Dölzschen cemetery, Cemetery in Dresden, Germany
Dölzschen Cemetery is a burial ground in Dresden spanning roughly 0.8 hectares, with numerous grave sites, monuments, and maintained pathways distributed across grassy areas. The layout is organized with green spaces that provide room for individual plots and memorial structures.
In 1920 the municipality of Dölzschen bought about 0.81 hectares from the Loschwitz factory owner Arno Reichelt, and the cemetery was laid out in 1922–1923 with garden design by Wilhelm Stein. Dölzschen had no church of its own; baptisms, weddings and funerals took place in Dresden churches, and after 1878 the village was assigned to Pesterwitz and Plauen. The first burial was in 1923, and the cemetery passed to Dresden's cemetery office after Dölzschen was incorporated in 1945.
The cemetery holds the graves of pianist, painter and translator Eva Klemperer (1882–1951) and her husband, the Romance philologist Victor Klemperer (1881–1960), whose diaries record life in Dresden under the Nazis. Also buried here are painter and graphic artist Martin Erich Philipp (1887–1978) and writer Balduin Thieme (1910–1996), who published as "Peter Uhu".
The cemetery lies at the end of Dölzschener Friedhofsweg on a hill, surrounded by fields and meadows; a field path passes it on the way to Roßthal. The grounds are enclosed by a hornbeam hedge, and only the entrance area is built of syenite. The site slopes, and the chapel long suffered from water collecting on the hillside, so paths can be damp.
The A17 motorway tunnel from Dresden to Prague, built from 2000, runs directly beneath the cemetery despite protests from local residents. The cemetery's chapel, designed by architect Reinhardt and built by Coschütz master builder Max Seiffert, was consecrated on 9 September 1928. Since 2011 the Freundeskreis Dölzschener Friedhof has campaigned for a separate bell tower, because the chapel's roof turret is too small for a bell.
The community of curious travelers
AroundUs brings together thousands of curated places, local tips, and hidden gems, enriched daily by 94,459 contributors worldwide.