Park cemetery Meiningen
The Park Cemetery Meiningen is the largest and most important of the four cemeteries in the southern Thuringia county town Meiningen . Integrated in a spacious landscape park with a rich tree population, a number of well-known personalities from politics, business and culture found their final resting place here, including Duke George II, the most famous citizen of the city. As an ensemble, the park cemetery is a garden and cultural monument and also houses numerous individual monuments.
history
From 1835 to 1838 the city had the new park cemetery built on a gently sloping mountain slope east of the city center and the Werra Railway as a replacement for the old, too small, urban churchyard located in the southern part of the English Garden . The official inauguration of the cemetery took place on August 12, 1841. In 1870 the Jewish cemetery was established in a narrow strip on the northern edge . The cemetery was initially set up as a purely functional facility. From 1880 the court gardeners Max Vieweg-Franz and Eduard Grau redesigned the resting place into a park cemetery at the instigation of Duke Georg II . In addition to numerous trees, irregular grave fields, wide lawns, curved paths and avenues were created. The cemetery chapel was built from 1884 to 1885 and the crematorium was built between 1911 and 1912 .
On July 13, 1924, the central monument was consecrated in the honor grove, which was erected to commemorate the fallen soldiers of the First World War based on a design by Karl Behlert . The last burial took place in the Jewish cemetery in 1944. An American air raid on Meiningen on February 23, 1945 destroyed large parts of the cemetery with the chapel and the crematorium. While the crematorium with the celebration hall was rebuilt in a simple form shortly afterwards, the chapel was lost forever. The city also had a memorial for the Meiningen bomb victims of the Second World War and the memorial in the honor grove built in 1924 to commemorate those who fell in this war. In 1948 , the Soviet Army built a Soviet memorial near the former chapel site, which still exists today , in which the graves of eight Russian forced laborers are integrated. Another five graves with memorial plaques remind of Poles who were deported to Germany during the Second World War and were victims of forced labor .
After the political change, memorial stones were inaugurated for the fallen soldiers of the Wehrmacht units stationed in Meiningen (1993) and for the victims of flight and displacement (1999), and the honor grove was redesigned by the “ Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge ”. The city also had two memorial stones erected for the victims of the Soviet military justice . One remembers 49 political prisoners who died of hunger and illness in the Untermaßfeld prison between 1950 and 1952 . In 1991 a new functional building was built in the cemetery. In the 2000s the crematorium was shut down and the building was used exclusively as a mourning hall and place of blessing. In 2007 the city built a community facility for urn burials at the site of the former chapel. On the north side of the cemetery, the “Crematorium South Thuringia” was built in 2010 in the immediate vicinity of the mourning hall. Since 2000, a number of urn community facilities, anonymous meadow burial areas and a cemetery for star children have been built .
The park cemetery, which is around ten hectares in size, with its widely ramified, winding main and side paths, had 758 large trees in 2007.
Buildings
Entrance hall
The neo-Gothic entrance building with the morgue was built by the architect August Wilhelm Döbner when the cemetery was founded in 1838 . Until 1992 it served as the main entrance to the park cemetery. The individual monument is located on the west side of the cemetery on Berliner Straße. The structure, which has a large gatehouse and two wings, is equipped with a rose window in the stepped gable , a stone relief with the city coat of arms in the Gothic pointed arch of the gate, branches and stone decorative elements on the upper facade under the eaves. On the street side of the gate passage, a two-winged wooden gate closes the access to the cemetery. After the morgue has been moved to the crematorium, the cemetery administration is located in the building.
Cemetery chapel
The → cemetery chapel was located in the southwest part of the cemetery and was a neo-Gothic building made of limestone. Construction work for the chapel began on May 7, 1884 under the direction of the architect Erwin Theodor Döbner . Completed on September 9, 1885, the inauguration took place on October 2, 1885. In 1887 the chapel was supplemented with a coffin lowering device. The construction costs totaled 29,300 Reichsmarks. During the Second World War, the cemetery chapel was completely destroyed in a bomb attack on February 23, 1945 . After the war, no reconstruction was considered, the natural stones that had been preserved were used to rebuild the crematorium with a celebration hall , which was also destroyed on February 23, 1945 .
Crematorium with celebration hall
The crematorium was built in 1911/12. The architect of the building on the northern edge of the cemetery was Carl Göbel . The building was destroyed by bombs on the same day as the cemetery chapel. In the years 1947–1949, the crematorium was rebuilt and expanded to include a ceremony and funeral hall to replace the chapel. The celebration hall is accessed via a wide flight of stairs and through a classicistic portal with Ionic columns. At the beginning of the 2000s, the firing systems were shut down, and a newly built crematorium in the immediate vicinity has been taking over the cremation since 2010. Since then, the old crematorium has been used exclusively for funeral services and as a farm building.
Cenotaphs and grave monuments of well-known personalities
An important memorial is the honor grove laid out in 1924 by Karl Behlert for the fallen soldiers of the First and Second World Wars. In the center of the complex, built as a roundabout, a large rock with inscriptions serves as a souvenir. Further cenotaphs are the cenotaph, created in 1945, with graves and memorial for the victims of the air raids in World War II, a memorial of the Soviet Army and memorial steles for the victims of the Soviet military justice.
The most important and worth seeing grave complex in the park cemetery is the burial place of the duke couple Georg II of Saxony-Meiningen and Helene Freifrau von Heldburg . In addition, many other well-known personalities found their final resting place in the Meiningen Parkfriedhof: Among them are the poet and librarian Ludwig Bechstein (1801–1860), Schiller's sister Christophine Reinwald , the poet Rudolf Baumbach (1840–1905), the musician Richard Mühlfeld ( 1856–1907), the composer Günter Raphael (1903–1960), the director Max Grube (1854–1934), the architect Karl Behlert (1870–1946), the director Ludwig Chronegk (1837–1891), the founder of the bank for Thuringia Gustav Strupp (1851–1918), the directors of Deutsche Hypothekenbank Bernhard Hessner (1856–1960) and Ludwig Kirchner (1858–1914) and the princes and princesses of Saxony-Meiningen Friedrich (1861–1914), Ernst (1895–1914 ), Marie Elisabeth (1853–1923), Ernst the Elder (1859–1941) and Katharina Freifrau von Saalfeld (1874–1945).
See also
Web links
- Alemannia-judaica - Meiningen Park Cemetery
- Flyer “The Meininger Parkfriedhof, A Guide to Notable Tombs”
literature
- City of Meiningen: The Meiningen Park Cemetery. Brochure, 2008.
- Ingrid Reissland, Hartmut Pfannschmidt: The Meininger Parks . Verlag Resch, Meiningen 2012, ISBN 978-3-940295-30-9 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Kuratorium Meiningen (ed.): Lexicon for the history of the city of Meiningen. Bielsteinverlag, Meiningen 2008.
- ^ Arnold Ansorg: Chronicle of the park cemetery. Meiningen 1978.
Coordinates: 50 ° 34 ′ 3 ″ N , 10 ° 25 ′ 18 ″ E