Ostfriedhof (Cologne)
The Cologne Ostfriedhof is a central urban cemetery in the right bank of the Rhine part of Cologne . It is located in the Dellbrück district near the Dellbrücker Mauspfad in the Mülheim district .
General
The east cemetery was established in 1946 when there was a lack of space in the cemeteries on the right bank of the Rhine that already existed at that time. The first burial took place in 1948, the funeral hall of the cemetery was not completed until 1955. The entire burial site is around 59 hectares and was designed as a forest cemetery. The plant took place in the green belt on the right bank of the Rhine in a partially wooded area that is one of the foothills of the nearby Königsforstes . Today, large parts of the cemetery and the surrounding areas are overgrown with mixed forest, which makes the Ostfriedhof one of the most scenic cemeteries in the greater Cologne area. With currently around 20,000 occupied graves, the space capacity of the cemetery is only about a tenth full, entire corridors remain unused to this day and are ideal for walks in the woods or for mushroom picking. For this reason, the city of Cologne is considering separating unused forest areas from the cemetery and adding them to the adjacent urban forest areas. Since March 2006, in addition to traditional burial facilities, anonymous urn burials under trees have been possible at the Ostfriedhof .
Barrows in the Ostfriedhof
Several unoccupied grave fields in the east cemetery show a slightly hilly relief; this goes back to several hundred barrows in the area of the cemetery, which from the 12th century BC. BC originated here as well as partly in other parts of today's Cologne on the right bank of the Rhine (for early tumuli in the Cologne urban area see also History of the City of Cologne # The pre-Roman Cologne ). In total, there are an estimated 1200 barrows in the area of the Ostfriedhof alone, far more than has been proven up to now. The burial mounds that have survived to this day can be seen, for example, near the main entrance and in hallway 43 near the mourning hall.
Memorial for slave labor
In the north of the cemetery, on Bensberger Marktweg, a memorial by Joseph Höntgesberg commemorates the forced laborers who had to work for the Radium company in the camp from 1943 to 1945 (1993).
Graves of important people
So far, the following celebrities have found their final resting place in Cologne's Ostfriedhof:
- Andreas Bliemel , painter
- Jupp Elze , Boxer (hallway 18)
- Heinz Kühn , Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia (Hall 29)
- Jim Reeves , singer and record producer
See also
literature
- Günter Leitner: Friedhöfe in Köln - Mitten im Leben, pp. 282–284. Cologne 2003
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Andreas Bliemel: Obituaries . In: faz.net . October 24, 2015.
Coordinates: 50 ° 57 ′ 51.6 " N , 7 ° 4 ′ 38.4" E