Turkish graves of Hammet and Hasan

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The so-called Turkish graves of Hammet and Hasan are two grave sites of looted Turks from the 17th century, which are located in Hanover in the Neustädter Friedhof . From the Turkish side the graves are called Mehmed ve Hasan († 1691) (also: Hasan ve Hamit ).

The two graves are - after the burial site of the six-year-old Mustaf in Brake near Lemgo - the oldest known and preserved burial sites of booty Turks in Germany. Since Hammet and Hasan remained true to their Muslim faith, the graves are also the oldest surviving Islamic graves on German soil. They are also the last surviving evidence of the Turkish wars in which the Hanoverian troops took part in the 17th century outside Vienna, and also the oldest evidence of the first Turks in Hanover.

Hammet and Hasan's tombs from 1691, with the renewed memorial plaque from 2006

Life of Hammet and Hasan

Hammet was captured outside Vienna in 1683 after the Second Turkish Siege of Vienna and served as a lackey or so-called Chamber Turk for Electress Sophie von der Pfalz .

The Hanoverian official clerk Johann Heinrich Redecker only noted in old German about Hasan : “There was also a Turk who was imprisoned in Hanover at this time, took Hassan, who also remained in Turkish disbelief…, died around A. 1691 […] [and at Hammet] was buried in just such a grave ”. The Islamic rite of Hammet's burial was exceptional, while the majority of Ottoman prisoners of war are said to have been forcibly baptized at the time.

Historical descriptions of the graves

1692: Report about "a Turkish grave"

There is a report from 1692 by a Leipzig traveler who wrote under the pseudonym "Antonio":

“I saw a Turkish grave there / which stands in front of the city outside the God's field next to the Moors. The Türck underneath went there in his superstition / and this meal was / was given to him by his fellow believers / whose many come to Hanover from Morea and Hungary. In the middle lies a broad stone / and as well as the head as the foot / a high stone is erected / on one of which a German / on the other has Arabic scripts carved into it. "

1710: Report on "(two) Turkish burials"

During a visit to Hanover in 1710, the private scholar and (later) Frankfurt mayor Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach found two “Turkish burials”. He wrote in his travel diary for January 12, 1710:

“We also looked at the orangery, but drove back again before I had avoided it, when the severe cold made us do it, and right in front of this gate in the churchyard we saw the Turkish burial on the right hand side, one of which is Tenzel every month Conversations Th. IV. A. 1692. p. 815 reports something. But there are now two. I would have liked to have had the inscriptions copied if the severe cold hadn't kept us from doing it. "

1764: Gravestones in the direction of Mecca

Johann Heinrich Redecker drew Hammet's two gravestones for his Historical Collectanea ... and added by hand:

"Stone, so towards the city, to the east
(and) stone, so to the west."

He describes a grave typical of Muslims at the time with a head and foot stone and an (approximate) orientation towards Mecca. Instead of an additional, lying “wide stone”, as described by “Antonio” in 1692, 60 years later there is obviously only bare earth in a low side enclosure.

Hasan's tombstone without an inscription?

Gravestone attributed to Hasan without inscription

On the second surviving tombstone, today attributed to Hasan, the Hanoverian city archivist Helmut Zimmermann said in 1958 the name “Hammet can still be clearly recognized” and took this as evidence for the second Hammet tombstone.

Günter Max Behrendt speculates that both of Hasan's gravestones (head and foot) were without inscriptions from the start. On the one hand, the text field on the preserved tombstone is completely blank (the lack of an inscription (would not be due to weathering, damage or deliberate deletion), on the other hand, the tombstones in Johann Heinrich Redecker's “Historische Collectanea ...” do not have a detailed description or even experience signing.

Hammet's gravestones

Hammet's grave originally had two gravestones: the one with the German inscription at the foot end and a higher one at the head end with an Ottoman inscription (gravestone lost).

German inscription

German inscription on Hammet's tombstone

The German inscription on Hammet's tombstone can still be read today in (old) German:

“After the great Turkic power went to Vienna in 1683 and was again driven forward by the Germans, but the Turks again settled down at Berkan in Upper Hungary with 12,000 men, in which action, such as the Berkan mentioned, went down with them Turck found Turcke Hammet, buried by this stone, after he was captured by a captain, who gave the same to her pass through the duchess, who then served her for the eighth year, then died and was buried. Anno 1691. "

Ottoman-Turkish inscription

1988: Translation by the Imam

The Turkish doctor Dr. Yetkin Güran, who lived in Hanover in the late 1980s (and today in Istanbul), did research on the two Ottoman graves as a hobby historian and spent years trying to preserve them. In 1988 he found a knowledgeable imam in a Hanoverian mosque who translated a reproduction of Johann Heinrich Redecker's copy of the Ottoman-Turkish epitaph as follows

“(Lines 1 and 2 :) 1097, Muhammet, the son of Mr. Baki, one of the Zipaachies, from our village / died after eight years. / May Allah bless him / Dervish from Shemdinli "

2000: Turkish-German memorial plaque

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Bilingual, renewed memorial plaque from 2006

With this translation of the Imam, Dr. Güran attracted the attention of the highest Turkish authorities: First the Turkish Consulate General in Hanover was convinced, then both tombs were renovated in 1998 with funding from the Turkish Defense Ministry and, in agreement with the City of Hanover, erected on the spot in 2000. After a vandalism attack in 2006, the memorial plaque, which was added back in 2000 , now has two (corrected) inscriptions, one in Turkish and one in German :

“BURADA 1683 YILI VIYANA KUŞAMASI MUHAREBELERINE KATILAN VE TUNA KIYISINDAKI CIĞERDELEN MEVKIINDE HANNOVER BIRLIKLERI TARAFINDAN SAVAŞ TUTSAĞI DÜŞURÜLEN OSMANLI SIPAHILERI HADAN MEHMEDIR. WELFEN PRENSI GEORG LUDWIG'IN EŞLIĞINDE HANNOVER SARAYINA GETIRILMIŞLER VE BU SARAYDA ÖLDÜKLERI 1691 YILINA KADAR HIZMET VERMIŞLERDIR. ISLAMI USÜLLERE GÖRE DEFNEDILMIŞLERDIR. BU KITABE ONLARIN VE BU TOPRAKLAR ALTINDA YATAN TÜM OSMANLI TÜRK ASKERLERININ ONURLU ANISINA ATFEDILMIŞTIR. "

“Here rest the bones of two Ottoman fief riders ( Sipahi ), Hammet and Hasan, who, a few days after the relief of besieged Vienna in 1683 near Párkány on the Danube, became prisoners of war in Hanover. They came to the court in Hanover in the entourage of the Guelph Prince Georg Ludwig , where they served until their death in 1691. They were buried according to the Muslim rite. This inscription is in their worthy memory and all other Ottoman-Turkish soldiers who rest under this earth. "

The imam's (now obsolete) translation has left its mark on the memorial plaque: For example, what was known in German as “Hammet” became the “Ottoman Zipaachie Derviş Mehmet from Şemdin” - a “place in the most distant Ottoman-Kurdish border area to Persia”.

2001: Translations based on a recovered photo

The inscription on the missing tombstone in "Ottoman-Turkish, the language of the Ottoman army" only became visible again after Günter Max Behrendt found a photo from around 1930 in the picture archive of the Historisches Museum Hannover in 2001 . The inscription was translated as follows by Klaus Kreiser :

" Sipahi Mehmed, who belonged to (in the year) 1097 (= 1685/86) in Timisoara (excavated) / Sipahis / died after eight years / the grace of God may come upon him, / the knowledge (of God) of his soul forever give. "

New Turkish transliteration :

"Bindoksanyedi yilinda Temeşvar (?) / Sipâhîlerden Mehmed Sipâhî / sekiz yildan sonra vefât / eyledi rahmet ullâhi aleyh ver rûhuna ma`rifeti."

Alternatively, Prof. Dr. Jens Peter Laut , Islamic scholar and Turkologist at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg , together with his colleague Dr. In short, the following reading:

“(Lines 1 and 2 :) The Sipahi (horse soldier) Mehmed, who was held as a prisoner of war since 1097 (AH = 1685/86), / died eight years later. / May the mercy of God be with him! / (last, line 5 unclear) "

Changing locations of the tombs

First grave place

Thanks to the two inscriptions in both German and Ottoman inscriptions, the grave was already well received during the times of Electress Sophie, as it represented a "German-Ottoman fusion: Ottoman-Muslim in the overall complex, German-Baroque in the artistic design". This also included the only partially correct reproduction of the Arabic characters by a Hanoverian stonemason, which he had copied as best he could from a handwritten template. Such a grave could not find a place in a Christian cemetery at that time, but was initially (built) at "the Neustädter Kirchhofe (at that time) in front of the city, on the outside of its wall, on the side facing the Schützen plan (= old Hanover's first shooting range on today's Klagesmarkt ) ”.

Second grave site

“Probably only with the construction of the houses on Körnerstraße (approx. 1870), the gravestones were moved to the cemetery grounds (which had been abandoned since 1876) for reasons of space.” The “Turkish graves” are still on a plan of the Neustädter St. Andreasfriedhof from 1923 one behind the other and facing south (towards Mecca).

Third burial place

After the air raids on Hanover in World War II and the subsequent downsizing of the cemetery in favor of the adjoining new buildings, graves were removed or moved, including the graves of Hammet and Hasan. Today they are "aligned" with the Christian grave monuments.

Exhibition 2010

As part of the exhibition Beyond Life - A Walk through Hanover's Cemeteries from September 15, 2010 to January 9, 2011, the Hanover Historical Museum showed, in addition to the original photos of the graves from around 1930, a model of Hammet's grave (on a scale of 1: 5 ), as it should have looked like in the time of Electress Sophie.

Literature (incomplete)

  • Günter Max Behrendt: Hammet († 1691) - an Ottoman prisoner of war in Hanover , in: Beyond life / A walk through Hanover's cemeteries , in: Writings of the Historical Museum Hanover , Vol. 39, Quensen Druck + Verlag GmbH and Co. KG , Hildesheim, 2010, ISBN 978-3-910073-40-1 , pp. 119-121
  • Günter Max Behrendt: The Ottoman graves in the former Neustädter Friedhof . In: Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter , New Series (NF), Volume 60. Edited by the state capital Hanover. Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hannover 2006, ISSN  0342-1104 , ISBN 978-3-7752-5960-6 , here pp. 181–187
  • Hartmut Heller: Muslims in German soil. Early burial sites from the 14th to 18th centuries . In: Gerhard Höpp, Gerdien Jonker (ed.): In foreign earth. On the past and present of Islamic burials in Germany . Berlin 1996, pp. 45-62
  • Otto Spiess: Turkish prisoners of war in Germany after the Turkish Wars . In: Erwin Gräf (Hrsg.): Festschrift Werner Caskel on his seventieth birthday March 5, 1966, dedicated by friends and students . Leiden 1968, pp. 316-335
  • Helmut Zimmermann : The first Turks in Hanover were prisoners of war . In: Helmut Zimmermann: People and Works. Highlights from Hanover's history . Hannover 1996, pp. 175-180
  • Antonio (pseudonym of a Leipzig resident who belonged to the circle of friends of Wilhelm Ernst Tentzel (editor of the monthly discussions ... )): (travel report), in: Monthly discussions of some good friends of all kinds of books and other similar stories. Issued to all lovers of curiosities for indulgence and reflection . Leipzig 4 (1692, October), here p. 815
  • Johann Heinrich Redecker : Historical Collectanea from the Royal and Electoral Resident City of Hanover / also lying around ancient counties of Lauenrode, Wunstorff and Burgwedel / July 8th, An. Started in 1723 by the Cammer clerk Redecker . Hanover 1764 (manuscript in the Hanover City Archives, Sign. B 8287 g or NAB 8287), pp. 712, 728

TV documentaries

Web links

Commons : Hammet and Hasan  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Uwe Standera: Brake, tombstones at the Ev.-Ref. Church . Natural science and historical association for the state of Lippe , 2011, accessed on October 11, 2017.
  2. ↑ Islamic Organizations in Germany by Thomas Lemmen, Digital Library of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung , 2000 (page of the print edition: 15) ISBN 3-86077-880-3
  3. ↑ a b Quote from Red. (Johann Heinrich Redecker), p. 712, by: NN: Türkische Gefangene in Hannover , in: Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter , Hannover, Druck und Verlag Th. Schäfer, 11. Jhrg., 1908
  4. ↑ Historical Museum - Exhibition shows the cultural history of Hanover's cemeteries by Simon Benne, Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung from September 13, 2010
  5. ↑ a b Brochure on the cemetery (pdf; 2.4 MB) ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. City of Hanover, 2003 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hannover.de
  6. ↑ Historisches Museum am Hohen Ufer, large text panel Hammet († 1691) , additional photos (around 1930) after the first reburial ("approx. 1870") and a model as an approximation of the presumed original Hammet grave on a scale of 1: 5 in the exhibition Beyond Life ( Memento of the original from September 15, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. from September 15, 2010 to January 9, 2011 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hannover.de
  7. ↑ Quotation by Günter Max Behrendt: The Ottoman graves on the former Neustädter Friedhof , in: Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter, New Series (NF) Volume 60, p. 181f, based on: Antonio (pseudonym of a Leipzig citizen who was part of the circle of friends of Wilhelm Ernst Tentzel , the Editor of the Monthly Conversations ... , belonged). (Travel report): (...) I saw a Turkish grave there (...). In:  Monthly conversations with some good friends from all kinds of books and other similar stories. Edited to all lovers of curiosities , year 1692, issue October (IV. Year), p. 815. (Online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / Maintenance / mur.
  8. ↑ Quoted in Günter Max Behrendt: The Ottoman graves in the former Neustädter Friedhof . In: Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter, New Series (NF) Volume 60, p. 181f, based on: Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach : Strange journey through Lower Saxony, Holland and Engelland 1701–1711 , Bd. 1 Frankfurt (inter alia) 1753, p. 417f.
  9. ↑ Helmut Zimmermann: The Turkish graves in the Neustädter St. Andreas-Friedhof in: Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter, New Series Volume 11, 1958, p. 191
  10. ↑ a b c d Günter Max Behrendt: The Ottoman graves in the former Neustädter Friedhof , in: Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter, New Series Volume 60, p. 181ff.
  11. ↑ Photo around 1930 (of the grave that was first reburied “circa 1870”) in the image archive of the Green Space Office / HMH
  12. ↑ Also quoted from Red. (Johann Heinrich Redecker), p. 728, by: NN: Türkische Gefangene in Hannover , in: Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter , Hannover, Druck und Verlag Th. Schäfer, 11. Jhrg., 1908
  13. ↑ According to Günter Max Behrandt, the translation of the imam, who has since died, turned out to be wrong on the one hand, but would be a highly creditable achievement due to the "almost complete mutilation of the source text."
  14. ^ Information from Günter Max Behrendt
  15. ↑ According to the table in the Historical Museum in Hanover: “Translation by Prof. Dr. Klaus Kreiser, 2001 “: Exhibition Beyond Life ( Memento of the original from September 15, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hannover.de
  16. ↑ Text for the exhibition Beyond Life ( Memento of the original from September 15, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in the historical museum @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hannover.de
  17. ^ Johann Heinrich Redecker: Collectanea Hannoverana, Vol. 2, p. 712
  18. ↑ Large text panel in the exhibition Beyond Life ( Memento of the original from September 15, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in the Historical Museum on the Hohe Ufer @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hannover.de
  19. ↑ Helmut Zimmermann: The Turks Graves on the Neustädter Friedhof , excerpt from the plan in: Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter, New Series, Vol. 11, 1958, p. 192
  20. ↑ A picture board in the museum points out: "How exactly the grave once looked can no longer be said."
  21. ↑ Günter Max Behrendt: The Ottoman graves in the former Neustädter Friedhof . In: Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter, New Series (NF) Volume 60, p. 182

Coordinates: 52 ° 22 ′ 41 ″  N , 9 ° 43 ′ 32 ″  E