Trinity Cemetery

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Caspar David Friedrich - Cemetery entrance (unfinished, around 1825)

The Trinity Cemetery in Dresden district Johannstadt belongs next to the Elias cemetery to the original investment as a plague cemetery burial sites of the city . Due to its artistic design, it is one of the most important cemeteries in Dresden in terms of urban history and culture and is the fifth largest cemetery in the city.

history

Based on the ground plan of the new burial ground in Dessau, here on a plan around 1787, the Trinity cemetery was originally to be laid out
Grave of Christian Wilhelm Kranert, the first of the cemetery

After the battle of Dresden in August 1813, the city looked like a field hospital. Around 21,000 members of the military died throughout the year, and more than 5,000 civilians were killed, also as a result of the catastrophic conditions in the city after the end of the war. Numerous people died of starvation, but after the end of the war many more succumbed to typhus , which in 1814 claimed over 3,000 lives. The Dresden cemeteries - Eliasfriedhof , second Annenfriedhof , Innerer Matthäusfriedhof and the first Johannisfriedhof - could no longer accept the dead from this time and were also held responsible for the spread of the typhus epidemic due to their overcrowding .

On April 29, 1814, the senior consistory granted approval for a new cemetery complex outside the city. For this purpose, a piece of land was bought “close to the Blasewitzer Tännicht ”. The cemetery was popularly known as the “wide cemetery” because of its great distance from the city. The design of the facility was entrusted to Gottlob Friedrich Thormeyer , who was the first in Dresden to not lay out the cemetery as a sacred, cult-related burial site, but instead created the first "reformed" cemetery in Dresden based on hygienic, functional and yet aesthetic aspects. After the exemplary Herrnhuter Gottesacker and the New Burial Grounds in Dessau , “a tastefully designed resting place for the dead with an architecturally embellished design according to its intended purpose” was to be created. Similar to the one in Herrnhut and Dessau, Thormeyer planned a square floor plan for the complex, which a willow hedge moves. The gravestones should be symmetrical and evenly spaced from each other, with "only the name of the deceased, date of birth and death" on the gravestone. At the convergence of the paths, which should be bordered by poplars, Thormeyer planned a temple building that should offer space for burial urns, among other things .

For cost reasons, the church council rejected Thormeyer's draft and instead approved two grave digger apartments on the cemetery grounds. The cemetery was also allowed to be surrounded by a wall. Thormeyer began implementing it in June 1815 and completed it on January 8, 1816. Only the path delimitation by trees could be implemented from the original design. The entrance system was created according to designs by the council builder Christian Gottlieb Spieß, who was also involved in the planning of the cemetery . With its two imposing gateposts, it became the template for the system shown in Caspar David Friedrich's painting Cemetery Entrance .

The first burial took place on May 4, 1815, probably in the open, as the actual construction of the cemetery did not begin until June 7, 1815. The simple, classicist tombstone of the candidate of theology Christian Wilhelm Kranert is adorned with the words "He was the first to slumber in this consecrated ground towards a more beautiful life." The tombstone has been preserved. The circumstances surrounding the first funeral suggest that "the usual inauguration ceremonies that went with the first corpse had to be dropped". On the occasion of the first expansion of the cemetery to the east in 1834 and the associated consecration of the new cemetery area, the complex was given its current name " Trinitatisfriedhof ". The name refers to the time of the first burial in the new part of the cemetery. In 1843 the Trinitatisfriedhof received a mortuary and a lodging house. The site was expanded again in 1846 and 1872.

When Dresden was bombed in February 1945, parts of the cemetery were damaged. The prayer and celebration room was badly damaged and was rebuilt by Arno Kiesling in the following years . The interior design comes from the painter Willy Trede . Directly in front of the cemetery is the Trinity Church , which was partially destroyed in 1945 and since then left as a ruin , whose name is derived from the cemetery name. In October 2013, grave sculptures made of non-ferrous metal were stolen from several cemeteries in Dresden, including sculptures and tombstones from six graves in the Trinity cemetery. The graves affected include those of Paul Gustav Leander Pfund and Max von Stephanitz .

Important graves

Grave of Hermann Joachim Hahn

The oldest grave in the Trinity cemetery dates from 1726 and is that of the deacon and preacher of the Dresden Kreuzkirche, Hermann Joachim Hahn . He was murdered by a presumably insane man, which caused considerable unrest among the population. Hahn found his final resting place in 1726 on the Johanniskirchhof . When this was secularized in the 19th century , Hahn's tomb was transferred to the newly created Trinity cemetery. The design of the tombstone is attributed to Johann Christian Kirchner . Together with the grave of the merchant Ferdinand Wiesand, who was also transferred to the Trinitatisfriedhof, Hahn's burial place is one of the few remaining graves in the Johanniskirchhof.

Grave of Michael de Habbe

One of the most beautiful graves in the cemetery is the resting place of the married couple Friedrich Anton and Friederike Serre , who gave societies in Maxen and Dresden and worked as patrons. The relief of the grave pyramid is attributed to Franz Pettrich . The wall stele was restored in 2001.

Grave of the Serre couple

By Ernst Rietschel of the design was to a Greek helmet on the grave of the French General Michel de Habba , whose remains were transferred in 1834 from Elias cemetery on the Trinity graveyard. Fritz Löffler considered the helmet “the most valuable work of art in the cemetery”. Rietschel created the portrait medallion on the grave of Rosa Oppenheim, while the grave of the Oppenheim family was designed by Gottfried Semper . The portrait medallion on the grave of Carl Gustav Carus from 1846 is also by Rietschel. The inscription on the doctor's grave was originally on Carus' house, which was destroyed in 1945. The grave itself was also bombed and was restored in 1949.

Ernst Rietschel's grave in the Trinitatisfriedhof was badly damaged in 1945 and restored in 1949. Rietschel's portrait medallion, which was created by the sculptor Adolf von Donndorf , was preserved and has been on Rietschel's grave again since 1949.

Some visual artists created their own grave sculptures. Two young bears look down from the grave stele by the animal sculptor Otto Pilz . The joint grave of the physicist Günther Landgraf and the sculptor Charlotte Sommer-Landgraf is adorned with two sculptures by Sommer-Landgraf: a figurative seated sculpture and a bust of Günther Landgraf.

Since 1919 an obelisk with the inscription "The dead of the May fights 1849" commemorates the fallen soldiers of the Dresden May Uprising of 1849, 76 of whom found their final resting place in the Trinity Cemetery.

Personalities

Grave of Caspar David Friedrich
Grave of Carl Gustav Carus
Grave of the singer Karoline Jagemann
Grave of Charlotte Sommer-Landgraf and Günther Landgraf
Grave of Friedrich Wieck
Grave of Emil Naumann and Carl Schlueter
Gravestone of Lili Elbe (reproduction)

The graves of:

A plaque on the family grave commemorates the mountaineer Oscar Schuster (1873–1917).

literature

  • Otto Rudert: Old Dresden cemeteries . Heinrich, Dresden 1931.
  • Hansjoachim Kluge: Dresden's cemeteries and grave monuments in the time of the wars of freedom and romanticism . Baensch, Dresden 1937.
  • Klaus Petzoldt: 150 years of the Trinity Cemetery in Dresden . Leipzig 1976.
  • Marion Stein: Cemeteries in Dresden . Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 2000.
  • Christoph Pötzsch : Fates on Dresden's Trinitatisfriedhof . Tauchaer Verlag, Taucha 2005.
  • Sigrid Schulz-Beer: The Trinity Cemetery in Dresden. A tour of selected graves . 2nd Edition. Saxoprint, Dresden 2007.

See also

Web links

Commons : Trinitatisfriedhof  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Marion Stein: Cemeteries in Dresden . Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 2000, p. 81.
  2. ^ Otto Rudert: Old Dresden cemeteries. Heinrich, Dresden 1931, p. 26 (= historical hiking trips , 13).
  3. ↑ Rudert, p. 27.
  4. ^ Hansjoachim Kluge: Dresden's cemeteries and grave monuments in the time of the wars of freedom and romanticism . Baensch, Dresden 1937, p. 14.
  5. ↑ Kluge, p. 15.
  6. ↑ Stein, p. 84.
  7. ↑ Kluge, p. 18.
  8. ↑ Stein, p. 87.
  9. ↑ Alexander Schneider: Thieves steal a dozen bronze sculptures in two cemeteries . sächsische.de, October 10, 2013.
  10. ^ Sigrid Schulz-Beer: The Trinity Cemetery in Dresden. A tour of selected graves . 2nd Edition. Saxoprint, Dresden 2007.

Coordinates: 51 ° 3 ′ 17 ″  N , 13 ° 46 ′ 21 ″  E