City cemetery (Braunschweig)

City cemetery plan

Entrance to Helmstedter Strasse

The Rieseberg Monument

Graves of the bomb victims from 1944 in the Ehrenfriedhof

Memorial "To the dead of war, tyranny, and displacement"

Grave of August Merges

The city cemetery in Braunschweig is a communal cemetery. The non-denominational cemetery, sponsored by the city of Braunschweig, was created in 1914. The municipal cemetery administration, the crematorium , the civil cemetery of honor and the foreigner cemetery are located on the grounds of the city cemetery . The former urn cemetery , which is now part of the city cemetery, was also located here. It is about 10 hectares in size. The cemetery is the final resting place of numerous well-known personalities.

The city cemetery is located on Helmstedter Straße , Brodweg and Franz-Frese-Weg and is located between the main Protestant cemetery and the Catholic cemetery . The Jewish cemetery is also adjacent to the city cemetery. It consists of an old part on Helmstedter Strasse and a new part on Franz-Frese-Weg.

The city cemetery has three mourning halls and a funeral room. There are urn graves as well as earth graves, urn groves and columbaria .

history

The city cemetery was created in 1914. A mourning hall (celebration hall 1) was completed as early as 1913. It offers space for up to 180 people for funeral services. In 1915, construction work on the crematorium was finished and it was put into operation. At that time, an average of 24 people were cremated each year. On June 28, 1930, the municipal urn cemetery was opened on Helmstedter Strasse. When a large number of citizens perished in the largest air raid on Braunschweig on October 15, 1944 , some of them were buried in the cemetery of honor. The funerals took place on October 23rd and November 1st.

Celebration hall 2 was built in the 1950s. It offers space for around 50 people. On November 27, 1956, the city's cemetery office took over the newly exhibited honorary part I from the main cemetery. The Rieseberg Monument was inaugurated on July 6, 1958, as a memorial for the victims of Rieseberg from 1933. On November 18, 1962, the memorial stone for the dead of both world wars, the tyranny and the expulsion was unveiled. On October 18, 1964, a memorial service was held for the victims of October 15, 1944 at the memorial for the victims of war and tyranny. At the council meeting on April 12, 1967, an extension of the urn cemetery was discussed. An urn grove for anonymous burials has existed since April 1974, on which a sculpture entitled “Reflection” was placed. On June 26, 1974, 50 dead Russian prisoners of war were reburied in the foreigners cemetery. They were previously scattered in graves in the main cemetery, in Gliesmarode and in Querum.

On April 22, 1994, a burial ground for Muslims was turned over. In 1999 the furnace systems in the crematorium were brought up to date. In 2006 the new modern celebration hall 3 was completed. It offers space for around 60 mourners. Since 2006 there have also been urn walls (columbaria) as burial places in the city cemetery. Around 2010, an average of 3800 cremations took place in the crematorium, which has three ovens. In order to give parents of miscarried or stillborn children the possibility of burial and remembrance of their deceased children, the garden of the star children was established. It was created in place of the previous memorial for miscarriages and stillbirths. In 2013 the monument to Minna Faßhauer was inaugurated by Tobias Vergin (* 1972) in the city cemetery. In 2013 it was decided to build a wash house, which is to be erected at celebration hall 3. It should serve for the burial of Muslim persons and possibly for Jewish persons.

Tombs and burials

Memorial stone for Georg Eckert (1912–1974), German educator, ethnologist, historian and politician

There are some honorary graves in the city cemetery, which can be found in section 33:

Otto Bennemann (1903–2003), German politician, councilor and mayor of the city of Braunschweig, honorary citizen of the city of Braunschweig with his wife Franziska Bennemann (1905–1986), German politician, Department 33/33
Martha Fuchs (1892–1966), German politician, Lord Mayor of the City of Braunschweig, Department 33/19
Erich Walter Lotz (1895–1966), German teacher and politician, City Director, Department 33/28
Walter Schmidt (1907–1997), German politician, honorary citizen of the city of Braunschweig, Department 33/17

Some murdered and killed in the war anti-fascists and resistance fighters against the National Socialist dictatorship were buried here:

Rudolf Claus (1893–1935), functionary and secretary of the Red Aid in Germany
August Fuhst († 1945), social democratic carter
Paul Gmeiner (1892–1944), German politician
August Merges (1870–1945), German politician and revolutionary
Matthias Theisen (1885–1933), German politician

In the city cemetery without the gravesites of the foreigners cemetery, a total of 863 dead from the Second World War and the National Socialist tyranny lie in several large grave fields. There are 210 soldiers' and war graves in a military cemetery of honor. The state of Lower Saxony has given the city of Braunschweig the task of looking after and maintaining the soldiers' graves. 653 civilians were buried in and adjacent to the civil cemetery.

The victims of the Rieseberg murders were buried in the area around the Rieseberg monument on July 6, 1958. They were exhumed on July 22, 1953 and autopsied in Braunschweig. The remains were cremated on August 21, and the urns were interred in this location on November 14, 1953.

Foreign workers who died in the Second World War as a result of forced labor and bombing raids are said to have been buried in the community facility of foreign workers .

Next to the Jewish cemetery is a grave field on which from 1944 to 1945 the ashes of Jews who had died were scattered, who had to do forced labor in the subcamp Schillstrasse, in the jute spinning mill and in the SS riding school. There is now a memorial with a memorial stone.

The ashes of murdered incurably mentally ill and mentally handicapped people who perished in the so-called death by grace ordered by Adolf Hitler in 1939 were distributed in an anonymous cemetery. Victims of euthanasia and concentration camp victims from 1940 to 1945 were also buried here.

Cemetery of honor

In the civil cemetery of honor, a grave field was created where the victims of the air raid on Braunschweig in October 1944 were buried. On November 18, 1962, a memorial for the dead of war, tyranny and displacement was erected there.

Foreigners cemetery

1211 foreign nationals were buried in the foreigners cemetery, most of them forced laborers and prisoners of war of Soviet (833) and Polish (351) origins. Other buried foreigners are: 5 Belgians, 2 Bulgarians, 1 Dane, 2 Estonians, 2 French, 1 Greek, 2 Israelis, 46 Yugoslavs , 2 Croats, 1 Latvian, 6 Lithuanians, 13 Dutch, 4 Romanians, 10 Slovaks, 18 Czechoslovaks , 10 Ukrainians and 3 Hungarians. 698 of the foreign nationals were buried in individual graves. 513 people, most of the victims of the bombing raid on Braunschweig on October 15, 1944 , rest in a mass grave. There are three stone cenotaphs in the foreigners cemetery, the Soviet , Polish and Ukrainian cenotaphs.

The graves in the south are laid out as row graves - almost without tombstones - most of them only overgrown with ivy . These are the graves of forced laborers from Eastern Europe who were killed in forced labor or bombing between 1939 and the end of the war in 1945. In the row graves in the north, which are also overgrown with ivy, lie former forced laborers who did not return to their homeland after 1945. Most of the gravestones from 1945 to 1954 are labeled there in the local language. The remains of 50 Soviet prisoners of war, who were buried in various Brunswick cemeteries, were reburied in a mass grave in 1975. This has been marked with a memorial stone.

The foreigner cemetery, where trees grow on the graves, is directly accessible from Brodweg.

View of the foreigners cemetery (southern part), on the right at the edge you can see the Polish Memorial.
Soviet memorial made of Elm limestone on the foreigners cemetery. Inscription on the middle part in German for example: "Memorial of the victims of fascism"
Inscription on the east side of the Soviet memorial: “In memory of the victims of fascism. This monument was erected on the initiative of the repatriation department of the city of Braunschweig and inaugurated on November 13, 1945. "
Polish memorial in the foreigners cemetery, inscription: “The Poles, the victims of the war 1939–1945. The compatriots. "
Ukrainian memorial in the foreigners cemetery.
Inscription on the Ukrainian memorial: “In the eternal memory of the Ukrainians who found peace in Braunschweig at the end of the war years. Your compatriots abroad. 1. X. [October] 1947 "