Vvedenskoye Cemetery

The Wwedenskoje- Cemetery ( Russian Введенское кладбище ; scientific transliteration. Vvedenskoe kladbišče) located in the old district of Moscow Lefortovo (scientific transliteration: Lefortovo.). It was laid out at the end of the 18th century and originally served for burials of non-Orthodox city dwellers, i.e. mainly foreigners. It is also known as the “Vvedensker Friedhof” and “German Cemetery”. Today there are also several graves of famous people.

Entrance building

history

A mausoleum in the Vvedenskoye Cemetery

The first burial places for people of different faiths existed in Moscow as early as the 17th century. The people who were buried there included merchants from other European countries living in Tsarist Russia , including many Germans. They could not have their deceased buried in the town's cemeteries, which were widespread at the time, as these cemeteries were reserved for Orthodox Christians.

At the end of the 17th century, a settlement specially built for foreigners, which was known as Nemezkaja sloboda ("German suburb"; scientific transliteration: Nemeckaja sloboda), arose in the eastern vicinity of the tsar's capital. From that time until the 19th century, Moscow's first Lutheran church building was located there, with a small parish cemetery adjacent to it. Probably the most prominent person buried there was the Swiss Admiral François Le Fort , who lived in the suburb and after whom the Lefortowo district was later named. This churchyard and thus also Le Fort's grave are no longer preserved today.

Today's Vvedenskoye Cemetery was built in 1771 during a great plague epidemic that raged in Moscow that year and killed up to 200,000 city dwellers. At that time, several new large cemeteries were set up outside the city limits at the same time in order to be able to bury all the deceased. Those of other faiths living in Moscow also received a new cemetery near their settlement. Its current name is derived from the Vvedensky Heights , a natural elevation in Lefortowo on the left bank of the Jausa River .

Even after the plague retreated, the Vvedenskoye Cemetery remained the main burial place of Moscow evangelists, Lutherans and Catholics. This lasted until the October Revolution of 1917. After that, all active Christian churches and other religious movements in the country were suppressed by the communist rulers, with many church buildings being misused or destroyed. The denominational status of the cemeteries was revoked. As a result, burials have since been carried out in the Vvedenskoye cemetery regardless of nationality or religious affiliation.

To this day, a relatively large number of graves from the pre-revolutionary period have been preserved in the Vvedenskoye Cemetery, which distinguishes the architectural appearance of the Gottesackers from other Moscow cemeteries. The cemetery chapel, built in 1911, has recently been restored and is now used again as a Lutheran place of worship.

Graves of prominent people

Memorial to six French pilots of the Normandie-Nyemen Fighter Wing

Robert Bartini (1897–1974), aircraft designer
Viktor Bolchowitinov (1899–1970), aircraft designer
Jean-Baptiste de Chamborant (1740–1809), General, Governor of Zitomir, (comes from the French count family 'de Chamborant')
John Field (1782–1837), composer
Ilja Frank (1908–1990), physicist
Naftali Frenkel (1883–1960), co-organizer of the Gulag system
Iwan Galanin (1899-1958), Soviet-Russian lieutenant general
Patrick Gordon (1635-1699), Field Marshal; was originally buried at the Lutheran church in Lefortowo and was later reburied in the Vvedenskoye cemetery
Wladimir Wassiljewitsch Gribkow (1902–1960), actor, voice actor and Estrada singer
Friedrich Joseph Haass (1780–1853), doctor and philanthropist
Alexander Kazantsev (1906–2002), writer and chess composer
Roman Klein (1858–1924), architect
Nikolai Korolev (1917–1974), boxer
Konstantin Melnikow (1890–1974), architect
Yuri Oserow (1921-2001), director
Helmuth von Pannwitz (1898–1947), General
Sofia Parnok (1885–1933), poet
Tatiana Ivanovna Peltzer (1904–1992), actress
Valery Popentschenko (1937–1975), boxer
Mikhail Prishwin (1873–1954), writer
Alberto Sánchez Pérez (1895–1962), painter and sculptor
Erich Fedorowitsch Rahr (1875–1934), pediatrician
Iwan Rerberg (1869–1932), architect
Lidija Seifullina (1889–1954), writer
Wassili Subow (1900–1963), philosopher, art, mathematics and science historian
Alla Tarasova (1898–1973), actress
Apollinari Wasnezow (1856–1933), painter
Wiktor Wasnezow (1848–1926), painter
Pawel Zybin (1905–1992), aviation pioneer

literature

Jurij Ryabinin: Žizn 'moskovskich kladbišč . RIPOL Klassik, Moscow 2006, ISBN 5-7905-4845-8 , pp. 316-332
Sebastian Kempgen : The churches and monasteries of Moscow. A regional handbook . Otto Sagner, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-87690-566-4 , ( Sagner's Slavistic Collection 21), pp. 579-580.