St. Barbara-Friedhof, Linz-Lustenau

The St Barbara Cemetery stands south of Linz’s Westbahn railway line in the Bulgariplatz district. It covers about twelve hectares and holds roughly twenty thousand graves, with nearly 180 000 burials since 1860. The Dinghoferstraße divides the site into two unequal parts, one of which contains a separate Jewish section. The cemetery accepts people of all faiths or none and has done so for many decades. It is run by the St Barbara Cemetery Foundation under the city’s parish priest. The cemetery’s origins go back to a parish graveyard laid out around the city church in about 1286. In 1531 it moved to a new site near the junction of Landstraße and Bethlehemstraße. By the late 16th century it had been shifted again, this time close to today’s Friedensplatz. A chapel dedicated to Saint Barbara was built in 1658 and gave the place its name. Emperor Joseph II’s decree of 1786 ordered city graveyards to move outside the walls, so the present grounds were purchased as a replacement. During the Nazi era many victims of the Niedernhart euthanasia programme were buried here. Visitors enter along Friedhofstraße where a 1985 drawing by Hans Hoffmann-Ybbs marks the gate. The cemetery’s paths wind past rows of headstones, including graves of notable figures such as the writer Adalbert Stifter and architect Mauriz Balzarek. A communal grave holds eight policemen murdered in 1945. The Jewish section preserves its own row of graves, while the Catholic part contains monuments from several centuries. The whole site offers a quiet space for reflection beside a busy urban road.