New Johannisfriedhof

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The mourning hall in the New Johannisfriedhof

The Neue Johannisfriedhof was the second municipal cemetery in Leipzig . It was used as a burial place from 1846 to 1950 and was the successor to what is now known as the Alter Johannisfriedhof . Today the Peace Park is located on its premises .

Location and shape

The location of the cemetery

The Neue Johannisfriedhof was about 1.5 kilometers southeast of the city center. Initially erected in an open field with access from Hospitalstrasse (today Prager Strasse), it received the following limits as the city expanded: Eastern section of Liebigstrasse in the north, Samuel Heinecke School for the hearing impaired and allotment garden association "Siegismund" in the east, Semmelweis- and Philipp-Rosenthal-Straße in the south and Linnéstraße in the west.

The Neue Johannisfriedhof was a north-south rectangle, 610 meters long and 290 meters wide, closed to the south by a trapezoid 100 meters high, with an area of ​​about 19 hectares. The access gate was on the north side and could be reached from the Ostplatz via the short cul-de-sac "Vor dem Hospitaltore". The entrance was flanked by a residential and administrative building. A main avenue led to the mourning hall almost at the southern end. It was built in the style of the Italian Renaissance based on the church of Santa Fosca on the Venetian island of Torcello .

The cemetery had nine sections and was structured strictly at right angles. The individual departments were separated by walls, which made it possible to erect representative hereditary burials . Initially treeless, the cemetery was given a park-like character over the years through the planting of mainly linden and horse chestnuts, which softened the strict geometry.

history

From Die Gartenlaube from 1861:
The graves of Tzschirner , Stallbaum , Herloßsohn and Zöllner
The cemetery entrance around 1900
Bomb damage in World War II

In the first half of the 19th century, the cemetery at St. John's Church , which had been in use for over 600 years, became too small for the growing city. The fields of the Johannis Hospital, which are about 500 meters away from the old one, were chosen as the site for a new burial site . The first to be buried here on October 1, 1846, on the unfinished complex called the New Cemetery, was the bricklayer Hans Gehlicke , who died in the fire of the Hôtel de Pologne . Since there was initially no morgue and no weatherproof shelter, the cemetery was initially unpopular with Leipzig residents. In 1848, according to plans by Albert Geutebrück (1801–1868), two buildings were built at the entrance as a morgue and administration building.

After just five years, the first section of the cemetery was occupied. It was followed by more about every four years, until in 1883 the ninth section of the cemetery had reached the largest possible area in terms of area. In the same year the old Johannisfriedhof was finally closed and the new cemetery was renamed Neuer Johannisfriedhof. Meanwhile, this was the Leipzig wholesale and educated middle class has become increasingly popular. This was also true after the opening of the south cemetery in 1886 , which was further away. Over 100, in some cases very representative, hereditary burial sites on the New Johannis Cemetery bear witness to its importance.

Special burial grounds with larger memorials were set up for soldiers who fell or died in Leipzig hospitals from both warring parties in the German War of 1866 and the Franco-German War of 1870/1871 .

In 1881/1882 the splendid mourning hall in front of the ninth section was built according to plans by the city planning director Hugo Licht (1841–1923). The central domed building was connected to the funeral halls on both sides. Also according to Licht's plans, the buildings at the cemetery entrance were replaced by more representative ones. The new Johannisfriedhof reached the height of its importance around 1900 when the ambitions of the Leipzig bourgeoisie to represent a collection of tombstone works of art that were later no longer found in this quantity and quality as a successor to the Südfriedhof.

During the Nazi era , over 100 victims of so-called " child euthanasia ", i.e. victims of the organized killing of mentally and physically handicapped or otherwise behavioral children and adolescents, from the children's department of the Leipzig sanatorium , were in Departments V 2, 3 and 5 - Doze anonymously in urn graves .

During the Second World War , the Neue Johannisfriedhof suffered bomb damage, which can be attributed to the proximity of the university's physical institute, where the Allies suspected research into the manufacture of an atomic bomb . The morgues in the side wings of the chapel were destroyed. The chapel itself was damaged, but could still be used after provisional repairs. In 1950, the burial activity at the New Johannisfriedhof was stopped with the intention of creating a park here later. At that time, 141,000 Leipzig residents were resting in this cemetery. After observing the rest period , the cemetery was secularized on January 1, 1971.

Then began the systematic destruction of this cemetery, which is unique in terms of culture and art, and its conversion into an amusement park. Crypts were filled, the graves cleared and leveled, and the mourning hall demolished. Using heavy technology, the tombstones were piled up to form a hill covered with earth, which would later serve as a toboggan slope. The former bourgeois elite of the city was thus forgotten. After protests, only 120 historically valuable tombs were brought to the Old St. John's Cemetery, where, after more than two decades of unsupervised storage, 58 are now, after partial restoration, in the lapidarium of the Old St. On July 20, 1983, the Peace Park was finally opened.

  • Limburger family grave complex

  • Grave field and memorial
    for the fallen from 1870/1871

  • Bernhard Windscheid grave site, around 1900

  • Burial of Auguste Schmidt 1902

  • Grave site of the Gerhard family

Buried personalities

Among the personalities on the list are nine honorary citizens of Leipzig.

Gravestones moved to the old Johannisfriedhof

literature

Web links

Commons : Neuer Johannisfriedhof  - collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Alfred E. Otto Paul: The New Johannisfriedhof in Leipzig. Retrieved February 8, 2016 .
  2. ↑ Berit Lahm, Thomas Seyde, Eberhard Ulm: 505 child euthanasia crime in Leipzig. Responsibility and reception. Plöttner Verlag, Leipzig 2008, ISBN 978-3-938442-48-7
  3. ↑ New release - The publication "Der Neue Johannisfriedhof in Leipzig"

Coordinates: 51 ° 19 ′ 38.5 ″  N , 12 ° 23 ′ 40.9 ″  E