Central Cemetery

 
The final resting places of Jihlava inhabitants have a rich history. The oldest cemetery was located around the church of St. John the Baptist (Kostel sv. Jana Křtitele) on Jánský Hill (Jánský kopeček) in the times of Old Jihlava, a small market settlement dating back to the last third of the 12th century. With the discovery of silver ore around 1240 and the foundation of the new royal town, a new burial ground was built behind the Church of St. James the Great (Chrám sv. Jakuba Většího), which served for many centuries. Due to the insufficient capacity of the old cemetery, a new cemetery was built in 1559 in the Špitálské suburb, along with the Church of St. Trinity (Kostel sv. Trojice), consecrated in 1572. After the Thirty Years' War, the church had to be rebuilt again and received a new patron, the HolySpirit.

The need for a new final resting place grew with the industrial expansion of Jihlava in the second half of the 19th century and with the growing number of new inhabitants. The cemetery at the Church of the HolySpirit (Kostel sv. Ducha) was no longer sufficient due to lack of space, as well as for sanitary reasons. The first steps towards the establishment of the present-day Central Cemetery were taken on 26 February 1869. At that time, the City Council purchased plots of land in the former Plotzar's Field, along what is now Žižkova Street, leading to Pelhřimov. According to Oldřich Meda, this was met with disapproval by the owners of the graves in the HolySpirit cemetery, which was to be cancelled, as well as with protests from residents of the neighbouring villages, who were offended by the City Council's announcement claiming that the new cemetery would only be used for burials of Jihlava residents. The Premonstratensians and the Minorites also opposed the new cemetery as they did not like the fact that the new cemetery would belong to the town, unlike the HolySpirit cemetery, which was the property of the Church.

The City Council appointed a committee consisting of local physicians, who emphasised the sanitary unsuitability of the old cemetery area, noting that the clay soil did not easily absorb the human remains, which, as a result, remained close to the surface. This expert opinion, as well as the establishment of a new cemetery for the villagers at Kalvárie, led to reconciliation of all the feuding parties. The new cemetery was consecrated on 26 September 1869. The festive procession started at the Church of St. James (Kostel sv. Jakuba) and headed to the Minorite Church of the Holy Mother (Chrám Matky Boží), where the congregation was joined by the Minorite Fathers. From there, the procession continued to the new cemetery. The cemetery was consecrated by the parish priest James Köpl and the guardian Neubauer.

The cemetery is rectangular. The selection committee appointed Eduard Rathausky and Alexander Theuner as its builders. As mentioned in archival sources, the latter presented the plans for the new cemetery on 22 April 1868. It is therefore possible that he also designed the entrance building, but no construction documentation is available to confirm this. The entrance building is single-storey, built in the Neo-Romanesque style, with a central two-storey avant-corps. Based on period photographs, the building was not originally plastered. The fired bricks were lined with distinctive stucco bossage at the corners, it was decorated with an arched frieze under the cornice, and the façade was divided by mighty horizontally grooved pilaster strips. The current appearance of the building respects the original architectural elements. The roof of the building is gabled with eight half-hipped dormers. The Latin inscription on the façade, which translates as "In Christ they died, through Christ they will joyfully rise," was formulated by MUDrLeopold Fritz, a member of the City Council and a prominent Czech revivalist.

The Chapel of the Ascension of Christ (Kaple Nanebevstoupení Krista) stands behind the entrance building. There is some uncertainty about who designed it. In the past, the name of August Prokop was mentioned in this context, but many contemporary works refer to Richard Völkel as its architect. The chapel plans, stored in the archive, have an inscription dating back to March 1893 and were not signed by any of the aforementioned architects.

Work on the chapel began with a ceremonial excavation in the autumn of 1892, and the construction was carried out from 1893–1894. It was consecrated by the parish priest Nepomuk Králík on 28 October 1894. It is a single-nave building with an offset chancel. The side façade is divided by a stone foundation wall, fine blocks, and terraced pillars topped with stone pinnacles. The pointed windows have stone tracery. The tower of the chapel is crowned by a spire with a globe and a cross. The cross-vaulted interior is embellished with decorative paintings in the Art Nouveau style by the academic painter Christian Petersen.

The area behind the chapel is lined with a regular row of graves. A circular sandy path leads through its centre. In 1927, a granite monument was erected there to commemorate Jihlava's residents who had fallen in the First World War. It was topped with a bust of a soldier with an Austro-Hungarian helmet by the sculptor Karel Křikawa. The monument was removed in 1945 and replaced in 1993 with a memorial to the civilian victims of the Second World War.

In 1927, the cemetery was expanded to include a newer western part with a burial site for Austro-Hungarian soldiers killed in the First World War. A total of 263 small simple tombstones are spread in concentric circles around a central stone cairn. A burial site for the 409 Red Army soldiers killed in the Jihlava region was added close by. Solid stone slabs with graves and a central monument unveiled on 23 April 1946 became the unifying element of the space. In the 1990s, a burial ground for German soldiers killed in World War II was added, with a park-like space lined with stone crosses, a centrally placed simple wooden cross and a rectangular memorial plaque. On 15 September 2012, the remains of Czech Germans murdered in the vicinity of Dobronín in 1945, which had originally been put in an unmarked mass grave near the village, were placed in a communal grave in the southern part of the cemetery.

The most valuable tombstones are on the western enclosure wall, where detailed stone-sculpted Neo-Gothic, Neo-Renaissance, and Neo-Classical styles can be found. The aediculae and niches house sandstone and marble sculptures of crosses, ancient gods, geniuses, and angels. A number of stonemasonry companies, including Adolf Loos Sr., Johann Eduard Tomola, and Konrad Weigner, were involved in the creation of the cemetery's sepulchral architecture. The Art Nouveau tomb for the Helenín businessman Karel Löw and his wife was designed in 1912 by the famous British architect Charles F. A. Voysey. The construction was carried out by Georg Felix Pfeifer according to a slightly altered design. Many important representatives of the city were laid to rest in the Central Cemetery, such as Mayor Vinzenz Inderka, MUDrLeopold Fritz, the first Czech mayor of Jihlava JUDrRudolf Veverka, and many others. The Central Cemetery is currently undergoing gradual restoration. Podzimek and sons (Podzimek a synové) has already renovated the entrance building.

Jihlava's Central Cemetery is not only a place of memories, but also a living organism that is constantly developing and changing with the influence of the people who shape it, visit it, and care for it before they are laid to rest there themselves. An image of every society is formed, among other things, by the way it cares for its dead. With the gradual renovation of the cemetery, Jihlava society is returning to its cultural roots.

MS
Literature and other sources 

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