Neuer Johannisfriedhof
Coordinates: 51°19′39″N 12°23′41″E / 51.32750°N 12.39472°E
The Friedenspark ("Peace Park") is an open space of about 20 hectares in the centre of Leipzig, Germany, in the district of Zentrum-Südost, located between the Ostplatz to the north and the Russian Memorial Church (Russische Gedächtniskirche) to the south. The park was opened in 1983, after the secularisation and clearance, under the then East German regime, of the Neuer Johannisfriedhof ("New St. John's Cemetery"), which is what the space used to be, and its thorough reconstruction.
The site of the Friedenspark used to be occupied by the Neuer Johannisfriedhof, which was opened as the second city cemetery of Leipzig in 1846, after it had proved impossible to enlarge the old cemetery, the Alter Johannisfriedhof, any further. The designs for the chapel and mortuary, built between 1881 and 1884, were by Hugo Licht (1841–1923). They were destroyed in World War II. During the time of the National Socialist government the remains of more than a hundred children from the Paediatrics Department of the were buried anonymously in urns in sections V 2, 3 and 5, victims of the then child euthanasia policy.
On 31 December 1950 the Neuer Johannisfriedhof was closed to further burials, but remained accessible to the public up to 31 December 1970. From 1973 to 1975 the cemetery was secularised: vaults were removed, graves cleared and levelled. About 120 monuments and gravestones of civic or art-historical significance were taken to the Alter Johannisfriedhof and kept in the open air. A combination of damage during transit, theft and vandalism meant that by the early 1990s only 58 monuments remained. These were restored, and erected in the south-east of the Alter Johannisfriedhof.
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