I will present the history of a dozen or so Bolesławiec cemeteries, only a small number of which have survived to our times. At the same time, I encourage you to visit them; this guide will be helpful.
1) MUNICIPAL CEMETERY on Śluzowa Street (German: Am Wehrberg) – the former New Evangelical Cemetery. It was established at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s because there was no more room in the old cemetery on Garncarska Street. Its location away from the town centre is characteristic of 20th-century cemeteries. The chapel is noteworthy; its mid-19th-century design has been preserved in the Evangelical Parish Archive, as has the figure of “Jesus, Friend of Children,” created by Prof. Peter Brauer in 1902. It was a gift from the Prussian Ministry of Religious Affairs to the Bolesławiec orphanage and was moved to its present location after the war for obvious reasons.
2) OLD CATHOLIC CEMETERY on Lubańska Street. It was established at the beginning of the 20th century. Its small size testifies to the small number of Catholic believers. Old German graves have survived there, the oldest dating from 1918. After the war, it served the Polish community until the mid-1950s. Soldiers of the 2nd Polish Army and Italian prisoners of war were buried there.
3) OLD EVANGELICAL CEMETERY on Garncarska Street. In its northern section stood the medieval Church of St Nicholas together with the parish cemetery. It was demolished in 1529. Through the efforts of the Evangelical parish, a cemetery chapel was built on its site in 1791; it was destroyed in 1813 and rebuilt again in 1819. From the 16th century until the beginning of the 20th century, it was Bolesławiec’s main cemetery. It contained many valuable monuments, thoughtlessly destroyed after the war: Renaissance epitaphs of the Holtzman, Walditz, Rothlach and Seifert families, all from the mid-16th century, and a number of Baroque epitaphs, including the Rococo monument to Pastor Ambrosius Jaerschky (+ 1761). The cemetery expanded southwards as far as present-day Willowa Street, where a mortuary was built beside the transformer station that still stands today.
4) HOSPITAL CEMETERY in the park on Piastów Street. It was established in the second half of the 19th century and served the nearby Hospital and Sanatorium of the Province of Silesia, built in 1857–1862. It had a cemetery chapel. It is now completely destroyed.
5) CEMETERY AT THE PARISH CHURCH in Bolesławice. Its location apud ecclesiam is traditional. A number of valuable works of art have survived. It is worth seeing the epitaphs of individual members of the Raussendorff family: Anna (+ 1572), Erasmus (+ 1576), Barbara (+ 1579) and her sister, whose name is unknown (1595), Eva von Kittlitz (+1561), Zofia von Kittlitz (+ 1578), Konrad (+ 1588), Anna (+ 1572), Henry (+ 1596) and Christopher (+ 1549). They are all set into the southern wall of the church. On all of them, except Christopher’s slab, which is set above the church entrance, we can admire fairly well-preserved portraits of the deceased. Dating from 1545 is the epitaph of Philipp Hiller, the first Lutheran parish priest of Tillendorf; beside him lies Simon Hanwalt, who died in 1554 and was the third parish priest of this church. Among the graves in the churchyard we find one particularly interesting tomb: that of Major General Edmund Dojanicz von Gliszczyński (1825–1896), his wife Teresa née Schmakowski (1832–1909), and Countess Anna Ballestrem (1809–1891). It is difficult to say why these graves are here or whether they have any connection with Poland. Inside the church there was one of the oldest epitaphs in Silesia, dating from 1418 and belonging to the forebears of the aforementioned Raussendorf family.
6) CEMETERY AT THE PARISH CHURCH OF OUR LADY AND ST NICHOLAS. It functioned until the 16th century and was located in the churchyard. Among its surviving remnants are the epitaphs mounted on the southern wall of the church, viewed from the west: Georg Albrecht (+ 1575); Anton Schwartz (+1573); Romulus Schellendorf (+1576); Hans Seidl (+1561); Johann Sueessenbach (+ 1585), the son of the first Evangelical pastor; Martha Seiler (+1594); Mathaus Buchwalder (+ 1568); Caspar Preibisch (+ 1575); the poet Caspar Kirchner (+ 1627), made by Jan Pohl of Głogów (see Głos Bolesławca no. 4/92); Sebaldus von Bibran (+ 1557); then Gallus Forman (1613), a councillor and coppersmith; Magdalena (+ 1620), the daughter of physician Jakob Bernauer; Johannes Diefenbach (+ 1603); Jeremias Gerstmann (+ 1590); and beside his, his sister Helena (+ 1588); Florian Gerstmann (+ 1599); Jan Tscherning (+ 1609), see GB no. 10/94; Thomas Heinsius (+ 1571); Esther Preller (+ 1625); and, on the southern side, the epitaph of the potter Mathes These (+1625). Inside the church we find several interesting funerary plaques: that of Pastor Chrystian F. Blutvogl (+ 1722); Mayor Sebastian Wolfgeil (+ 1726); Councillor Sebastian Froben (+ 1582) and his daughter Maria (1576); and Ursula Marianna (+ 1697), the daughter of Giulio Sinionetti.
7) OLD EVANGELICAL CEMETERY in Bolesławice on Ptasia Street. An Evangelical chapel, which no longer exists, stood on its southern side. The cemetery is now partly destroyed and desecrated. Quite a large number of original German gravestones have survived; the remainder were used, among other things, to build the nearby fence. At the centre stands a monument to German soldiers who fell in the First World War, bearing the text: DEM ANDENKEN DER GEFALLENEN 1914–1918 (In memory of those who fell, 1914–1918).
8) NEW EVANGELICAL CEMETERY in Bolesławice on Ptasia Street, at the corner of Narcyzów Street. It is now destroyed. What remains is a cemetery park.
9) JEWISH CEMETERY. It is now destroyed. It was located at the corner of Komuny Paryskiej and Jeleniogórska Streets. A small square is all that remains. It had its own synagogue. The Jewish gravestone located in the Lapidarium behind the Museum of Ceramics probably comes from this cemetery.
10) OLD JEWISH CEMETERY. Completely destroyed. It stood at the junction of Wąska and Kubika Streets. It is known only from Wernher’s 1749 plan. The town plan of 1773 already shows a “Gleich garten” in its place—an evened-out garden or park (?). Until the war, a synagogue stood there, owned by the Jewish community located in this district of the town.
11) CEMETERY AT THE CHURCH OF ST HEDWIG. It is known only from a medieval town plan. Today’s “Piast” Hotel stands on its site.
12) CEMETERY–MAUSOLEUM OF SOVIET SOLDIERS in Bolesławice. It contains the graves of soldiers of the 7th Guards Tank Corps and the 31st Infantry Division. The centre of the site is a monument to M. I. Kutuzov, beneath which a sarcophagus containing his internal organs was originally embedded; a later legend said it contained his heart. More about the monument can be found in GB no. 5/94.
13) CEMETERY OF SOVIET SOLDIERS in Bolesławiec, next to the old Catholic cemetery. It contains the graves of soldiers of the 7th Guards Tank Corps. We have reliable information about the cemeteries mentioned above. It is more difficult, however, to accept the existence of the Hussite cemetery known from local stories, on Jeleniogórska Street, or a second one in today’s Waryński Park, where before the war the Schuetzenpark stood—a shooting park and a place for all kinds of festivities, meetings and ceremonies attended by the town’s residents. Finally, it should be noted that many walls in Bolesławiec were built from stone gravestones taken from cemeteries. It is enough to look closely at the walls on Polna Street and Dąbrowszczaków Street to see that they are made of “cemetery sandstone”.