Reformed cemetery Hochstrasse (Wuppertal)

View over the cemetery to the cemetery church

The Reformed Cemetery Hochstrasse is one of the three cemeteries on Hochstrasse in the Elberfeld district of Wuppertal , along with the Catholic and Lutheran cemeteries .

history

The Reformed Cemetery was established in 1842 by the Reformed Community of Elberfeld after the cemetery opened in 1786 on today's Else-Lasker-Schüler-Strasse could no longer cope with the increasing number of burials. At that time, the new cemetery of the Lutheran community of Elberfeld was opened on the opposite side of the main road to Neviges , the site of today's Reformed Cemetery was still lightly wooded at that time and bordered on the then sparsely developed working-class district of the Elberfeld Nordstadt, today's Mount of Olives. It was not until 1844, two years after the opening of the Lutheran cemetery opposite, that the first burials could be held in the new Reformed Cemetery. The gate building on the south side of the cemetery was built in 1843 and initially also served as a place of worship for the Reformed Parish of Elberfeld.

From 1894–1898 the cemetery church was built on the site of the deliberately large-scale cemetery . The church built at the southwest end of the cemetery got its name due to its proximity to the cemetery, but apart from the crypt in the foundations of the church, it was never connected to it. With the construction of the cemetery church, the time of the chapel as a place of worship ended, since then only funeral services have been held in it. At the same time as the cemetery church, the Reformed Parish and Community House Alemannenstrasse was built on the site of the cemetery, which initially also housed the cemetery administration.

In May 2013 a new columbarium was inaugurated in the cemetery. However, due to structural defects and strong mold growth, the building had to be closed for the time being in 2016; access has also been prohibited to mourners since then. The future of the building is therefore uncertain.

With 14,900 grave sites, the nine-hectare Reformed Cemetery Hochstrasse is the fourth largest Protestant cemetery in Wuppertal after the cemeteries Bredtchen , Unterbarmen and Norrenberg .

chapel

Entrance portal with chapel

The chapel, built in 1843, is part of the southern gate building, which is the main entrance to the cemetery. According to the Reformed tradition, the chapel is an extremely simple building in the classicism style . The seventeen meter long nave of the chapel opens on the north side into a flat apse delimited by several round arches , which, like the church windows on the north-east side of the chapel, is glazed in simple pastel tones. On the south-west side there is a transept-like extension that is pulled forward towards the street, which has grandstand-like seating in the interior and acts as a side aisle.

The chapel , which could hold 156 people, had had a pipe organ by Paul Faust from Schwelm since November 1933 , which had ten registers and three transmissions. The organ case design came from Peter Klotzbach . This organ was replaced in 1958 by an instrument from the Alfred Führer workshop , which has seven and a half stops on a manual with pedal.

Personalities

In the cemetery there are a total of 11 of the 39 honorary graves of the city of Wuppertal as well as six monumental tombs. The graves of the following people can be found there:

Peter von Carnap (1823–1904), landowner and city councilor (honorary grave)
Helmut Dahm (1913–1996), historian and archivist
Wilfried Eckey (1930–2010), theologian
Jacob Wilhelm Haarhaus (1798–1881), entrepreneur and President of the Elberfeld Chamber of Commerce (listed)
Otto Hausmann (1837-1916), writer and painter (honorary grave)
Albert Neuhaus (1873–1948), politician (DNVP), 1925 Reich Minister of Economics.
Adolf Schlieper senior (1825–1887), chemist
Adolf Schlieper junior (1865–1945), industrialist and chemist (listed)
Johannes Schornstein (1789–1853), music director and choirmaster
Johann Richard Seel (1819–1875), painter and caricaturist (honorary grave)
Friedrich Storck (1838–1915) and Viktor Storck (1877–1969), writers (honorary grave)