Forest cemetery of the Hanover Children's Hospital in Nienstedt
The forest cemetery of the Hanoverian children's sanatorium in Nienstedt , sometimes referred to as the cemetery of forgotten children , is a war cemetery in Deister near Nienstedt in Lower Saxony .
location
The war cemetery is located in the nature reserve near a hiking trail that leads west of the outskirts of Nienstedt from the district road 61 via the Wallmannshütte to the Deisterkamm. Despite its proximity to Nienstedt, the site in the state forest belongs to the municipality of Messenkamp in the Schaumburg district .
history
On the western edge of the village of Nienstedt in what was then the Springe district , the Nienstedt school camp of the Herschel School in Hanover had been located since 1926 . From October 1943, the school camp, which was supplemented with a barrack, served as an alternative hospital for the Hanover Children's Hospital .
The patients came from the city of Hanover and the districts of Hanover , Springe, Schaumburg , Nienburg and the northern district of Hildesheim . Until the end of the Second World War , it was also used as a sanatorium for small children of mothers from labor camps such as the Hanover-Mühlenberg satellite camp . In the period after the liberation, many of the children came from the displaced persons camps .
According to the death books of the children's hospital and the death books of the registry office in Nienstedt, a total of 1,248 children died in the alternative hospital, the vast majority of them in 1945 and 1946. Most of the deceased were taken to their hometowns by their relatives for burial. At first there were several burials in the Nienstedter community cemetery. Later about 90, including 18 foreign citizens, were buried in an "emergency cemetery" located about 400 m north of the school camp in the Deister.
A few years after the end of the war, the hospital was gradually moved back to Hanover. In 1951 the Leibniz School Hanover took over the school camp.
The approximately 10 × 17 m large cemetery with 89 or 91 graves depending on the source, was provisionally fenced in in an open field at the beginning of the 1950s. The burial mounds, laid out in six and a half rows, carried simple wooden crosses. The maintenance of the facility was neglected, probably due to the unclear responsibility. In 1966 the cemetery was leveled. At the urging of the Nienstedt community, the district president in Hanover shortened the statutory rest period to 15 years. The leveling of such war cemeteries was legally inadmissible, but not uncommon at the time. The previously grazed open areas in the area were reforested. Conifers were also planted on the site of the former cemetery.
Documents on the cemetery were probably lost when Nienstedts were incorporated into Bad Münder and the Springe district was dissolved during the regional reform in Lower Saxony . Even many long-established citizens of Nienstedts could not or did not want to remember details about the cemetery. Two detailed local chronicles produced in 1970 and 1980 did not deal with the subject.
memory
When the leveling was approved in 1966, the district president demanded a “memorial cross”. This was never built. In 1977 efforts to erect a memorial stone failed. In 2001, the Nienstedt school camp association of the Leibnizschule Hannover put a memorial stone with an information board on the edge of the forest path by the cemetery.
The historian Bernhard Gelderblom has been concerned with the history of the cemetery and the fate of the deceased children since 2009. Since the deceased forced laborers are legally war victims, the cemetery was designated as a war cemetery in 2013 . Two boards with detailed descriptions are at the entrance to the cemetery.
On July 1, 2015 the newly designed and fenced-in cemetery was inaugurated. At the entrance there are three steles inscribed with the names of the 18 foreign children buried here. A grave mark designed by a student in an advanced art course at the Leibniz School was realized in 2015. It shows two heads of mother and child facing each other.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Herbert Krieg, Manfred von Allwörden, Ulrich Manthey: Landheim Nienstedt. in: Bad Münder and its districts . P. 72 , accessed on September 4, 2017 .
- ↑ a b c d Bernhard Gelderblom: The forgotten children's graves of the Nienstedter forest cemetery. Association for Regional Cultural and Contemporary History Hameln eV, July 23, 2015, accessed on September 4, 2017 .
- ↑ a b Achim Linck: Cemetery of the forgotten children. www.dewezet.de, March 23, 2012, accessed on September 11, 2017 .
- ↑ al: The forest reveals its secret. quoted on www.marktplatz-schaumburg.de . (No longer available online.) Schaumburger Wochenblatt, July 2, 2014, archived from the original on September 12, 2017 ; accessed on September 11, 2017 .
- ↑ Bernhard Gelderbloom: The forgotten children's graves of the Nienstedter forest cemetery. (PDF; 1.69 MB) from: Springer Yearbook 2013 , ed. v. Support association for the town history of Springe e. V., Springe 2013, pp. 17–32 (on: www.leibnizschule-hannover.de). 2013, accessed September 11, 2017 .
- ↑ Lauenau - Feggendorf, Nienstedter Waldfriedhof. Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge eV, accessed on September 11, 2017 .
- ↑ Paul Mittag: A quiet place - overgrown, forgotten, displaced. www.ndz.de, July 18, 2009, accessed on September 11, 2017 .
- ↑ There is still only a cross in the forest / children's cemetery recognized as a war cemetery / information boards and stone. quoted on www.hiergeblieben.de . Schaumburger Wochenblatt, February 12, 2014, accessed on September 11, 2017 .
- ^ St: Cemetery of the Forgotten: Historians at work. www.ndz.de, December 29, 2009, accessed on September 11, 2017 .
- ↑ Jens Rathmann: Cemetery now war cemetery. www.sn-online.de, July 1, 2015, accessed on September 11, 2017 .
Coordinates: 52 ° 15 ′ 47.3 " N , 9 ° 26 ′ 15" E