Sofia Central Cemetery

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Coordinates: 42 ° 42 ′ 59 "  N , 23 ° 19 ′ 58.8"  E

Main entrance

The Sofia Central Cemetery ( Bulgarian Централни софийски гробища , Zentralni sofijski grobischa ), also Orlandowzi Cemetery after the district of the same name (Орландовци), is the largest cemetery in the Bulgarian capital Sofia . It houses mostly Bulgarian Orthodox graves, the largest Jewish cemetery in the country and several memorials for fallen soldiers.

Urban development

Aerial view from the city center to the north over the cemetery and the Orlandowzi district

When Sofia was declared the capital of Bulgaria, which had just become independent from the Ottoman Empire, on March 22nd, 1879 , the place was at the lowest point of its history as a small town with winding streets and around 18,000 inhabitants on an area of ​​250 hectares. After the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877-78, practically the entire Muslim population and some non-Muslims, more than 35,000 in total, had left the city. In the first census of the Principality of Bulgaria in 1881, the 20,501 inhabitants consisted of 13,195 Bulgarians, 4,164 Jews, 1,061 Armenians and 778 Roma.

The Bulgarian rebirth phase had come to its long-awaited end and a future-oriented urban development plan was to be drawn up for the new capital. After a preliminary study from 1878, the Council of Ministers adopted a plan in early 1880 which - based on the existing religious buildings in the center - provided for a complete redesign on the basis of a rectangular street network with street widths of 12, 15 and up to 25 meters for the boulevards. Large green spaces were integrated as an essential element in the system of radial and ring-shaped streets surrounding the central hill. The planned green areas of general importance included the Boris' garden ( Borisowa Gradina ) in the southeast, the park around the Alexandrowska city hospital, a green area in front of the main train station north of the center and the central cemetery north of the main train station. Smaller green areas for individual city districts should be added. Further plans led to a concept designed by Adolf Muesmann between 1934 and 1938 , which turned the green spaces into wedge-shaped natural zones from the city center to the outskirts. Parks, forest areas and areas for agricultural use were designated as green areas. At that time Sofia had practically become a new, according to the understanding of the time, modern European city. After the destruction of 12,000 houses in the Second World War, representative buildings and apartment blocks were built in the 1950s according to the guidelines of the socialist government that regulate social life, while the population almost doubled in a decade and had grown to around 645,000 in 1956. Since independence in 1989, the public green spaces have declined due to a process of privatization and the associated construction work. Today the central cemetery is one of the green spaces and recreational areas of the inner-city area. While the topography and the existing building structure had to be taken into account when creating the urban street plan, the central cemetery with its right-angled network of paths clearly implements the urban planning ideal on a small scale.

investment

One of the main ways

The main train station and the railroad tracks running from northwest to southeast demarcate the inner-city residential area from the Woenna Rampa industrial area immediately to the north. The central cemetery is located northeast of the train station. It borders on the industrial area to the west, on its south side on Istorija Slawjanobalgarska boulevard, on Kamenodelska street to the east and on Parwa-Bulgarska-Armia street to the north. Except for the north, where a monotonous simple residential area extends, the cemetery is surrounded on three sides by industrial zones. It can be reached from the city center through a pedestrian underpass or on a street under the train tracks east of the station. The main entrance with a three-arched gate is in the south. Another entrance to the north is at the terminus of tram line 13.

The cemetery forms a slightly shifted square about 900 meters in size and is densely covered with tall trees. The main and secondary roads are separated by long, rectangular, numbered parcels. In addition to the Bulgarian Orthodox and Jewish areas, there are graves for Roman Catholic and Armenian Christians and corresponding chapels. There are also soldiers memorials on the site, which is surrounded by a wall. The entrances are locked at night.

The lack of maintenance of the entire cemetery area is lamented. This also applies to the graves of important personalities, some of which are overgrown and whose inscriptions can hardly be read. There is a lack of information (map, signs) about the prominent graves. In the northeast corner there is a square with urn graves set into concrete walls.

Jewish Cemetery

Jewish graves

Before independence at the end of the 19th century, Jews were the third largest group in Sofia. In 1888, 5403 Jews lived in Sofia. Before the start of the Second World War, around half of the almost 50,000 Bulgarian Jews lived in the capital, the vast majority of them were Sephardim . After their mass emigration to Israel in 1948/49, according to an estimate from 2012, the number of Jews in the whole country was still 2000. There are no Jewish cemeteries from before the mid-19th century in Bulgaria.

The area with Jewish graves roughly in the middle of the cemetery is about 50,000 square meters and contains 7,000 gravestones according to an estimate from 2001. Some have fallen over, the rest are in a state of preservation corresponding to that of Christian graves. Most of the tombs date from the 20th century. They are made of granite, marble or limestone and have inscriptions in Bulgarian, Hebrew and Ladino . A memorial for the Jewish victims during the Holocaust belongs to the Jewish cemetery .

War cemeteries

On the north side of the site on Parwa Bulgarska Armia Street is a cemetery for 185 soldiers. The entrance is across from Mara-Bunewa-Straße. 62 gravestones are dedicated to British prisoners of war of the First World War. The rest of the burials were brought here from the Protestant cemetery in Varna in 1955 and from the British and Jewish cemeteries in Ruse in 1960. There are 28 graves belonging to the British fallen from World War II. There are also 12 graves of civilians.

Behind a low wall is a German cemetery for soldiers from both world wars. 278 German soldiers from the First World War were buried here. The graves of 68 other fallen from World War II are not marked. French and Italian graves from World War I are nearby. There are also Russian, Serbian and Romanian war graves.

Personalities buried in the cemetery

Grave of Stefan Stambolov

Web links

Commons : Sofioter Zentralfriedhof  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Svetlana Ivanova: Sofya . In: Encyclopaedia of Islam . New Edition, Vol. 9, p. 704
  2. ^ FW Carter: Bulgaria's New Towns . In: Geography , Vol. 60, No. 2, April 1975, pp. 133-136, here p. 133
  3. ↑ Lyudmil Mihaylovich (Ed.): Master Plan of Sofia Municipality. Synthesis Report. Sofia, 2009
  4. ↑ Milena Komarova: Mundane Mobilities in “Post-Socialist” Sofia: Making Urban Borders Visible. In: Etnofoor , Vol. 26, No. 1, 2014, pp. 147–172, here p. 150
  5. ↑ Georgeta Narzaska: Bulgarian Women Intellectuals in the Collective Memory (19th-21st Century). In: Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies , Vol. 2, No. 11, October 2013, pp. 48–51, here p. 49
  6. ↑ In 1878 of the 2872 houses in the entire village, 1,350 belonged to Bulgarian, 1,172 to Turkish and 350 to Jewish families. After: Jacques Eskenazi, Alfred Krispin: Jews in the Bulgarian Hinterland. An Annotated Bibliography. (Judaica Bulgarica) International Center for Minority Studies and Intercultural Relations, Sofia 2002, p. 501
  7. ^ Wolf Oschlies : Bulgaria - a country without anti-Semitism. Ner-Tamid-Verlag, Erlangen 1976, p. 28
  8. ↑ Bulgaria . Jewish World Congress
  9. ^ World Jewish Population, 2012. Berman Institute - North American Jewish Data Bank, University of Connecticut, p. 60
  10. ^ Jewish Historic Monuments and Sites in Bulgaria. ( Memento of the original from December 2, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. United States Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad, 2011, pp. 61-66 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.heritageabroad.gov
  11. ^ Sofia War Cemetery. Commonwealth War Graves Commission
  12. ↑ Sofia German Military Cemetery. German War Graves Commission
  13. ^ A Tour of Sofia's Central Cemetry . inyourpocket.com, October 13, 2015