AnEhrengrab (English: 'grave of honor') is a distinction granted by certain German, Swiss and Austrian cities to some of their citizens for extraordinary services or achievements in their lifetimes. If there are no descendants or institutions to care for the gravesites, the communities or cities will take responsibility for the graves and for financing their care.
ManyEhrengräber (honor graves) also serve to document cultural history; for example, when a cemetery containing artistically notable graves is closed and the graves are moved at public expense.
The basic details of the awarding, financing and care of honorary graves are similarly handled in all German-speaking countries. Berlin and Vienna maintain the largest number of such sites.
InBerlin about 200 cemeteries contain approximately 740 tombs of honor with about 800Ehrengräber (some tombs honor several members of the same family). Berlin public memorial graves are under the legislation of the Berlin Senate dating to 1952, labeled as "General Instructions for the recognition, transfer and maintenance ..." regarding tombs subject to benefits. The current basis is §12, Paragraph 6 of the "Law on the state-owned and non-state-owned cemeteries in Berlin" (Cemeteries Act) of 1 November 1995.
As such, Berlin provides at public expense honorary graves, available to:
Among those who have such tombs of honor in Berlin areDietrich Bonhoeffer,Bertolt Brecht,Aleksander Brückner,Wilhelm Busch,Theodor Fontane,Valeska Gert,the brothers Grimm,Georg Ludwig Hartig,Heinrich von Kleist,Hildegard Knef,Otto Lilienthal,Herbert Marcuse,Felix Mendelssohn,Marg Moll,Helmut Newton,Ernst Reuter,Joachim Ringelnatz,Heinrich Zille, andArnold Zweig.
From 1951 to 1989, theGerman Democratic Republic used theMemorial to the Socialists (German:Gedenkstätte der Sozialisten) atZentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde as central memorial site for East Germany's Socialists, Communists and anti-fascist fighters. Decisions whether a person should be buried in theMemorial to the Socialists or the adjacentPergolenweg section of the cemetery rested solely with thePolitburo of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, and many honoured this way were also given astate funeral. People buried or commemorated here includeWilhelm Liebknecht,Karl Liebknecht,Rosa Luxemburg,Adolf Hennecke andKlaus Fuchs. Under certain circumstances, relatives of people honoured in theMemorial to the Socialists or thePergolenweg section can still be buried there; one such example isMarkus Wolf (died 2006), whose ashes were placed in the grave of his brotherKonrad Wolf, who had been awarded an honorary grave in thePergolenweg section in 1982.
Graves of honor are calledGewidmete Gräber der Stadt Wien (Dedicated tombs of the City of Vienna). The nameEhrengräber is reserved for tombs in theCentral Cemetery of Vienna. To make the cemetery more attractive, famous citizens such asLudwig van Beethoven andFranz Schubert were exhumed and transferred to the cemetery. Funerary monuments were built for others, such asWolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Hundreds of graves of honor are found in cemeteries in Vienna.
The city ofZurich maintains an anonymous tomb of honor near theNordheim crematorium [de]. It is a common tomb for people who have donated their bodies to the Anatomical Institute of theUniversity of Zurich for the needs of science and wished that their urn would be stored there. Some graves originate from the medical faculties of universities in other cities of Switzerland, Germany and Austria, and the maintenance costs for the graves are generally borne by the responsible institutions.
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