Museum burial ground

The museum graveyard is a small open-air museum as part of the Schosshaldenfriedhof in the Swiss city of Bern , which is dedicated to selected tombs .

history

The museum graveyard, "probably the smallest museum in the city" of Bern, was founded in 1980 with the aim of preserving "contemporary examples of tomb art" for posterity. The “field” is occupied in a slow rhythm, “so that there are not too many tombs from the same era”. The City of Bern Tombs Commission decides which tombstones are to be included in the museum field based on purely aesthetic criteria. These include “tombs that are exemplary in terms of their craftsmanship and artistically”, which are awarded a prize once a year by the Tomb Commission. Part of the concept of the museum grave field is that the age patina is left in place.

The museum burial ground also serves as an open-air event location. So was z. B. 2011 Heinrich von Kleist staged in the museum grave field by Christine Ahlborn and Matthias Zurbrügg as a theater walk.

The oldest gravestone in the field is from 1888, the majority of the exhibited gravestones date from 1950 to 1980. The gravestones are currently exposed to the weather in a remote part of the Schosshaldenfriedhof , but should be moved to a location more convenient for visitors. It is also intended that the museum grave field will participate in the annual Bern Museum Night, as well as special museum grave field tours.