On the occasion of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, we recall Krzysztof Olczak’s guide. We have supplemented the text with current photographs.
From the history of the town. The cemeteries of Bolesławiec – a brief guide
I will present the history of a dozen or so cemeteries in Bolesławiec, only a small number of which have survived to our times. At the same time, I encourage you to visit them; this guide will help you do so.
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 space in the old cemetery on Garncarska Street. Its location away from the town centre is characteristic of twentieth-century cemeteries. The chapel draws attention; its mid-nineteenth-century design has survived in the Archive of the Evangelical Parish, as has the statue “Jesus, Friend of Children”, created by Prof. Peter Brauer in 1902 – a gift from the Prussian Ministry of Religious Affairs to the Bolesławiec orphanage, moved after the war to its present location for obvious reasons.
Old Catholic Cemetery on Lubańska Street. It was established at the beginning of the twentieth century. Its small size indicates that there were not many Catholic worshippers. 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 Second Polish Army and Italian prisoners of war were buried there.
Show Cemeteries in Bolesławiec on a larger map
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 in its place in 1791; it was destroyed in 1813 and rebuilt again in 1819. From the sixteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century, it was the main cemetery of Bolesławiec. It contained many valuable monuments, senselessly destroyed after the war: Renaissance epitaphs of the Holtzman, Walditz, Rothlach and Seifert families, all from the mid-sixteenth century, and a series 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.
Hospital Cemetery in the park on Piastów Street. It was established in the second half of the nineteenth 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.
Cemetery by the Parish Church in Bolesławice. A classic apud ecclesiam location. A number of valuable works of art have survived. The epitaphs of individual members of the Raussendorff family are worth seeing: Anna (+ 1572), Erasmus (+ 1576), Barbara (+ 1579) and her sister, whose name is unknown (1595), Eva von Kittlitz (+1561), Sophia von Kittlitz (+ 1578), Conrad (+ 1588), Anna (+ 1572), Henry (+ 1596) and Christopher (+ 1549). All of them are embedded in the southern wall of the church. On all of them, except Christopher’s slab, embedded above the church entrance, we can admire fairly well-preserved images of the deceased. An epitaph from 1545 commemorates Philipp Hiller, the first Lutheran pastor of Tillendorf. Beside him lies Simon Hanwalt, who died in 1554 and was the third pastor of this church. Among the graves in the churchyard we find one particularly interesting tomb: it contains the remains of Major General Edmund Dojanicz von Gliszczyński (1825–1896), his wife Teresa née Schmakowski (1832–1909), and Countess Anna Ballestrem (1809–1891). Why these graves are here, and whether they have any connection with Poland, is difficult to say. Inside the church there was one of the oldest epitaphs in Silesia, dating from 1418 and belonging to the ancestors of the aforementioned Raussendorf family.
Cemetery by the Parish Church of Our Lady Mary and St Nicholas. It functioned until the sixteenth century and was located in the churchyard. Among its surviving remnants are epitaphs placed 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), by Jan Pohl of Głogów (see “Głos Bolesławca”, issue 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 him his sister Helena (+ 1588); Florian Gerstmann (+ 1599); Jan Tscherning (+ 1609), see GB issue 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 tomb plaques: that of Pastor Christian F. Blutvogel (+ 1722); Mayor Sebastian Wolfgeil (+ 1726); Councillor Sebastian Froben (+ 1582) and his daughter Maria (1576); and the daughter of Giulio Sinionetti, Ursula Marianna (+ 1697).
Old Evangelical Cemetery in Bolesławice on Ptasia Street. An Evangelical chapel that 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 rest were used, among other things, to build a nearby fence. In the centre stands a monument to German soldiers killed in the First World War, bearing the text: DEM ANDENKEN DER GEFALLENEN 1914-1918 (In memory of those who fell, 1914–1918).
New Evangelical Cemetery in Bolesławice on Ptasia Street, at the corner of Narcyzów Street. It is now destroyed. What remains is a cemetery park.
Jewish Cemetery. It is now destroyed. It was located at the corner of Komuny Paryskiej and Jeleniogórska Streets. What remains is a small square. It had its own synagogue. The Jewish gravestone in the Lapidarium behind the Museum of Ceramics probably comes from this cemetery.
Old Jewish Cemetery. Completely destroyed. At the junction of Wąska and Kubika Streets. It is known only from Wernher’s plan of 1749. The town plan of 1773 already shows “Gleich garten” in its place, a levelled garden or park (?). Until the war, a synagogue stood here – the property of the Jewish community located in this district of the town.
Cemetery by the Church of St Hedwig. Known only from a medieval town plan. Today’s “Piast” Hotel stands in its place.
Cemetery-Mausoleum of Soviet Soldiers in Bolesławice. 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 internal organs was originally embedded; a later legend said it contained a heart. More about the monument appeared in GB issue 5/94.
Soviet Soldiers’ Cemetery in Bolesławiec, next to the old Catholic cemetery. 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 another one in today’s Waryński Park, where before the war the Schuetzenpark stood – a shooting park and a place for all kinds of entertainments, meetings and celebrations attended by the town’s residents. Finally, it should be noted that many walls in Bolesławiec were built from stone gravestones taken from cemeteries. One need only look closely at the low walls on Polna Street and Dąbrowszczaków Street to see that they are made of “cemetery sandstone”.
Author: Krzysztof Olczak, “Głos Bolesławca”, November 1994 edition.