Seelhorst town cemetery

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Listed entrance buildings from 1924 at the former main entrance on Hohen Weg
Cemetery wall in the area of ​​the new entrance from the 1960s

The city ​​cemetery Seelhorst is a municipal cemetery of the city of Hanover in the district of Seelhorst , which was opened in 1920. With an area of ​​68.5 hectares, the cemetery is now the largest cemetery in Hanover.

history

The Seelhorst cemetery was created as the third city cemetery (after the Engesohde city cemetery in 1864 and the Stöcken city cemetery in 1891) from 1919. It was made necessary by the incorporation of Döhren and Wülfel . During the construction, the former village cemeteries of these communities - the Alte Wülfeler Friedhof and the Alte Döhrener Friedhof - with around 2.7 hectares were included in the new Seelhorster Friedhof.

The cemetery is structured symmetrically, all paths are arranged at right angles. The individual cemetery departments are also strictly geometrically designed. When planning the cemetery, City Gardening Director Hermann Kube adopted the principles of the two large previous cemeteries, Engesohde and Stöcken. It was the style of an architecturally designed park cemetery with an axial layout. The lime tree avenue leading over the cemetery corresponds to the dimensions of an avenue in the mountain garden in Herrenhausen . The horticultural design comes from Hermann Kube and the high-rise buildings were designed by Paul Wolf . In terms of its overall character, it represents a typical reform cemetery in Germany as a prime example of contemporary planning.

The main entrance with two gate buildings and a passage was originally on Hohen Weg. From here a 400 m long, four-row avenue of lime trees leads into the cemetery. These are the buildings designed by the architect Konrad Wittmann (two chapels, crematorium , company building), which he built in the expressionist clinker style ( brick expressionism ) of the 1920s. The Anzeigerhochhaus in Hanover and the Chilehaus in Hamburg correspond to this architectural style . The cemetery was given a crematorium, as the number of cremations was already increasing at that time due to changed burial customs . The first burial took place a year after construction began in 1920. The first phase of construction with the main cemetery buildings was completed in 1924. The avenues with chestnuts, beeches and oaks, which support the formal character of the complex, are impressive in the design of the cemetery. Also striking are the many hedges cut to a height of 1.5 m to delimit the burial fields.

A cemetery museum has existed since 2006 .

War crimes 1945

Towards the end of World War II , an end- stage crime occurred in the cemetery . On April 6, 1945, members of the Gestapo Ahlem agency drove mainly Soviet prisoners of war and forced laborers to the Seelhorster cemetery and killed 154 people. On May 2, 1945, "incriminated Nazis" were forced by the US Army to dig the mass grave, where 526 bodies were discovered. 386 were taken to the Maschsee in a funeral procession and buried on the north bank.

1960s remodeling

New cemetery entrance Garkenburgstrasse

In the early 1960s, the main entrance at Hoher Weg was relocated to a new entrance on Garkenburgstrasse, where the cemetery was connected to a tram . According to plans by the architect Edgar Schlubach , a spacious entrance area with a parking lot and new buildings for the cemetery administration were created. The crematorium received another chapel. With the introduction of a new cemetery statute in 1963 with stricter conditions for the design of beds, the grave grid changed. The grave beds became smaller, which made the use of machines easier. The current type of lawn cemetery was created. After 1963 there were two extensions to the site in the direction of Peiner Straße to the north.

Cemetery wall on Garkenburgstrasse next to the Stadtbahn tracks with graffiti painting

Occupancy

The Seelhorst cemetery has fewer graves of known people than the city cemeteries Engesohde and Stöcken . There are sections for urn graves, including a Buddhist one, as well as row and elective graves for coffin burials. There is a large water basin in the center of the axis of the cemetery.

In 2005 the first funeral forest in the city of Hanover was opened in a natural wooded area on the eastern edge of the cemetery. Four urn graves are arranged around a tree trunk. Tree trunks are set up in the entrance area of ​​the Seelwald, on which a wood sculptor can attach a memorial sign in the form of a ribbon or meander ribbon . Individual marking of the grave sites with tombstones, crosses, grave decorations or plantings is not permitted in the Seelwald.

Special facilities of the cemetery are three departments with war graves. The war victims were only reburied here after the Second World War with the support of the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge . There are 4,148 war victims, including 1,763 Germans (thereof 1,304 victims of Allied air strikes) and 2,385 victims from twelve nations. In addition, since the early 1950s, the cemetery has had a memorial for the victims of the First and Second World Wars in the form of a column on the central avenue of lime trees.

At the entrance to Hoher Weg there is a memorial for 390 victims of the Hanoverian concentration camps Mühlenberg , Ahlem and Stöcken .

  • Memorial for the victims of the subcamps in Hanover

  • Memorial and memorial for the victims of the First and Second World Wars

  • Memorial for infants of forced laborers

  • Dutch honorary system for victims of concentration camps and forced labor

On a burial site to the northeast of the cemetery are the graves of and a memorial for nearly 300 infants and small children who died as a result of insufficient supplies and neglect. The mothers of these children were abducted foreign forced laborers who were housed in the maternity camp in Godshorn and were brought back to the place of their forced labor immediately after the birth, leaving their children behind.

A cemetery section houses a Dutch hall of honor. It includes the graves of 417 Dutch war victims who were transferred to here from several cemeteries in Lower Saxony after the Second World War. Here is a memorial for the 1,900 Dutch prisoners who perished in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp .

In the cemetery there is only an honorary grave of the city of Hanover for the Nazi victim Wilhelm Fahlbusch (1907–1933). It is without a marker or tombstone.

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Stadtfriedhof Seelhorst (Hannover)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Helmut Schoenfeld: Rationalization of the cemeteries. The cemetery reform movement from the beginning to the time of National Socialism. In: Arbeitsgemeinschaft Friedhof und Denkmal, Museum for Sepulchral Culture: Space for the Dead. Braunschweig 2003, ISBN 3-87815-174-8 , ISBN 3-87815-174-8 , pp. 175-176
  2. ↑ Seelwald Hannover-Seelhorst | Friedrich Cordes funerals. In: www.hannover-bestattung.de. Retrieved December 23, 2016 .
  3. ↑ Beate Räckers: War graves. Seelhorst city cemetery (PDF; 1.97 MB). City of Hanover Department of Environment and Urban Greenery, March 2011, p. 14 , accessed on December 21, 2015 .

Coordinates: 52 ° 20 ′ 19 ″  N , 9 ° 47 ′ 25 ″  E