Volkovo Cemetery

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Volkovo Cemetery ( Russian Во́лково кла́дбище or Во́лковское кла́дбище ) is a 26-hectare cemetery in Saint Petersburg ( Russia ). It is located in Frunze district, south of the city center, not far from the Volkovskaya metro station . He is best known for the literatorskije mostki ("literary bridges ", Литераторские мостки ) section of honor , where the graves of numerous writers, poets, artists and scientists are located.

Volkovo Cemetery with St. Job Church

history

Bridge over the Volkovka in the cemetery
Church of the Resurrection

The name of the cemetery is derived from the former village of Wolkowka or Wolkowo, which was first mentioned in the 17th century. In 1719 a small churchyard was laid out there at the Johannes-der-Baptist-Kirche. In the middle of the 18th century, however, this cemetery was closed and one of the city's three new large cemeteries was founded in its vicinity, with today's Wolkowo Cemetery. The date of origin of the Volkovo Cemetery is May 11, 1756, when its foundation was sealed by a decree of Empress Elisabeth . The new necropolis was built on the bank of a small tributary of the Neva , which was only given its current name Wolkowka in the 19th century .

Initially, the Volkovo Cemetery was considered a burial place for the poor. It was only around 2000 m² in size and only had a wooden chapel, but no church of its own. The complex was hardly maintained for decades and there was no spatial order for new burials, which is why the cemetery still has a very disordered structure and only a few sidewalks. The first church in the Volkovo Cemetery, originally made of wood, was consecrated at the end of 1759. In 1777 it was supplemented by a new one, which burned down in 1782 and was replaced by today's Church of the Resurrection in Stein by 1785. The first wooden church in the cemetery was demolished in 1795 because it was in disrepair and was not replaced by a successor building until 1842 - today's Church of the Redeemer. In the further course of the 19th century, two more churches were built in the cemetery: The All Saints Church (1852) and the Church of St. Job (1887), and a bell tower was added to the ensemble from 1832–34.

In the later 18th and especially in the 19th century, the cemetery was already one of the largest in Saint Petersburg, as its territory was expanded several times. In 1812 sidewalks were laid there and additional trees were planted. In 1885 there were already around 600,000 burials in the Volkovo Cemetery, including numerous magnificent tombs of wealthy citizens. After the October Revolution of 1917, part of the cemetery was de-dedicated, with the best-known graves being reburied in other sections, but most of them destroyed. The Church of All Saints from 1852 and the Church of the Assumption of Mary built in 1913 were also demolished; the church of the Redeemer was de-dedicated and converted into a workshop for a stonemason. During the Second World War, mass graves for civilian victims of the siege were excavated in the cemetery during the German siege of the city (1941–1944).

In the course of its history, the cemetery was not only used for the burials of Russian Orthodox Christians: at the end of the 18th century, the Lutheran section was built next to the Orthodox section on the other bank of the Volkovka, and a small section to the north of it existed until the 1930s for old orthodox believers.

In individual sections of the Volkovo Cemetery, burials are still carried out today.

Graves of prominent people

Garschin's grave
Graves of Plekhanov, Belinsky and Dobrolyubov
Burial of victims of the Leningrad blockade in October 1942
Mendeleev's grave
Turgenev's tomb

Since graves are generally not re-occupied in Russia, numerous historical tombs have been preserved in the Volkovo Cemetery to this day, dating from the 18th and 19th centuries, some of which represent prominent noble families (including Galitzin , Trubezkoi , Yusupov and others) offer their final resting place.

The most famous section of the cemetery are the so-called literary bridges, where writers and publicists, and later artists, scientists and politicians, have traditionally been buried since the 19th century. The name literary bridges also originated in the 19th century, when "bridges" were then used to refer to special wooden boards with which cemetery paths were paved in order to make them passable despite moisture and mud.

Authors

Visual artists, composers, musicians

scientist

Other known people

See also

Web links

Commons : Volkovo Cemetery  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 59 ° 54 ′ 11 ″  N , 30 ° 21 ′ 51 ″  E