Johannisfriedhof (Nuremberg)

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St. Johannis Cemetery (2008)
Location map

The Johannisfriedhof is a church cemetery in Nuremberg with historical and artistically valuable bronze epitaphs as well as culturally significant lying (standardized) gravestones and burial places of the Nuremberg population from more than five centuries. The burial site is still in operation and is a listed building; the city of Nuremberg and the Evangelical Lutheran cemetery administration are responsible for the burials. Because of the many rose bushes it is also called the rose cemetery . Due to the historical sights , the Johannisfriedhof is a destination in the context of a cemetery tourism and a stop within the historical mile of Nuremberg .

location

The cemetery is located west of the Nuremberg city wall in St. Johannis , which was incorporated in 1825. In the middle of the cemetery is the 13th century St. John's Church . On the eastern edge is the circular building of the Holzschuherkapelle (1513–1515), which is attributed to Hans Beheim the elder , who built it around 1514 for Peter Imhoff and his wife, who was born in Holzschuher . Hieronymus Holzschuher was buried there in 1529.

history

St. John's Church
High altar in the Johanniskirche

The nucleus for the later Johannisfriedhof was in 1234 a so-called Siechkobel (leper house) for lepers . In 1238, Pope Gregory IX approved . here a burial place with a chapel, which was the predecessor of the Johanniskirche around 1250. In the years that followed, this churchyard served as a burial place for the inmates of the Siechkobel as well as for farmers from the area. The choir of today's Johanniskirche was consecrated in 1377, the nave in 1395. The chapel has hardly changed its appearance since then and survived the Second World War largely undamaged. Only in 1446 was the sacristy added to the south side. In order to separate the Siechkobel residents from other worshipers, a closed walkway was laid out from the first floor of the Siechkobel to the church in the 14th century. It led to the west side, while other worshipers had entrances on the north and south sides. The church itself was also a burial place for the Nuremberg patriciate until well into the early modern period . For reasons of status as well as salvation, the patricians considered it essential to be buried within churches. Over time, more and more coffins piled up, and the nave was soon no longer able to accommodate visitors to church services. This was also the reason to build two galleries on the north side of the church. After 1800 the tombs were removed from the church. The Johanniskirche is equipped with valuable altars, the left side altar (around 1514) shows a double coat of arms of the donor couple Imhoff / Holzschuher.

Around 1395, on the occasion of a plague epidemic, the space around the St. Stephen's Chapel, which was consecrated this year (predecessor of the Holzschuherkapelle), was used as a burial place for victims of the disease. These burials outside the walls were the exception in the following 15th century. Only when epidemics burst the capacities of the cemeteries around the churches of St. Sebald and St. Lorenz , St. Jakob and the Heilig-Geist-Spital did this step take place, whereby the burial ground west of the Stephanus chapel was expanded in 1427 and 1457.

Watercolor of the Johannisfriedhof (Albrecht Dürer), around 1489

After the hygienic conditions in the church yards within the city walls had become intolerable at the end of the 15th century, the city lord of the imperial city of Nuremberg, Emperor Maximilian I , issued a mandate on October 31, 1518, according to which, in times of plague, any burial had to take place outside the city walls . On this basis, the city council was able to enforce, against the objection of the clergy, that the Rochusfriedhof was rebuilt for the parish of St. Lorenz near the Spittlertor and that the Johannisfriedhof was significantly expanded so that it could accommodate the deceased citizens of the Sebald side . As early as 1520, the Nuremberg council ordered general burial outside the walls. In the 1540s there was a general ban on burials in churches within the city walls. Until the opening of the Central Cemetery (since 1904 West Cemetery ) in 1880 and the South Cemetery in 1913, the Johannis and Rochus Cemeteries were the main burial places of the Nuremberg population without interruption. From the 16th to the 19th century, the Johannisfriedhof underwent numerous expansions, such as B. 1562 against the background of a devastating plague epidemic with around 9,000 deaths and in 1644 under the pastor Wolfgang Jacob Dümler .

The Nuremberg Way of the Cross leads from the city to the cemetery with seven stations that were created by Adam Kraft in 1506–1508 . Only copies of these works have stood on the Way of the Cross since the 20th century. The original stations are in the Germanic National Museum , the crucifixion group in the Heilig-Geist-Spital and the burial in the wooden shoe chapel.

Epitaph art

Holzschuherkapelle from 1515 and stele of Wolfgang Münzer

The handicraft tradition for the production of the epitaphs was included in the Bavarian State Directory of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2018 . The unique form of expression of the Sepulchral Culture arose on the one hand from the need to attach permanent signs on the weather-sensitive sandstone of the tombstones and on the other hand from the outstanding craftsmanship of the Nuremberg redsmiths .

Not only socially privileged persons provided their graves with an epitaph. From the beginning there were no demarcated areas on the burial ground for the wealthy patrician upper class, rather the most diverse professions and activities can be read from the individually designed grave tablets. The craftsmen in particular put themselves in the picture with their tools or products, making the bronze epitaphs an important source of the history of crafts and material culture. Numerous vivid insights can also be gained about the history of social and mentality and the history of art.

The bronze epitaphs in the Johannisfriedhof, the Rochusfriedhof and the Friedhof in Wöhrd (which were destroyed in the Second World War) were made in the 16th and early 17th centuries by the physician Dr. Michael Rötenbeck (1568–1623) has been examined. In 1682, Christoph Friedrich Gugel recorded them completely for the first time and printed his results. In 1736 the work of the Altdorf scholar Johann Martin Trechsel , called Großkopf, appeared, which dealt with the graves at the Johannisfriedhof, in the Johanniskirche and the Holzschuherkapelle. A systematic, digitally accessible and scientific inventory of the thousands of historical epitaphs under individual monument protection in the Johannis and Rochus cemetery is still missing today. A high-quality photographic documentation is available - as a private initiative. Numerous epitaphs are endangered by the effects of war, vandalism or material damage. An association and a foundation are dedicated to the continued existence of the cultural cemeteries.

Graves of famous people

Albrecht Dürer's grave
Veit Stoss ' grave
Willibald Pirckheimer's grave
Ludwig Feuerbach's grave

See also

literature

  • Johann Martin Trechsel called Großkopf: Renewed memory of the Nuremberg Johannis-Kirch-Hofs with appendix Ordinary lists and descriptions of all and every monuments and epitaphs, such as the time on the Nuremberg God's field at S. Johannis, and in that church ... to be found and are to be found . Felsecker, Frankfurt am Main 1736 ( digitized version from the Austrian National Library Vienna)
  • Kurt Pilz: St. Johannis and St. Rochus in Nuremberg. The church yards with the suburbs of St. Johannis and Gostenhof . Carl, Nuremberg 1984, ISBN 3-418-00488-1 .
  • Herbert Liedel, Helmut Dollhopf: The Johannisfriedhof in Nuremberg . Stürtz, Würzburg 1984, ISBN 3-8003-0234-9 .
  • Otto Glossner: The St. Johannisfriedhof in Nuremberg ( large architectural monuments , booklet 216). Edited by Illa Maron-Hahn. 4th edition, Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich and Berlin 1991.
  • Erich Mulzer: The outskirts. The baroque garden suburb of St. Johannis and the Johannis cemetery . In: Erich Mulzer: Baedeker Nürnberg - City Guide , 9th edition, Baedeker, Ostfildern-Kemnat 2000, ISBN 3-87954-024-1 .
  • Georg Stolz: Johannisfriedhof . In: Michael Diefenbacher , Rudolf Endres (Hrsg.): Stadtlexikon Nürnberg . 2nd, improved edition. W. Tümmels Verlag, Nuremberg 2000, ISBN 3-921590-69-8 , p. 499 ( online ).
  • Peter Zahn: The epitaphs of the old Nuremberg cemeteries: Sources for social history . In: Communications of the Association for the History of the City of Nuremberg 88, 2001, pp. 203–211 - online .
  • Civic Association St. Johannis-Schniegling-Wetzendorf: Wooden shoe chapel in the St. Johannisfriedhof Nuremberg, St. Johannis . St. Johannis-Schniegling-Wetzendorf Citizens' Association, Nuremberg 2002.
  • "If time goes by, death comes" - 500 years of Johannis and Rochus cemetery 1518–2018 . Edited by Michael Diefenbacher and Antonia Landois (exhibition catalog of the Nuremberg City Archives 26), Neustadt / Aisch 2018, ISBN 978-3-925002-56-4 .

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ St. Johannis website (history)
  2. ↑ Entire paragraph on the previous story from: "If time goes, here comes death". 500 years of Johannis and Rochus cemetery 1518-2018 . In: Michael Diefenbacher, Antonia Landois (ed.): Exhibition catalog of the Nuremberg City Archives . tape 26 . Nuremberg 2018, ISBN 978-3-925002-56-4 , pp. 11-18, 61-66 .
  3. ↑ Wolfgang Jacob Dümler: Christian inauguration of the newly expanded Gottsackers by S. Johannis: Beschehen auss God's Word / and with the dead body of the now blessed boy Hanns Adam / Deß ... Hanns Adam Seutters .... Söhnleins / Welches ... 1644 ... different / and ... were buried. Nuremberg 1644
  4. ↑ Nuremberg epitaphs are an intangible cultural heritage in Bavaria ( Memento of the original from January 13, 2018 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.sonntagsblatt.de
  5. ↑ Christoph Friedrich Gugel: Norischer Christen Freydhöfe Gedächtnis, that is: Correct presentation and index of all those monuments, epitaphs and grave inscriptions, which are on and in which [...] church yards of S. Johannis, Rochi and the suburb of Wehrd [...] located . Nuremberg 1682.
  6. ^ Johann Martin Trechsel: Renewed memory of the Nuremberg Johannis-Kirch-Hof, including a description of the church and chapel there [...] Frankfurt 1736.
  7. ^ Heiko Leuchtenstern: Epitaphs on the Johannisfriedhof and Rochusfriedhof. Retrieved November 11, 2019 .
  8. ↑ Nürnberger Epitaphienkunst und -kultur eV Accessed on November 11, 2019 .
  9. ^ Epitaphs Foundation. Retrieved November 11, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Glossary German-New High German ( Memento of the original dated December 31, 2013 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. , uni-hamburg.de. Retrieved December 30, 2013.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / webapp6.rrz.uni-hamburg.de

Coordinates: 49 ° 27 ′ 33 ″  N , 11 ° 3 ′ 40 ″  E