page_title: Gartenfriedhof
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Gartenfriedhof / History
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Fotografie aus Hannover, um 1880, aus einem Konvolut, rückseitig teilweise gestempelt mit Carl G. Frietsch (Besitzernachweis&#160;?) und mit einem offensichtlich älteren Stempel von Wilhelm Mendelsohn, "Americanischer Bazar, Hannover, Georgstraße 11 und Frankfurt am Main, Schillerplatz 6 und Zeil 29, Reichhaltiges Lager von Photographien sämmtlicher größerer Städte Deutschlands sowie von modernen und classischen Bildern; große Auswahl feiner Galanterie und Luxuswaaren, english spoken"
context_page_description: The Gartenfriedhof or Garden Cemetery is a cemetery in Hanover, created in 1741 and located by the Gartenkirche. The cemetery and the church are both named after the garden parish outside the city walls in front of Aegidien gate. The cemetery, which contains a number of classicising grave markers from the first half of the nineteenth century, was closed in 1864 with the establishment of the Stadtfriedhof Engesohde. Today it forms a park in the middle of inner city Hanover. The graves of Charlotte Buff, the astronomer Caroline Herschel and the painter Johann Heinrich Ramberg are located here. The Gartenfriedhof lies on Marienstraße between Warmbüchenstraße and Arnswaldtstraße.
context_section_description: The names "Gartenfriedhof" and "Gartenkirche" date to the establishment of the parish and its cemetery in the Garden community in the eighteenth century. At the time, the modern ward of Südstadt lay outside the city walls and the Aegidien gate and was used by the "Garden folk" (Gartenleuten) primarily for growing crops and vegetables for sale in the city of Hanover. Because of their simple homes, called Kates, these farmers were also known as "Garden Cossacks" (Gartenkosaken, punningly derived from cotter). In 1741, the City of Hanover established the "New Churchyard before the Aegidien Gate" (Neuen Kirchhof vor dem Aegidientor) for these people. Between 1746 and 1749 a simple aisle church with a flèche was built by Johann Paul Heumann as well - later to be known as the Gartenkirche. This was replaced by a new building constructed from 1887 to 1891 by the architect Rudolph Eberhard Hillebrand. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Gartenfriedhof was not just used by the Garden folk, but also by townspeople who settled in the nearby Aegidienneustadt from the middle of the eighteenth century: families of officials, soldiers, ministers, professors and councillors, who are commemorated on the stones of the Gartenfriedhof to this day. In their artistic devotion to classicising elements, these grave monuments represent the ethos of the bourgeois class - known in Hannöversch as the "Hubsche families. The grave monuments of this time, like urns, weeping jugs, the snake eating its own tail (symbolising eternity), the butterfly (transformation), and the extinguished torch are found throughout the Gartenfriedhof in numerous variations. There are also works of art, like the gravestone with acanthus flowers and palmettes designed by Georg Ludwig Friedrich Laves for Charlotte Buff or the four sphinxes pulling Kielmannsegge's stone sarcophagus.
  Already in the nineteenth century, the Open Grave, subject of numerous horror stories, had developed into an early tourist attraction and a Hanover landmark.
  Since the 1950s, the Gartenfriedhof has fallen into serious decay, especially the sandstone gravestones and wrought iron fences. Air pollution and also vandalism and the (ongoing) misuse of the Gartenfriedhof as a dog's toilet have contributed to this. Since the old fence was melted down during the Second World War, the former railing of the Kanalbrücke bridge in the Hanoverian suburb of Vinnhorst was recycled as a fence for the cemetery in 1984. Community efforts by various cultural societies finally led to the protection and refurbishment of the space. As a result, a bronze plaque with a map was installed in the entrance area in the mid-1990s by the Hannover-Leineschloß Rotary club, which makes it possible to find the way to the most distinguished surviving tombs. The numbers on this table are the same as those in literature issued by the Parks and Gardens Office (see the bibliography).
caption: Photo of the Open Grave of Henriette Juliane Caroline von Rüling (1756–1782) (Grave Number 32); c. 1880
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