Westfriedhof (Ingolstadt)

Alleys accompany the cross-shaped paths

Detailed view of Westfriedhof Ingolstadt

The Israelite cemetery

The Westfriedhof Ingolstadt is one of the four main cemeteries in the city of Ingolstadt and is located on the western ring road. It is a typical hedge cemetery with cross-shaped paths, accompanied by avenues, rows of trees and individual trees covering grave fields.

history

As early as 1563, for reasons of hygiene, a cemetery was laid out outside the city walls, today's Westfriedhof. In the years 1891/92 the Israelite cemetery was created, which was still outside the Christian cemetery. The latter finally enclosed the Jewish cemetery through several extensions, so that it is now part of the Westfriedhof. A fundamental redesign and expansion of the cemetery took place from 1933 to 1935 with a neoclassical funeral hall and enclosure walls, mostly made of natural stone. Many distinguished people and families of the city are buried in the Westfriedhof, e. B. Marieluise Fleißer , Hermann Paul Müller , Adolf Scherzer or the last executioner in town, Johann Ritzer .

The cemetery is now completely surrounded by buildings and roads. This means that it is no longer possible to expand the area.

In the cemetery there is a chapel from 1802, a funeral hall and a Tahara house .

War memorials and war cemeteries

In the cemetery there are war graves from the First and Second World Wars as well as war memorials in memory of the German and French soldiers who died in the Ingolstadt hospitals during the war of 1870/71 .

Ingolstadt was an important hospital site during World War I, where thousands of wounded were treated. 336 of the soldiers who died of their wounds or illnesses in the course of the four years of the war rest on a burial ground in the south of the cemetery. Their names are recorded on a total of eight boards.

Furthermore, a grave field for deceased prisoners of war was laid out during the First World War. The British, Italian and French prisoners of war who died were transferred to their home countries from 1924. The memorial stone on the south wall of the Israelite cemetery reminds of the Russian, Serbian and Romanian soldiers resting here far from their homeland.

The grave site near the funeral hall , known as the "Grove of Honor", is the final resting place for the 568 war dead of World War II. There are deaths in the air raids on Ingolstadt from January to April 1945 and 75 people executed in 1944/45 who were accused of " deserting ", " decomposing military strength " or "war pessimism". They were reburied in the honor grove on November 2, 1945.

As part of a project by the Reservist Association of Ingolstadt in the VdRBw eV in cooperation with the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge eV , history and commemorative boards were drawn up in 2017-2020 and presented to the public. These panels are intended to classify the war memorials and war cemeteries historically and provide background information and thus serve as places of learning about history.

Natural space

The Westfriedhof is a valuable urban biotope, especially for breeding birds of all kinds. In addition to the old trees ( birch , maple , linden, etc.), the approx. 6400 m long hedges made of hornbeam , field maple , yew , dogwood, etc., which are cut twice a year, serve in order to maintain their structuring and space-saving function, as a nesting and feeding option.