Südwestfriedhof Essen

Southwest cemetery, devotional hall

The municipal south- west cemetery of Essen is located in the west of the city of Essen in the district of Fulerum . After the park cemetery, it is the second largest burial site in the city in terms of area. 2878 victims of both world wars are also buried here.

With around 33,000 graves, far more people are buried in the 37.27 hectare cemetery than Fulerum has inhabitants (around 3350 inhabitants).

The entire cemetery area and an adjacent strip to the east with a total of around 38 hectares were declared a landscape protection area in 1992 .

history

Beginnings

Essen wanted to build a new central cemetery, which should be larger than all Essen cemeteries that had existed up to that point together, which at the time seemed necessary due to the rapidly increasing population. Because more and more people settled in Essen because they found work during the industrialization period, especially in mining and the rapidly expanding steel industry. For this purpose, the cemetery should be located in such a way that it cannot be enclosed by future residential areas and thus could always be expanded. At the same time, the cemetery was designed as a park from the start. This is indicated, for example, by old stone signs to specific locations within the cemetery, which were also used in the Grugapark . The Essen city planner and civil engineer Robert Schmidt led the planning and campaigned for its implementation.

The area of the south-west cemetery, located in the eastern area of what is now the Fulerum district, was bought by the city in 1910 after it was incorporated into the city of Essen. Until then, the farmer Oberscheidt owned this land including the farm with a total area of around 28 hectares. Parts of the former Oberscheidthof served as a farm for a long time. Its remains were demolished in 1975.

Urn Grove

An initially planned, baroque forest cemetery, the row graves of which should extend as far as the Nachtigallental in the east, could largely no longer be realized because of the outbreak of the First World War . Instead of a planned monumental prayer hall, a cemetery of honor for soldiers of the war was created in the southern part of the cemetery area. A temporary wooden building had to take over the function until today's cemetery buildings were built in the 1920s. An existing birch grove was converted into an urn grove for cremations. A plaque with the inscription Urnenhain Essen - Association for Cremations indicates this today. On a stone slab in the ground there is the verse Come to me, journeyman, here you will find your rest (from the song At the well in front of the gate ).

The wide, originally planned four-row lime tree avenue still forms the central north-south axis of the cemetery today. It was the old Fulerumer Strasse, which in 1914 was relocated completely to the west to its present-day course to create the cemetery. The gardening director of the city of Essen, Rudolf Korte , was also involved in the design and new construction of the cemetery .

Building complex from the 1920s

Today's brick buildings made of dark-burned clinker bricks, which have been listed as a historical monument since 1991, and consist of a blessing hall, shops and administration, have enclosed a courtyard since 1926 and form the main entrance area of the cemetery, which is open to Fulerumer Straße. The entrance gate has expressionist stylistic features. The buildings were built according to plans by the architect and head of the municipal building department, Ernst Bode (1878–1944). In the first construction phase, from April 1925 to February 1926, the portal buildings with porters 'room and the two flanking buildings for flower and sculptor shops, offices and officials' apartments were built. The cost of this was around 106,000 Reichsmarks . The actual cemetery building then erected with all ancillary facilities cost around 901,000 Reichsmarks. This consecration hall was built between 1927 and 1929. Glass in your ceiling area provides illumination. The planning to build a crematorium also dates back to 1929. It started operating in 1936, but is now closed.

Consecration hall with arcades
Walkway with parabolic arcades
Will Lammert - Mother Earth (1926), once above the portal of the mourning hall, destroyed

The sculptor Will Lammert , who lived on the neighboring Margarethenhöhe to the east, contributed artistically . Lammert created several Christian works of art, such as the portal doors and the 16 apostles on the two pylons, for the southwest cemetery. This also included the approximately five meter high sculpture Mother Earth , which was attached directly outside above the portal of the consecration hall. From 1933 onwards, all of his works of art were denigrated by the National Socialists as " degenerate art ", removed and destroyed because Lammert was considered a communist and his wife was Jewish. Only the approximately twelve meter high Blessing Christ inside the consecration hall has been preserved to this day. Due to its size and the fact that it is firmly anchored in the north wall of the building, this sculpture was simply hung with a swastika flag.

National Socialism and the Consequences

Remains of the Gau memorial of the NSDAP 1938/1939

Since the cemetery was to become the main cemetery of the Essen Gau at the time of National Socialism , the NSDAP's memorial was erected in 1938/1939 . The memorial, of which only remains of the foundations and walls remain, was built by Emil Fahrenkamp . In the presence of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler on June 17, 1939, the NSDAP politician and SA leader Heinrich Unger was transferred here from a previous temporary burial place. This burial with 15 other NSDAP supporters who perished in street fights was preceded by a mass staging on Burgplatz with a subsequent move from there to the southwest cemetery. After the Second World War , the memorial was blown up by the Allies .

To the north of the mourning hall and its outbuildings originally bordered terraces. After the war, the sloping terrain north of the cemetery buildings up to the Borbeck Mühlenbachtal was filled with rubble from the rubble of the surrounding settlements and redesigned for new burial areas. Bomb craters in the Nachtigallental were also filled with rubble from Margarethenhöhe.

Cemetery of honor

Sculpture "Mourning" by Joseph Enseling

On the cemetery area there are several grave fields, initially known as the Ehrenfriedhof , with a total of 2,878 victims from both World Wars and from the time of National Socialism. A memorial by the sculptor Joseph Enseling was erected in it. This sculpture from 1929, entitled Mourning , originally stood in Grugapark. It bears the inscription on a metal plate attached to the stone base: Essen city memorial for the victims of war and violence .

Victims of the First World War

Of the victims of the First World War , four bomb victims, 600 fallen German soldiers and 121 foreign prisoners of war lie here. A stele with the names of the victims and the inscription Den Fliegeropfern am Wasserturm 1916 is dedicated to the four bomb victims, a military man and three children, who were hit by two airmen on September 24, 1916 at the water tower . On the burial ground of the 600 German soldiers, an obelisk with an iron cross on its tip was erected, commemorating the dead of the 190 Infantry Regiment . There are another five memorials from Essen clubs on the field.

Cemetery of honor, in the background: stele with iron cross
Stele with an iron cross commemorates the 190 Infantry Regiment
Tomb for the four bomb victims, once "crowned with a bomb", which was stolen

Victims of the Kapp Putsch and the occupation of the Ruhr

36 victims of the Kapp Putsch in March 1920 are buried in a grave field that was later leveled by the National Socialists. There were a total of 57 so-called March victims who were buried here. However, members of the police and the local armed forces were transferred to a memorial. The memorial with the inscription you died in faithful fulfillment of duty the honor death for the fatherland 1920-21 reminds of you.

There were 13 victims due to the occupation of the Ruhr on March 31, 1923, when Krupp workers on Altendorfer Strasse revolted against a French commando that tried to confiscate the trucks produced there. When the French faced a large crowd of workers, they panicked and shot their way through. The funeral followed a propagandistic funeral procession to the cemetery of honor on April 10, 1923. A Hugo Lederer memorial , which has not been preserved, was erected in 1928 with a clear political background and bore the inscription: Holy Saturday 1923. The works comrade, the French bullets in the factory fell victim.

Funeral procession with the bereaved relatives of the Krupp workers moves to the cemetery of honor
Memorial by Hugo Lederer for the killed Krupp workers on Holy Saturday 1923; no longer received
Police memorial for the victims of the Kapp Putsch
Grave field of the victims of the Kapp Putsch in 1920, the bloody Holy Saturday in 1923 and the Monday hole in 1945
Grabfeld citizens of Essen who were murdered for political or ideological reasons between 1933 and 1945

Victims of the Second World War

From the Second World War, spread over several grave fields, 1,287 bomb victims, 525 fallen German soldiers, 43 foreign prisoners of war, 277 mostly Eastern European forced laborers deployed in Essen and 21 Essen citizens who were killed in captivity and in concentration camps between 1933 and 1945, buried. A commemorative plaque in front of a high cross commemorates 84 mostly political prisoners who died on December 12, 1944 in the bombing of the city prison. They were not allowed to leave their cells during the attack. Another commemorative plaque from 1943 bears the inscription according to the ideas of the National Socialists: Love your homeland, admonish the dead . 34 Eastern Europeans, who were executed by the Essen Gestapo on March 12, 1945 in the Monday hole , today in the Grugapark grounds, lie among the forced laborers . After American troops had the dead buried by hand by Essen citizens directly at the Monday hole, they were transferred to the southwest cemetery on November 3, 1949.

Commemorative plaque for victims of 1943 with the inscription of the National Socialists: Love your home, admonish the dead
Grave field for bomb victims from 1943
Grave field of mostly fallen soldiers
Commemorative plaque to 84 political prisoners who fell victim to a bomb attack in 1944
Grave fields for victims of the December 1944 bomb attack

More war graves

foreign victims, including those from Schuirweg; in front of the cross the stone of the only person known by name

To the north of the actual cemetery of honor, in the eastern line next to today's devotional hall, there are another 108 war victims. 19 people, mostly Poles, belong to a column of around 3,000 forced laborers who were killed on April 9, 1945 on Schuirweg due to a mix-up in an air raid by American bombers in fields 23 a and b. Only one of them, Kazimierz Soporowski (born November 14, 1914 in Warsaw , † April 9, 1945 in Essen), is known by name to this day. His son and his family came to the Southwest Cemetery for prayer on April 9, 2006 and put a sign with the father's name on an Orthodox cross. Two days later, the official commemoration and honoring of the dead from Schuirweg took place in the cemetery, with the Soporowski family, organizers, clergy and city representatives present.

Buried personalities

The graves of the businessman Otto Burau, the engineer Franz Dinnendahl (transferred from the Rellinghauser Friedhof), the politician Victor Niemeyer , the Lord Mayor Wilhelm Holle , the Lord Mayor Wilhelm Nieswandt , the politician and Lord Mayor Heinz Renner and Hans Spaeth were named the city's grave of honor.

Other personalities buried here include the architect Georg Metzendorf , according to whose plans the neighboring Margarethenhöhe was built, the weightlifters Karl Bierwirth and Karl Jansen , the politicians Karl Obermeyer , Wilhelm Pawlik , Ernst Bessel , Josef Beckmann , Hermann Klewer and Otto Hue , the Mayor of Steel Bernhard Schulz , the sculptor Bruno Krell , the writer Felix Wilhelm Beielstein , the music pedagogue and publicist Franz Feldens (1900-1976), the lawyer Hans Niemeyer and the Essen entrepreneur and publisher Wilhelm Girardet and his son, the publisher Herbert Girardet .

under monument protection: tomb of the architect Georg Metzendorf
Honorary grave of the engineer Franz Dinnendahl
Honorary grave of the Lord Mayor of Essen Wilhelm Holle
Honorary grave of the Mayor of Essen, Heinz Renner
Tomb of the entrepreneur Wilhelm Girardet and his son Herbert Girardet (publisher)