Imperial churchyard
The Imperial Cemetery , also known as the Austrian cemetery or war memorial, is a resting place for the hospital residents of the main army hospital in Bensberg Castle , who mainly died of typhus and who were buried in mass graves in the Milchborntal in Bensberg on the southwestern edge of the Hardt . The name Kaiserlicher Kirchhof is based on the fact that the complex was built in 1854, during the time of the Austrian Empire , with their support. The name Austrian cemetery is intended to remind us that soldiers from the Austrian troops in the last phase of the so-called Holy Roman Empire were buried here.
history
backgrounds
Right at the beginning of the coalition wars, there were clashes between the French revolutionary army and the Austrian regiments in the Aachen area in 1792 . The wounded and sick were initially housed in a hospital in Königswinter , but the premises were soon no longer sufficient. A further eight secondary hospitals in the area around Unkel , Honnef and Rheinbach were no longer sufficient in terms of space. In the search for alternatives, Bensberg Castle was soon targeted.
Against the resistance of the Countess Helena Theresia Moureaux, a field hospital was set up at the beginning of 1793, which subsequently had to take in the injured. It was subordinate to the city commandant of Cologne . Again and again it was difficult to get the necessary furnishings, straw for the storage of the injured and firewood. There were also always bottlenecks with food. In addition, the hygienic conditions were extremely poor. Typhus broke out for the first time in March 1793, claiming numerous victims. To prevent the epidemic from spreading any further, the corpses were carried down to the Milchborntal as quickly as possible by cart and buried there in large mass graves. This practice was also used for other deceased people who were not infected with typhus, although individual graves were originally planned. It has been estimated that up to 9,000 dead are believed to lie in the graves, including the dead in the nearby French cemetery .
The grave complex
The Bensbergers remembered the terrible impressions and experiences from the time of the hospital and oral tradition. In the meantime, in 1840, Bensberg Castle had become a cadet institute . The fact that the graves from the French times were neglected was no longer accepted. In 1853 there was a call to erect a monument. The Vienna Foreign Ministry had already approached the King of Prussia with a plan by the architect Friedrich von Schmidt to erect a worthy monument. The monument was inaugurated on June 13, 1854 with military honors and with great sympathy from the population.
monument
The memorial of the imperial churchyard is registered as an architectural monument under No. 93 in the list of architectural monuments in Bergisch Gladbach .
literature
- Guide for Bensberg and the surrounding area , published by the Bensberger Verschönerungsverein n.d. (around 1900)
- Kurt Kluxen : History of Bensberg , Paderborn 1976
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Anton Jux: The KK Hauptarmeespital in Bensberg and the Kaiserliche Kirchhof , Wuppertal-Elberfeld 1955
Coordinates: 50 ° 58 ′ 25 ″ N , 7 ° 9 ′ 14 ″ E