotations from the Bible.

literature

  • Rudolf Löhr: Protocols of the Dutch Reformed Congregation in Cologne 1651 - 1677. 2 volumes. Rheinland Verlag Düsseldorf, Cologne 1971.
  • Jürgen Fritsch, Günter Leitner: Cemeteries in Cologne - in the middle of life . 1st edition. Cologne 2003, ISBN 3-936333-01-7 .
  • Günter Leitner, Bernhard Buddeberg: I know that my Redeemer lives - A tour of the evangelical Geusenfriedhof in Cologne . Ed .: Evangelical Congregation Cologne. Self-published, Cologne 2007.

Web links

Commons : Geusenfriedhof  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Günter Leitner / Bernhard Buddeberg, I know that my redeemer lives - A tour of the evangelical Geusenfriedhof in Cologne , 2007, p. 5
  2. Peter Fuchs (Ed.), Chronicle of the History of the City of Cologne , Volume II, 1991, p. 61
  3. Carl D. Dietmar7Werner Young, Small illustrated history of the city of Cologne , 2002, p 94
  4. ^ Geographical Institute of the University of Cologne, Kölner Geographische Arbeit , Edition 83, 2004, p. 178
  5. Stefan Lewejohann (ed.), Cologne in unholy times: the city in the Thirty Years War , 2014, p. 66
  6. Jürgen Wilhelm (ed.), Das Große Köln Lexikon , 2008, p. 173
  7. ^ Hermann von Weinsberg, Liber decrepitudinis , Volume III, 1598, p. 248
  8. Jürgen Wilhelm (ed.), Das Große Köln Lexikon , 2008, p. 173
  9. Günter Leitner / Bernhard Buddeberg, I know that my redeemer lives - A tour of the evangelical Geusenfriedhof in Cologne , 2007, p. 27
  10. Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Information Center for Space and Building (ed.), Tombs and Mausoleums , Volume 1, 1986, p. 33

Coordinates: 50 ° 55 '31.5 "  N , 6 ° 55' 36.9"  E