Zentralfriedhof, Cemetery in Erlangen, Germany

Zentralfriedhof is a cemetery in Erlangen featuring a sandstone entrance gate and chapel dating to the late 1800s. The grounds contain thousands of burial plots arranged across the landscaped property.

Erlangen's first municipal cemetery, at the site of today's Ehrenfriedhof, had become too small, so the Zentralfriedhof was built in the 1890s on a plot of about 50,000 square meters on the Brucker Anger. It opened on 26 September 1895, cost around 90,000 marks, and was open to all denominations and to deceased from the mental health and care institutions. Between 1916 and 1921 Russian, Italian and French prisoners of war who died in the Erlangen camp were buried here; the Russian inmates erected a two-meter granite memorial with Cyrillic inscriptions in summer 1919, and in 1929 their individual graves were consolidated into two artificial-stone sarcophagi flanking the stone.

The cemetery is open to all denominations and also served the deceased of Erlangen's mental health and care institutions. The mortuary chapel, built around 1895, has a west front with arcades on round columns and a gable with bell tower and clock; a colonnade with Ionic capitals runs along both sides of the entrance. Since 1994 it holds a seven-register organ by Deininger & Renner of Oettingen.

The cemetery lies at Äußere Brucker Straße 53, about one kilometre southwest of Erlangen's historic centre, and measures roughly 300 metres north to south and 250 metres east to west. A flower kiosk has stood beside the main entrance since 1954, and the municipal garden and cemetery office occupies the northeast corner. The grounds are reached on foot from the centre along the Brucker Straße axis.

The grounds contain burial sites of Friedrich-Alexander University professors and former mayors of Erlangen. This connection to the city's history makes it a place of particular local importance.