Georg Christian Oswald Friedrich Görwitz

 * 1818
Buried on 22.10.1853

Beautiful, rococo gravestone, consisting of two parts; upper and lower part are separated from each other by a slightly protruding ledge and sculptured on the sides (right, left and above); the front is richly decorated, with cartouche, rocaille work, spirals and flowers.

Georg Christian was the first son of the Eisenach Amtsaktuars Georg Justin Friedrich Görwitz, lawyer in Weida and according to the death book married, he lived in Camsdorf/Wenigenjena.
He died at the age of 35 and was buried at the Johannisfriedhof on 22.10.1853. For this purpose the body had to be brought here over the Camsdorf bridge.

His brother was married in the city church of Jena. The entry in the church register reads:
"Mr. Georg Gustav Adalbert Leonhard Görwitz, Oberconsistorial Archiv Registrator at Eisenach, formerly Mr. Georg Justin Friedrich Görwitzes Amtsactuars at Kaltennordheim nachgel. ehel. 2ter son and virgin Dorothea Rosalie Caroline, née Eydam allhier, Mr. Gottlieb Bernhard Theodor Eydams, citizen and master glazier, as well as former God's box administrator all here only daughter 2nd marriage".
© Ch.Apfel

 

Gravesite of the Koch family

All members of the Koch family were actively involved in the economic and political life of the city of Jena for generations. The family, formerly based in Weimar, moved to Jena in 1726.

Johann Heinrich Koch (1723-1775), left grave plate, was Jena city captain.
 The right grave plate belongs to Anton Friedrich Wilhelm Koch (1755-1820), the son of Johann Heinrich Koch. Already at the age of 13 he had to start a merchant apprenticeship in Naumburg to contribute to the family's living. After the death of his mother, he now also had to support his eleven-year-old sister. He tried it as a merchant, since he had inherited a house at the market (east of the sun). Difficulties and quarrels with the Jena merchant guild led to the sale of the house and also the mother's estate was sold in order to survive together with the sister.

Anton Koch, however, managed to quickly turn his finally established business into a profitable one.

In the "Kochschen Garten", located on today's Paradiesstr., he maintained an excursion destination and a meeting place for Jena students. In 1789 he received the title "Hoffaktor" from the duke and was elected as a councilor in 1810.

His first wife died early, from his second marriage with Maria Sophia Köberlein, the daughter of the head master of the white bakery in Jena, he had six sons and one daughter.

Goethe and Duke Carl August are said to have been his guests.

Theodor Wilhelm Friedrich Koch (1786-1863) was a very successful merchant successor of his father Anton Friedrich Koch. Married in two marriages, he had four daughters and six sons.
The eldest son - from the first marriage - took over the business and expanded the range of goods.
The son of Theodor Wilhelm Koch, Hermann Koch (1814-1902) took over the business in 1840.
In 1870, he donated 10,000 thalers to the town church, which resulted in extensive restoration, although valuable old works of art were destroyed.
In 1876, Hermann Koch sold the "Kochsche Berg" in the north of the city, where the present North Cemetery was established in 1884. His sons Wilhelm Koch (1850-1903) and Rudolf Koch (1854-1906) learned banking and took over the family business. Their gravesites are not known.

Dr. Herbert Koch (1886-1982), a son of Wilhelm Koch, left the greatest lasting mark in Jena alongside his grandfather Hermann. After his school years, he studied in Munich, Leipzig, Berlin and Jena and received his doctorate in 1909.
He had been married since 1910 to Charlotte Czapski, the eldest daughter of Ernst Abbe's successor Dr. Siegfried Czapski. After stays in Argentina and Brazil, he returned to Jena with his family (the couple had three sons) and became a teacher at the Jena Lyceum.

In his spare time, he devoted himself to intensive research on the history of the city and the region, as well as on the genealogy of his family.

After the Nazi seizure of power, the family's life became difficult, as Charlotte Czapski was half Jewish and although Herbert Koch tried to save his family through well-dosed opportunistic actions and statements. He was nevertheless interned in a labor camp in Weißenfels. The son Gerhard could not withstand the pressure on the family and took his own life in 1937. He is the last family member to be buried here in the family grave.

After the war, Dr. Herbert Koch took over the management of the cultural office, the city archive, the city museum and the entire public education. In 1946 he stood as a candidate in the municipal elections. There his - in retrospect understandable - opportunistic attitude during the Nazi period became his undoing and his political engagement came to an end.

In 1963, Dr. Herbert Koch moved to Hamburg. He left his huge collection of documents to the City Archives, which has lasting value, since many originals were lost during the war.

Dr. Herbert Koch passed away on November 18, 1982. He is buried in the North Cemetery, and a memorial plaque in the Johannis Cemetery commemorates him, his wife and son Gerhard.
© Dr. P. Große, gekürzt Ch. Apfel

 

Johann David Rostimpfel (1744 – 1816)

A hatter in the eternal east

If one walks along the northern wall of the oldest cemetery area, a tombstone catches the eye, which clearly towers above the neighboring tomb complexes and is striking in its design. The triangular pediment of the tombstone shows a globe flanked by two sphinxes, in between angles and compasses. Above the angel of death with lowered torch of life seven stars can be seen. A symbolism typical for the high degrees of Freemasonry.
At the foot of the imposing tomb rest the married couple Johann David Rostimpfel and Eva Maria Dorothea née Grellmann. The marriage, contracted on January 14, 1787, in the Jena City Church, produced a total of 13 children, eight of whom reached adulthood.
Eva Maria Dorothea Rostimpfel was born in Jena on November 21, 1764, the daughter of Georg Martin Grellmann, a white baker, and Eva Magdalena Linde. She died of debilitation on October 28, 1830, at the age of 65, leaving behind eight children. She had outlived her husband by 14 years.
Johann David Rostimpfel saw the light of day on January 8, 1744 in Pößneck. His parents were Christian Georg Roßtümpfel and Catharina Margaretha Vogt. As the sixth-born child, he later followed in the footsteps of his paternal ancestors. Old father Hanß Roßtümpfel came from Langenschade to Pößneck in the times of the Thirty Years' War and founded a branch of the family there, many of whose male descendants worked as hatters for generations.
Johann David became a resident of Jena in 1783 at the latest. In January of that year, he was granted a concession to establish a hat factory. Just three months later, he was appointed Saxony-Weimar court hat manufacturer. As such he successfully gained a foothold in the city on the Saale, for in the following decades the Rostimpfel hat factory was mentioned time and again. In 1798, the privileged hat manufacturer was named in a trade and factory address book of Germany and related provinces as one of 14 Jena entrepreneurs who were otherwise predominantly active in the book and publishing business.
The factory's production capacity does not seem to have met the demand for Rostimpel's hats for long. In 1791, the court hat maker asked the mayor and council of the city for the transfer of part of the Zwinger below the Pulverturm in order to expand his factory property.
In 1810 Johann David Rostimpfel handed over the business to his sons David Leonhardt, Carl Friedrich, Adolph and Ferdinand, who from then on traded as the Rostimpfel brothers and were among the most successful entrepreneurs in the city.
On March 22, 1816, Johann David Rostimpfel died in Jena, where he was buried three days later in the Johannis Cemetery. He had, as it is said in the symbolic language of the Freemasons, entered the eternal East. His work in this secretive alliance is one of the mysteries, the solution of which has been kept from us until now.
© D. Pflechter

 

Carl Theil (1886-1945)

Pedagogue - Socialist - University Trustee

 

Carl August Theil was born in Gdansk on December 17, 1886, the son of the Royal Prussian music director Carl Christian Hugo Theil (1853-1909) and his wife Natalie (1866-1946). After attending school and obtaining his school-leaving certificate, he studied shipbuilding at the Technical University of Gdansk in 1904/06 and then classical antiquity, history, philosophy and education at the universities of Berlin, Munich and Jena until 1912.

He received his doctorate in 1912/13 in Jena, and in 1919 he passed the Gymnasium state examination in Latin, Greek, history and philosophical propaedeutics.

In 1912 he married Elisabeth Eigenbrodt, the adopted daughter of the Jena Swedish editor Wolrad and his Swedish-born wife Helfried, née Freiin Rappe. The marriage produced five children, two daughters and three sons.

From 1912 to 1914 Carl Theil worked as a teacher at the Odenwald School. For Theil, the two years at the Odenwald School, founded in 1910 by the reform pedagogue Paul Geheeb (1870-1961) according to the principles of the Landeserziehungsheim movement, must have been profoundly formative.

Carl Theil was drafted into the military in 1914. Until the end of the war, he was deployed as a naval officer, mainly on minesweepers in the Black Sea. Theil returned from military service as a convinced pacifist and found a political home in Social Democracy, the founding and supporting party of Weimar democracy, which also provided political support for the school and education movement. From 1919 to 1920 he found a new job in Jena at the newly founded "Volkshoch-schule Thüringen". Through this activity he became acquainted with Martin Buber (1878-1965), with whom he was on friendly terms.

 

In 1920 Theil moved to the school in the garden city of Hellerau near Dresden, which he built up along the lines of the Odenwald School. Due to financial difficulties at the school and internal conflicts within the teaching staff, Theil resigned as principal in April 1922. Other members of the school board also left the school, which was dissolved in 1925.

From October 1922, Theil was a Studienrat at the new Aufbauschule in Weimar, and from April 1923 he was appointed as Studien- und Gymnasialdirektor at the Wilhelm-Ernst-Gymnasium in Weimar. Here, too, he had problems, the "liberal part" on the one hand, and the German-national, mostly still monarchist-minded teachers and parents on the other.

 

In January 1924, when the socialist state government was replaced by völkisch-national-socialist state parliamentary factions and the reforms introduced were revised, the teachers' college demanded Theil's immediate removal from office. Theil was removed as principal and transferred to Jena as a teacher.

 

There, Theil taught Greek, Latin, German, history, and gymnastics at the Carl Alexander Gymnasium in Jena in 1924-33.

He sent his children to the university school where Peter Petersen developed the "Jenaplan" pedagogy.

In June 1933, Theil was dismissed from the Thuringian civil service on the basis of the "Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service". Only the mothers' house and property secured the family's economic existence.

From 1941 to 1944 Theil was given the opportunity to work as a Greek and Latin teacher at the private school in Salem. In 1944, an SS-Obersturmführer became provisional principal and Theil, ill due to strokes of fate - two of his sons had been killed in action - returned to Jena. Officially, he retired from teaching in 1945. In March 1945, the third son was killed.  Theil was now active in the ministry.

In July 1945 he took over the office of university curator at the University of Jena until his death in August 1945.

 © J. John, gekürzt: Ch.Apfel

Charlotte Johannetta Kleyen (1719–1724)

* 27.04.1719 in Creyenberg

† 03.04.1724 in Jena

 

Mr. Joh. Georg Kleyens, princely Saxon. Eisenacher tax Secretarii allhier only daughter Charlotte Johanetta

 

The Amt Krayenberg (Creyenberg), since 1703 called Amt Tiefenort, was a territorial administrative unit of the Ernestine Duchies. It belonged to the Duchy of Saxony-Eisenach from 1672 and to the Duchy of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach from 1741, which was elevated to a Grand Duchy in 1815.

Until the administrative and territorial reform of the Grand Duchy of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach in 1850 and the associated dissolution, it formed the spatial reference point as an office for the collection of sovereign duties and frond services, for police, jurisdiction and army succession.

 

The tomb inscription:

Above:

God judges only the course in this temporality, but fortz blessedly to free eternity.

in the middle:

Ehren - Gedächtnüß der wohlseeligen Jungfr. Charlotten Johannetten, eine einzige in voller Hoffnung gestandenen Tochter, des S. T. Herrn Johann Georg Kleyen, Fürstl. Sächßl. Eisenachl. Steüer Secre tarii allhier to Jena.  She was born in the Fürstl. Amte Creyenberg d. 27. April 1719. died here in Jena d. 3 April. 1724 gestifftet of sadly bereaved parents.

below:

Barely had my arrival here happened a few days ago, so I was hurriedly told to go away the death selenium.

© Ch. Apfel

Nicolai Brandt (1638-1720)

* 10.08.1638 in Sonderburg in Holstein

† 05.07.1720 in Jena

 

Nicolai Brandt worked under Duke Bernhardt (1638-1678) as court and pleasure gardener and transformed part of the botanical garden into a pleasure garden;

Rococo tomb framed with acanthus leaves;

The motto in the upper inscription field reads:

In faith stand firm

In hope seek refreshment,

So bring patience in love

A blessed refreshment

In the larger lower title block:

Before the corner

of the Weyl. Well honored

eighth and art well experienced

Mr. Nikolai Brandt

Princely Saxon. Iron. Jena court and pleasure gardener

born at Sonderburg in Holstein año 1638

the 10th of Aug. His parents true Mr. Johann Brandt

merchant in Sonderburg and Anna

Brandtin bored Stolzenbergerin from the Lübeckl. bürtig.

married año 1671 den

10. feb. with the former Jgfr. Anna Maria

Tailoress born ao.1653 d. 6. novem.

at Eisenach, died the 21. Junei 1721

with whom he almost 50 years a happy marriage led and

led and 6 children gezeuget neml. 2. son

u. 4. daughters. Is with hochgedachter

princely. 50 years in faithful service to the

and finally died in JESV the 5th of July 1720.

died at the age of 82 years from 1. mo. v. 4 days.

in honor of your beloved father

of his bereaved

4 children living afterwards

donated.

© Ch. Apfel

Christian Lorenz Moritz Timler (1763–1826)

Court master mason

Born in Jena on March 6, 1763, he was the son of Johann Christoph Timler, a master mason, and was married to Rosina Maria, née Hänsgen, daughter of Johann Christoph Hänsgen, a local sheriff and tax collector from Hohlstedt. Christian Lorenz Moritz Timler was the great uncle of the later Jena architect Carl Christina Ludwig Timler (1836-1905).
He lived in his father's house Kollegiengasse / Brüdergäßchen, later in Timler's house built by himself on the east side of Eichplatz.
Christian Lorenz Moritz Timler worked as a master mason with Goethe and in February 1807 was a sworn assessor and was commissioned by Goethe to assess the damage to the houses burned down as a result of the battle of 1806 in Johannisstraße and Eichplatz. He also received the contract for reconstruction.
Christian Lorenz Moritz Timler was a council member, district head, head master mason, since 1812 master court mason; police inspector for the market district;
He was the builder of the Napoleon Temple on the battlefield of 1806
and convinced the Grand Duke Carl August of the demolition of the city wall, which began in 1819 with the demolition of the Löbder Gate; a drawing by Goethe bears witness to this.
The renovation of the Anatomy and the University Library; the new construction of the Inspector's House in the Botanical Garden for Duke Carl August is his work.
He died on June 24, 1826 in Jena.
The gravestone in the upper field reads:
The Hofmauerer CLM Timlersche Erbbegräbniss.
Underneath: Christian Lorenz Moritz Timler born March 6, 1763 died June 24, 1826.
A noble man, a true citizen, restless for the good of his hometown, ready for all in happiness and helpful in need, worthy of the memory of good people.
© Ch. Apfel

 

Dr. Otto Eppenstein (1876–1942)

 

Meritorious scientist and committed citizen of Jena

 

Otto Eppenstein came from a Jewish family and was born in Breslau on October 10, 1876, the eldest son of the merchant Richard Eppenstein (1848-1909) and his wife Marie née Silbergleit (1856-1931).

After graduating from high school, he studied physics, mathematics and philosophy in Heidelberg, Breslau, Vienna and Jena and received his doctorate in 1900 in Jena.

In his doctoral thesis, he names Ernst Abbe (1850-1905), Felix Auerbach (1856-1933), Noberl Prize winner Rudolf eucken (1846-1926) and Rudolf Straubel (1864-1943) as his teachers.

In 1901, the Carl Zeiss Foundation employed him in the station for earthquake research established within the University Observatory.

In 1907, he joined the Zeisswerk, where he was immediately put in charge of the scientific department for distance measurement. Between 1907 and 1942, he filed 63 patents in this field.

In 1918, Eppenstein took over the establishment of the department of production metrology and achieved worldwide renown in this field as well.

Outside of Zeiss, Eppenstein was involved in art, culture and education in Jena.

In 1911, Eppenstein married Ellen, née Hoffmeyer from Denmark. This marriage produced three daughters and a son. The children were all baptized in the Schiller Church and Eppenstein also converted to the Evangelical Lutheran faith out of conviction in 1924.

In 1928 the marriage was divorced and the mother went to Denmark with the son, the daughters stayed with the father.

In 1932 he married Gertrud Petersen, née Zoder (1892-1957). Shortly after Hitler's seizure of power, he sent the daughters to their mother in Denmark to give them an honorable life.

His life was now constantly in danger, but the Zeiss management managed to avert the very worst from Eppenstein.

Deportation and transport due to incapacitation were avoided by the efforts of the family doctor; Eppenstein had previously had a serious intestinal operation.

On October 8, Otto Eppenstein died of cancer. His urn was buried secretly in Stadtroda and reburied in the Johannis cemetery after the war.

© L. Grolle, gekürzt Ch. Apfel

Hereditary burial Kürbitz

Mill owners

 

Franz Robert Kürbitz, born on October 6, 1834 in Neidschütz, died on September 14, 1885 in Jena, was the son of the willow and castle mill owner Friedrich Wilhelm August Kürbitz. He was married to Anna Caroline, née Burckhardt (1851-1881), the daughter of the master tanner Johann Friedrich Ludwig Burkhardt and Aurelia Friedericke Louise, née Tretber from Maua.

The son, Karl Rudolph Kürbitz (1873-1905), married Anna Hedwig Marie, née Günther (born 1873), the daughter of the market mill owner Gottlieb Heinrich Oskar Günther and Louisa Amalie Bertha, née Raabe.

Together with his brother, merchant Otto Ernst Hermann Kürbitz (1870-1942), he owned the lawn mill.

The mill owner Franz Robert Kürbitz bought the family's hereditary burial ground in 1879.

In 1879 the hereditary burial ground was located "at the eastern and northern wall of the old lower cemetery". The bones of this hereditary burial ground, like other burial grounds, were moved to the "Old Churchyard" - to the present burial ground - during the road construction that took place in 1938 - today, Straße des 17. Juni (Street of June 17). Unfortunately, the pedestal of the baroque monument (around 1700) was lost.

© Ch. Apfel

Johann Traugott Leberecht Danz

* 31.05.1769 in Weimar

† 15.05.1851 in Jena

Theologian

Johann Traugott Leberecht Danz was the son of the Weimar high school teacher Johann Heinrich Danz (1733-1821) and his wife Sophia Wilhelmina Trautermann (1733-1812).

He was encouraged by Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803); through his influence he studied theology in Jena with Griesbach, among others, continuing his studies also in Göttingen; after graduation he received a position as a teacher at the Weimar Gymnasium and since 1795 at the Landesschullehrerseminar;

In 1798, through Herder's mediation, he became rector of the Jena city school; in the same year he earned a master's degree in philosophy and, from 1804, was a private lecturer at the philosophy faculty. In 1809 he resigned as rector of the city school and became a deacon at the city church of St. Michael in Jena. Since the position was poorly paid, he petitioned the Duke for financial support, which was granted by allowing him to serve as a.o. Prof. of Theol. From 1810 to 1827, he became a full professor of theology in Jena, retiring in 1837. He was an outstanding scholar with knowledge in eight disciplines.

The first summary report on the battle of 1806 at Jena: "Views of the City of Jena in the October Days of 1806" was written by him.

He was married to Friedericke Charlotte, née Schultze.

 

His son, Heinrich August Emil (Aemilius) Danz, born in Jena on December 11, 1806, attended high school in Weimar and studied law in Jena and Berlin. In 1831 he received his doctorate in law in Jena in 1834 and was appointed professor of law. In 1861 he became a full professor at the Jena Law Faculty. He wrote valuable writings on Roman legal history