GERMANY: PFORZHEIM CEMETERY, DOWNTOWN, ENZ RIVER, WALLBERG

 May 23, 2025

When we got up in the morning, we knew we had a big day ahead that involved meeting cousins we didn't know we had because our mother chose to keep their existence a secret from us, if she even knew about them (and we are pretty sure she did). The day would also include a visit to the Pforzheim cemeetery, a trip to one of the archives that our researcher used to uncover some of the information that had been in hiding for 85 years, a visit to the street where our mother and her family lived until 1945, the installation of a Stolperstein in our grandfather's honor, and more.

But since parking is an issue in Pforzheim, and since the cemetery had a big parking lot, that is where we began. We could park our two vans there and walk to our other destinations during the day, then pick up the vans at the end of the day.

A map of the cemetery at the entrance had this information: "Pforzheim's main cemetery is considered one of the most beautiful park cemeteries in southern Germany. Eighty percent of its total area of approximately 33.4 hectares (82.5 acres) is protected as a historical monument. These areas are characterized by stately tree stands and . . . garden design from the imperial era. From 1877 to 1945, the basic strcture of long avenues and numerous neatly trimmed hedges, which still characterize the cemetery today, gradually emerged.The historical fabric is still largely intact."

I love cemeteries, which I've said many times in this blog. Every grave and monument represents a life and a story, and that seems especially apparent in a cemetery as beautiful as the one in Pforzheim. If I understand correctly, plots are leased for a specific period, usually 20 to 30 years, rather than purchased outright. If the lease is not renewed, the remains are moved or cremated and the site is "recycled" for another burial. Beautiful, well-maintained gravesites are a staple of German culture. Visiting the cemetery is almost like strolling through a botanical garden. Each grave is distinct from the others around it and artfully decorated as if it is a separate room. Take a look at these examples:

There was what I think was a columbarium, or place for ashes, where I was especially taken by the Lindt chocolate bunny atop the marker for what is either siblings or a married couple. 

As you would expect, there is a World War I section of the cemetery, accessed by this gravel path.

Evenly spaced headstones stand like sentinels between hedgerows. The soldier's name and hometown are engraved on the front, and his year of death is at the bottom, here obscured by the robust ivy. In this photo I see Hamburg, Berlin, Breslau, and, of course, Pforzheim.

There is a similar area for the soldiers who died in World War II:

So many died in 1945. So pointless.

But the reason we were here was for two other parts of the cemetery. First, we came to see this memorial to the victims of the bombing of Pforzheim on February 23, 1945. I've written more about that event here, but the short version is that 17,600 people, or over 30% of the city's population, were killed, and 83% of the city's buildings were destroyed by a bombing raid that lasted 22 minutes.

Stones engraved with the names of the dead dot the green lawn. Most of the bodies were consumed by the firestorm that resulted from the bombing.

Pforzheimer descendants:

All of the travelers, spouses included:

Just over twenty-four years before, Bob and I and our kids stood in front of that same stone wall and stone cross with my mother (far left, next to our daughter):

Bob and I more or less recreated the photo, but the date of the bombing on the wall of the earlier picture has been expanded to read "The seventeen thousand victims of 23 February 1945." 

The other, even more important (and new since our visit in 2000) item in the cemetery that we came to see was at the other end of this expanse of grave markers. At the back of that lot is a monument installed in 2013 to remember the 232 Pforzheimers who were murdered by the Nazis in euthanasia institutions because they were "unworthy of life, disabled, and unfit for work." Others memorialized here include 43 residents killed in concentration camps or prison and 23 elderly people who did not survive deportation to so-called "wartime old people's homes."  Three plaques that bear the names of these 298 victims are mounted on a layered stone wall. The names are in alphabetical order, and it was easy to find the name of our Opa, Karl Frey, and his age at death, 48.

If you have the patience to use Google Translate to get you through the German documents (or if you speak German), there is a terrific website about this wall of names that can be found here.  The documents on this site are under sections entitled "Names, not Numbers," which I think is the powerful title of this documentation project.

In front of the wall is this metal sculpture with abstract figures standing between horizontal bars. The inscription on the base is "1933-1945 / In memory of the victims of violence and lawlessness."

We walked from the cemetery to the downtown area of Pforzheim--quite a long walk but mostly downhill. All of the downtown area was demolished in the February 1945 bombing, and unlike many other cities destroyed in World War II, Pforzheim leaders made the decision not to rebuild the old city but rather to create a new, more modern downtown area. As a result, it lacks the charm I associate with many of Germany's cities.

However, it has something the others don't have: a statue of an elderly man by the German artist Karl-Henning Seemann. On the left is Bob posing with it in December 2000, and on the right is Bob in May 2025.  A plaque on the ground in front of it states: "Here I stand, the fat one. Thanks to the many donations from my friends in Pforzheim and the generous gift of Mr. Fred Eckert, Pforzheim Cultural Council."

I've entitled this "The Obnoxious One Meets the Fat One."

And this one is "Young Ladies."

Downtown Pforzheim also has a Middle Eastern bakery with very good baklava. I'm sure this didn't exist pre-1945.

It provided the perfect mid-morning snack.

We had some important events that happened in the middle of the day, but I am going to cover them in the next post. For now I will move on to the late afternoon when we visited what is a sacred site in our family lore--the stairs that my grandmother and uncle raced down during the 23 Februrary 1945 fire-bombing to reach the lifesaving water and oxygen provided by the Enz River. The two pictures below are of the same concrete stairway, the one on the left taken on this trip in May 2025 and the one on the right taken during the visit with my mother in December 2000. These stairs lead from the street down to the river and were blocked by a locked gate. 

We could see the river through the new tree growth, tantalizingly close. Well, David and Stephen were never ones to let a locked gate stop them. Over the top and down the stairs they went.

They took some time at the river's edge to ponder on the events that happened just over 80 years ago.

From there it was a short walk to what we think was the area where Oma, who joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1928, took the family to church. The congregation met in rented space in a business somewhere close to the white building on the left below. 

A little further on our walk we noticed this man standing unmoving and staring into the depths of the river. Upon closer examination, we realized he was a statue.

After we picked up our car from the cemetery parking lot (a longer walk because it was all uphill), we drove to Wallberg, aka Monte Scherbelino (Rubble Hill). Wallberg was always a hill, and before the war it was 378 meters (1240 feet) tall. After the bombing of Pforzheim on February 23, 1945, the decimated city was left with massive amounts of rubble (83% of the city's structures) that had to be moved in order for rebuilding to begin, so it was moved to an unused quarry on the northwest side of Wallberg. After 1,650,000 cubic meters of rubble was hauled up the slopes in 1952, the new elevation was 417.5 meters (1370 feet). That additional 130 feet is about the height of a 10- to 13-story building. Apparently, artificial mountains like this that have been formed from the debris of war can be found in nearly every major German city.

Photo from here

For years Wallberg was just a large hill at one end of the city, but in 1989 a memorial plaque was placed on its top. I believe this is the memorial plaque. The translation by Google is on the right.

In 2005-2006 the top of Wallberg was turned into a bombing memorial. At that time it was crowned with five stainless steel three-sided stelae of varying heights. Each depicts a scene from the old, the destroyed, and the rebuilt city.

I was drawn to the scenes of destruction, but having the before and after pictures added important context. Here are two grainy photos from before the war:

Here are a few of the scenes of destruction. (The English captions are superimposed on the photo by Google Translate.)

Here is an example of one of the "Rebuilt Pforzheim" photos:

Even before the hill elevation was raised by 10-13 stories, it was a popular viewpoint. 

I guess if there is one moral to the story here, it is that something beautiful can almost always be made out of something horrible. I think Germany has demonstrated that.