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ID: dok-000303-P/77648

Chernivtsi Municipal Cemetery.

ID: dok-000303-P/77648

Chernivtsi Municipal Cemetery.

The municipal cemetery is located to the east of the town centre, with the Jewish cemetery adjacent to the north. It is a very extensive necropolis, with an area of approximately 14 ha.

The cemetery is still active, well-maintained, with a regular grid of alleys and an exceptional richness in the forms of gravestone monuments. It is also very diverse in terms of nationality, which makes the search for Polish traces difficult. To this, as Zbigniew Hauser points out, one must add the mannerism that was indulged in before the First World War, which resulted in inscriptions in German appearing on Polish tombstones. The use of this language had ennobling overtones. In turn, a certain ease in finding burial places of Poles is the, perhaps not entirely consistent, division into revirs corresponding to nationalities. The magnificence and variety of gravestones indicate the wealth and often high social status of the city's inhabitants, citizens of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.

It is therefore necessary to mention just a few. Hauser points out as particularly interesting the tombstone of the Załoziecki family from the turn of the 20th century with an inscription in German. It is a tomb crowned with an obelisk decorated with a medallion with a relief bust of the deceased, with a full-figured sculpture of a weeping woman standing to the right. The burial chapels are particularly impressive. The neo-classical chapel of the Jasiński family (dating from the 1880s) with a two-column Ionic portico and a façade decorated with wreaths and four fluted pilasters, decorated with a frieze and topped with a pediment, or the neo-Gothic chapel of Krzysztof Bogdanowicz, a landowner, member of the Galician Sejm and honorary citizen of Kolomyia, who died in 1875, are only a modest representation of the burial chapels in the cemetery. It is also worth mentioning the monumental sepulchral rocks of Dr Bronislaw de Majerski and his wife, bearing photographs of the deceased and an inscription listing the doctor's decorations and titles. The number of inscriptions of a similar nature shows that this was a common custom among people holding senior positions. There is no shortage of rhymed inscriptions, such as this one from the tombstone of CK starost Antoni Knisch (d. 1879): "The memory will never be wiped away / Though a tear from the eyes has long since been wiped away".

Bibliography:

  • Karta dokumentacyjna obiektu zabytkowego poza granicami kraju, powiat nadwórniański, zbiór przechowywany w Ministerstwie Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego, Warszawa..
  • Hauser Zbigniew, „Podróże po cmentarzach Ukrainy”, t. IV, „Województwa: wołyńskie, podolskie, bracławskie i kijowskie”, Kraków 2009, s. 493-504.

Author:

Bartłomiej Gutowski, Alicja Czuber-Filonik
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