Gartenfriedhof

The Garden Cemetery (Gartenfriedhof) is a cemetery in Hanover, Germany. It was created in 1741 and is located by the Garden Church built in 1749. The cemetery and the church are both named after the garden parish outside the former parish 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 (inspiration of Goethe's "Lotte" in The Sorrows of Young Werther), the astronomer Caroline Herschel and the painter Johann Heinrich Ramberg are located here. The Gartenfriedhof lies on Marienstraße between Warmbüchenstraße and Arnswaldtstraße. 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" (Gartenleute) 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.