Inferior cemetery

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The "Gate to Eternity"

The Unterbarmer Friedhof is a denominational cemetery in the Wuppertal district of Barmen , district Unterbarmen , near the S-Bahn station " Wuppertal-Unterbarmen ". It belongs to the united evangelical parish Unterbarmen and was created in 1822 , the year the parish was founded. It was expanded in 1897 and 1911, its current area is around 16 hectares . To this day, the Unterbarmer Friedhof is administered by the parish. In contrast to most other major German cities, almost all other cemeteries in Wuppertal are operated by religious communities instead of the city administration.

location

View from above on Wuppertal

The Unterbarmer Friedhof has a park-like character and is located on a steep slope of the adjacent Kaiser-Friedrich-Höhe . This opens up beautiful views down to the urban residential areas along the valley axis, especially from the upper parts of the cemetery. While the old part of the cemetery, which has been in use since the founding year (remains of the natural stone wall that separated this old part, have been preserved to this day) has a strictly geometrical network of paths, which was customary at the time, this requirement was moved away from this requirement during the expansion and instead twisted Designed paths that adapt to the existing topography. Right at the top there are landscaped expansions with a small pond, spacious lawns and old trees. These were intended to underline the character of the cemetery as a park, which, in addition to being used as a resting place, also serves as a recreational area for the urban population.

Graves worth seeing

Tomb of Friedrich Engels senior

In the lower area of ​​the cemetery, around the high cross, there are many splendid graves from its founding time. The oldest tomb is the cast iron memorial for Wilhelmine Berg from 1822. It is located on Mittelallee directly in front of the main entrance. Nearby, on the same path to the left before the Hochkreuz, is buried Friedrich Engels (senior) - at that time a wealthy textile manufacturer in Barmen and father of the philosopher and Karl Marx ally Friedrich Engels . However, he was not buried next to his father, but was cremated in London after his death in 1895 . The tomb of Engels is an approx. 4 meter high pointed Gothic pinnacle tower .

Other old grave sites that are well worth seeing can be found above all on “Millionallee”, which runs from the Hochkreuz to the right, along the old cemetery wall. This designation - similar to the Melaten cemetery in Cologne - has also become common here in order to underline the sometimes very elaborate architecture of the grave sites here. Examples include: the grave of the Georg Heinrich von Knapp family with a stone sarcophagus standing on stylized lion's feet in front of a 4.5 meter high and 6.5 meter wide grave wall; the approximately 2.80 meter high tomb of the Riedel-Goschin family as a reclining sphinx with a grieving youth supported on her; the grave of the Carl A. Kruse family with the “gate to eternity”, which is being opened by a life-size bronze figure in a long robe; as well as the grave of the Carl Toelle family with the only surviving mausoleum in Wuppertal with stone figures from the Germanic Nibelung saga at its entrance .

Well-known personalities buried

Mission cemetery

Mission cemetery

A separate part of the Unterbarmer cemetery is reserved for the graves of the missionaries and their wives of the Rhenish Mission Society , which was based in Barmen.

Others

The scenic location of the Unterbarmer Friedhof attracts visitors from Wuppertal and from outside, but it has repeatedly been a burden for the cemetery and thus also for the Unterbarmer Evangelical community. Game kept coming in from the forest areas bordering on from above and caused considerable damage, so that the community had to raise a lot of money for the renewal of the fence and the repair of the damage, which could no longer be covered by the income. The steep slope of the cemetery caused even more problems. The renewal of the canal system caused high costs at the time, as the canals that had existed up until then could not absorb the falling water during heavy rains and consequently graves in the lower area of ​​the cemetery were covered with mud. Furthermore, until the 1960s, funeral cars were pulled exclusively by horses, which, due to the difficult ascent, took breaks on the way and relieved themselves on the spot, which caused high cleaning costs. But even after the horse-drawn carriages were replaced by motorized vehicles, the criticism persisted. The pace of the funeral cars was too fast for the mourners, who had to climb up on foot; According to a report from a parish priest, the comment was made: "Our Else [in the coffin] is fine, she doesn't need to walk".

The high costs of maintenance could not be covered by cemetery fees until the 1970s, although these were increased several times. Only numerous renovation measures such as staff cuts, the termination of the contracts for the "eternal graves", the abandonment of the municipality's own flower shop and cemetery nursery, and the development of new grave fields were able to halt the losses.

The cemetery chapel and the connecting passage to the gatehouse have been a listed building since 2009 , as has the organ in the cemetery chapel, which, however, has its own monument number.

  • Millions Avenue

  • Entrance area with gatehouse

  • Cemetery chapel

  • sphinx

  • statue

See also

Web links

Commons : Unterbarmer Friedhof  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

  • Community life in sub-mercy ; Ed .: United Evangelical Community Unterbarmen-Mitte, Wuppertal 1982, pp. 40–42. ISBN 3-88578-006-2
  • Peter Herkenrath: 140 years of history of the United Evangelical Church of Unterbarmen 1822-1962, Wuppertal 1962
  • Sigrid Lekebusch: Unterbarmer community history 1964-1997 ; Wuppertal 1997, pp. 217-222. ISBN 3-00-001429-2
  • Wolfgang Stock: Wuppertal graves. Historical walk through all of the city's cemeteries, Wuppertal 2007, pp. 22–37. ISBN 978-3-88908-482-8
  • Bettina Tewes: Wuppertal cemeteries ; Wartberg Verlag Gudensberg-Gleichen 2006, pp. 58–73. ISBN 3-8313-1619-8

Coordinates: 51 ° 15 ′ 23 "  N , 7 ° 10 ′ 27"  E