St. Marx Cemetery (Sankt Marxer Friedhof) is a

cemetery A cemetery, burial ground, gravesite, graveyard, or a green space called a memorial park or memorial garden, is a place where the remains of many death, dead people are burial, buried or otherwise entombed. The word ''cemetery'' (from Greek ...

in the Landstraße district of

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

, used from 1784 until 1874. It contains the unmarked grave of the composer

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition and proficiency from an early age ...

History

The cemetery was named after a nearby

almshouse An almshouse (also known as a bede-house, poorhouse, or hospital) is charitable housing provided to people in a particular community, especially during the Middle Ages. They were often built for the poor of a locality, for those who had held ce ...

whose chapel had been consecrated to

St Mark Mark the Evangelist (Koine Greek, Koinē Greek: Μᾶρκος, romanized: ''Mârkos''), also known as John Mark (Koine Greek, Koinē Greek language, Greek: Ἰωάννης Μᾶρκος, Romanization of Greek, romanized: ''Iōánnēs Mârkos;'' ...

. It opened in 1784 following a decree by Emperor Joseph II that forbade further burials in cemeteries within the outer walls of the city of Vienna. He also ordered that bodies should be buried in unmarked graves, without coffins or embalming. This regulation however never came into effect in Vienna, because the government of the city denied its approval because the populace did not want to be reminded of the

mass graves A mass grave is a grave containing multiple human corpses, which may or may Unidentified decedent, not be identified prior to burial. The United Nations has defined a criminal mass grave as a burial site containing three or more victims of exec ...

of plague times. There were no mass graves in late 18th-century Vienna.Michael Lorenz
Mozart and the Myth of Reusable Coffins
Vienna 2013 Thus the common assumption that Mozart's grave was unmarked because he was too poor is false. His burial in 1791 after a funeral in the Stephansdom simply followed the regulations of the day.

Notable interments

It includes the graves of: * Johann Georg Albrechtsberger * Elias Parish Alvars * Josepha Barbara Auernhammer * Count Philipp von Cobenzl *

Anton Diabelli Anton (or Antonio) Diabelli (5 September 17818 April 1858) was an Austrian music publisher, editor and composer. Best known in his time as a publisher, he is most familiar today as the composer of the waltz on which Ludwig van Beethoven wrote ...

* Baron Ernst von Feuchtersleben * Johann Baptist Gänsbacher * Anna Gottlieb *

Josef Madersperger Josef Madersperger (October 6, 1768 in Kufstein – October 2, 1850 in Vienna) was a tailor. He is one of the inventors of the sewing machine. Biography Madersperger was born in 1768 in Kufstein, western Austria. In 1790, he relocated to Vien ...

* Louis Montoyer *

* Franz Pfeiffer * Josef Strauss * Franz Xaver Süssmayr (unmarked) *

Alexander Ypsilantis Alexandros Ypsilantis (12 December 1792 – 31 January 1828) was a Greek nationalist politician who was member of a prominent Phanariot Greeks, Phanariot Greek family, a prince of the Danubian Principalities, a senior officer of the Imperial R ...

Mozart

The most famous person to be buried in the St. Marx Cemetery is

. Later attempts to locate his grave all failed, including a search by his widow, 17 years after Mozart's death, and by Vincent Novello in 1829. In 1855 a gravestone was erected at what was presumed to be the correct spot. Later the stone was transferred to a group of famous musicians' graves at Zentralfriedhof. At St. Marx Cemetery, a worker replaced the gravestone with a memorial tablet, which was again expanded by several contributors. The memorial known today was refurbished by Viennese sculptor Florian Josephu-Drouot in 1950.

After closing

Over the years, the rest of the cemetery decayed. In the 20th century it was restored, put under

historic preservation Historic preservation (US), built heritage preservation or built heritage conservation (UK) is an endeavor that seeks to preserve, conserve and protect buildings, objects, landscapes or other artifacts of historical significance. It is a philos ...

status, and opened to the public in 1937.

References

External links