St. Marx Cemetery

Geschichte

St. Marx Cemetery (Sankt Marxer Friedhof) is a cemetery in the Landstraße district of Vienna, used from 1784 until 1874. It contains the unmarked burial of the famous composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.HistoryThe cemetery was named after a nearby almshouse whose chapel had been consecrated to St Mark. 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 went into effect in Vienna, because the government of the city denied its approval owing to the fact that the populace did not want to be reminded of the mass graves of plague times. There were no mass graves in late 18th-century Vienna.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 intermentsIt includes the graves of Anna Gottlieb Johann Georg Albrechtsberger Josef Strauss Anton Diabelli Count Philipp von Cobenzl Alexander Ypsilanti Franz Pfeiffer Franz Xaver Süssmayr (unmarked) Baron Ernst von Feuchtersleben Louis Montoyer Josef Madersperger Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Elias Parish AlvarsJohann Baptist Gänsbacher