Ehrengrab

An honorary grave is an expression of honoring the deceased by cities or communities for citizens who have earned special merits in his lifetime. The procurement and maintenance of such graves is usually done by the public sector. Depending on the lending practices, a grave of honor therefore have the character of a public award for a significant individual or even a memorial to a certain group of people. If there are no descendants or institutions exist that take care of the graves of these personalities, the towns will also take responsibility for the graves and finance the grave care. Firstly, as the memory of the honored person is kept alive, on the other hand are often kept ( within the meaning of Monuments and Sites) evidence of cultural history, when about cemeteries elaborate tombs can be obtained by consuming reburials only with public funds and closed.

• 2.2.1 Vienna
• 2.2.2 Salzburg

• 2.3.1 Zurich

Dissemination

Honorary graves exist worldwide, although there are for the award, financing and maintenance of these systems vary by country regulations (eg are sometimes military cemeteries or burial sites of victims of political persecution by former regime treated as honorary graves ).

In the German-speaking countries, the allocation, financing and maintenance of graves in honor of its main features is handled similarly. In the following, therefore, is the example of Berlin, which maintains the largest number of such sites in Germany, the relevant regulation shown is representative of many other towns and cities. The subsequent listing of other cities does not claim to be exhaustive and is for illustrative character.

Examples

Germany

Berlin

Of the 200 cemeteries in Berlin about 80 cemeteries contain about 740 honorary tombs with over 800 honorary graves; the difference is explained by the fact that in some family tombs Sir multiple people are buried. The Berlin public honor grave care goes back to a resolution of the Senate in 1952 and was governed by a general statement for the recognition, transfer and care ... that zugutekam 60 graves at the beginning. Today's basis is § 12, paragraph 6 of the " Law on the state-owned and non state-owned cemeteries in Berlin " (cemetery Act) November 1, 1995 After the State of Berlin free of charge honorary graves are available whose costs are borne by the relevant district offices. :

Proposals for the recognition of honor graves, each citizen is submitted to the responsible Senate Department for Urban Development and Environment. The appointment will be made - no sooner than five years after the death of the nominee - by Senate resolution for the current minimum rest period of 20 years, which is then usually extended. The graves are marked with reddish stones that bear the two-line inscription honor grave, Land Berlin over the arms of the city. Berlin memorial graves have, for example, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Bertolt Brecht, Wilhelm Busch, Hanns Eisler, Theodor Fontane, Curt Goetz, the brothers Grimm, Georg Ludwig Hartig, Heinrich von Kleist, Annedore liver, Otto Lilienthal, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Marg Moll, Georg Schumann, Friedrich von Raumer, Ernst Reuter, Ringelnatz, Agnes Windeck, Heinrich Zille and Arnold Zweig.

In 2003 the Senate to bury the transferred from the United States urn of Berlin-born philosopher Herbert Marcuse in a grave of honor decided. Also, who died in 2004 star photographer Helmut Newton, who as Helmut Neustaedter in Berlin was born in 1920, received an honorary grave at the decision, the Senate of exception to the rule, to decide until five years after the death, moved away. Another exception, the Senate had made, in 2002 for Hildegard Knef.

What constitutes a grave of honor, is sometimes dependent on the historical and political conditions. Thus, taught the GDR with the memorial of the Socialists in the Central Cemetery Friedrichsfelde own Ehrenfriedhof one that served as a burial place for persons who had rendered outstanding services of the Politburo of the SED 's view in the German labor movement and the struggle for the "socialist idea". Since the end of the GDR no new grave sites more there will be awarded.

More cities

• Germany's biggest Park Cemetery, Hamburg Ohlsdorf Cemetery, directed to commemorate an honorary grave for the victims of National Socialism and resistance 1933-1945.
• Among the 49 honorary tombs of Hanover is the resting place of Kurt Schumacher.
• The city of Kassel currently has 63 honorary graves.
• Kiel maintains approximately 25 honorary graves, for example, in the cemetery Russee a place for the teacher Johann Heuck.
• The writer Caesar Flaischlen found a grave of honor at the Stuttgart Prague cemetery.
• The city of Bonn was built at the old cemetery a common grave of honor for Clara and Robert Schumann.
• On the Vorwerker cemetery to Lübeck, Hans Pieper, while its almost the same time deceased predecessor, Harry Maasz, received his honorary grave in the cemetery of honor dortigem.

Austria

Vienna

To make the 1874 opened Vienna's central cemetery for the people attractive, memorial graves were created for famous personalities. This is also buried in other cemeteries Viennese celebrities such as Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert were exhumed and transferred, people such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart received grave monuments. Currently (2009) there are in the central cemetery more than 350 honorary graves and more than 600 honorary dedicated graves. In other Viennese cemeteries exist in total a few hundred more honorary dedicated graves.

Salzburg

In Salzburg, the statement shall be an honorary grave by the City Council of the City for a thirty year period and can then be extended for thirty years. The writer Hermann Bahr, the mountaineer Ludwig Purtscheller and about 25 other deserving citizens addressed the city of Mozart memorial graves one on the municipal cemetery.

Switzerland

Zurich

The city of Zurich has at the crematorium Nordheim a so-called "honor grave of anatomy ". In this common grave urns to be buried by people on request, had asked after her death the Anatomical Institute of the University of Zurich for research purposes. Such " Anatomy graves " exist in many other university towns of Switzerland, Germany and Austria, where the costs are usually borne by the responsible institution.