The municipal cemetery of the Croatian capital Zagreb is located north of the city center on the "Aleja Hermanna Bollea" in the district of Mirogoj on a foothill of Zagreb's local mountain Medvednica. On May 11, 1996, a cemetery for German soldiers was inaugurated here as a supplementary cemetery. More than 4,000 soldiers of the German Wehrmacht who lost their lives in the Second World War are buried here.
Cemetery description
Around 2,000 German soldiers were buried in the Mirogoj cemetery in Zagreb during the Second World War. In agreement with the city administration, the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e. V. (German War Graves Commission) had the cemetery area restored in 1994 and 1995 and provided with groups of symbolic crosses. Metal plaques were inscribed with the names of all the dead registered for the Mirogoj municipal cemetery. The newly designed cemetery was opened on May 11, 1996. More than 4,000 German war dead are now buried there. The multi-denominational Mirogoj cemetery covers an area of almost 72.4 hectares. This makes it the largest cemetery in Croatia. The park-like grounds are not only a special sight in Zagreb, but are also one of the most beautiful cemeteries in Europe. There are a number of memorials in the cemetery, including for the victims of the First World War and in particular for those who died in the so-called Yugoslavian succession wars between 1991 and 2001. Many well-known Croatian personalities have also been laid to rest there.
History
The Mirogoj cemetery was established in 1876 on land belonging to the linguist Ljudevit Gaj. Herman Bollé, one of Croatia's most important architects at the time, designed the main buildings. Construction of the arcades, the domes and the church in the entrance portal began in 1879 and was not completed until 1929.
On behalf of the German government, the Volksbund looks after three war cemeteries from the Second World War in Croatia, where 4,728 dead are buried. This work is based on the War Graves Agreement concluded between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Republic of Croatia on December 9, 1996. Originally, the graves of the dead of the Second World War were spread over more than 900 municipalities. Maintaining these many graves would have required too much effort in the long term. For this reason, the Volksbund's reburial service transferred the war dead to central cemeteries.
In the fall of 1994, the restoration of two sites in Zagreb - Mirogoj and Gornje Vrapèe cemeteries - began. this was followed in 1997 by the renovation of a German cemetery at the municipal cemetery in Split, which was completed the following year. Finally, in 2012, a repaired cemetery was inaugurated at the cemetery in the municipality of Sisak, where German war dead from the Second World War are also buried.
Special feature
There are graves of members of various religions in the Mirogoj cemetery. People of Jewish, Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim faiths are buried there. In keeping with the character of the cemetery as a park, works by many famous artists have been placed there. Franjo Tuðman, the first freely elected president of Croatia after its separation from the Yugoslav federation, is one of the famous people buried in the cemetery.
