“In 1819, by a resolution of the Klaipėda City Magistrate, it was decided to establish a new cemetery belonging to the municipality in the outskirts of Klaipėda, on the eastern side of the New Town – in Rosgarten, where pastures and meadows had been used by the townspeople for a long time. <…> On 7 January 1820, the New Town cemetery was consecrated by the reformer preacher August Eduard Lambert. <…> The cemetery was intended for the burial of all townspeople.” (Zita Genienė, Art. Klaipėda Cemetery, Sculpture Park and the Challenges of its Identities, 2012, Klaipėda)

In the 1762 city plan, we find a small cemetery marked near Liepų and Trilapio Streets. As mentioned in sources, Russian soldiers were buried here during the Seven Years’ War. In 1803, a Russian cemetery was mentioned. During the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), not only Russian soldiers were buried, but also German prisoners of war, who together with the deserters were kept in the castle. They were dying of typhus by the hundreds and in carts were taken away to the outskirts of town and buried there.

It can be assumed that these soldiers’ burials gave rise to the city’s later cemetery. The city’s largest cemetery of 1796-1820 was located in Krūmamiestis, in what is now Naujojo Sodo Street (nowadays, this area includes the Klaipėda Queen Louise Youth Centre, and most of the square in front of the Simon Dach School.). In 1820, the first city garden was established on this site, and the cemetery was moved to Liepų and Trilapio Streets. The site of the new cemetery was damp and ditches had to be dug around it.

Until 1820, the care and management of the city cemetery was the responsibility of the churches. When the new cemetery was established, its maintenance was handed over to the city magistrate, who appointed a special cemetery keeper called the cemetery inspector.

After the cemetery was opened, the city authorities addressed the residents, encouraging them to plant lavenders, perennial daisies and boxwoods there. The magistrate has banned smoking and dog walking in the cemetery. The cemetery was originally planted with a hedge, but later it was fenced with a high board fence.

Already in 1856, it was mentioned that the plot was almost fully occupied. The government allowed the old burial site to be used a second time, using the soil that had been brought by ship to Klaipėda as ballast. As the old cemetery paths remained as they were, the edges of the blocks had to be reinforced with retaining walls and, in some places, steps had to be built.

People of different faiths were buried in the city cemetery: Lutherans, Catholics, Anglicans and people of other faiths who did not have their own cemetery. In the middle of the 19th century, the merchant Julius Ludwig Wiener was exceptionally buried here, although the Jews had their own cemetery (today’s Žiedų lane).

After the Franco-Prussian War ended in 1871, the cemetery was used for the burial of French prisoners who had dug the Wilhelm Canal.

At the end of the 19th century, the cemetery was enlarged. The plot, which had increased by almost one third, became irregular and L-shaped.

Thanks to the efforts of the citizens, by the end of the nineteenth century, this city cemetery had become “with an air of calmness, poetic, shady place, favoured by nightingales, cuckoos and other songbirds in spring. It was the pride of Klaipėda, which could be the envy of much larger cities”, wrote J. Zembrickis.

The newspaper “Vakarai” (1 November 1937) writes that the cemetery keeper Hein buried 11,519 people in the cemetery between 15 November 1851 and his death on 1 April 1885. Previous cemetery books were burnt in a city’s big fire in 1954. After Hein’s death, Tiessen became cemetery inspector, and by 1 April 1919, had buried 11,412 people. And from 1919 to 1 November 1937, Inspector P. Tillott buried 5999 people. Thus, 28 930 people were buried in Klaipėda’s city cemetery over 86 years (1851-1937).

In 1937, in addition to the city cemetery, there were two other cemeteries in Vitė and Smeltė, which were tended by the inspector of the city cemetery. The inspectors used to live near the cemetery, in a small one-storey brick house (on this site now stands a building belonging to the Klaipėda City Municipality, which housed the Chess Club during the Soviet era, since 1996 there was a cozy café-winery “Metų laikai”, in 2007 the building was destroyed by a fire, and in 2012 Klaipėda Cultural Centre of National Minorities was opened there).

In 1937, the magistrate allocated an annual sum of Lt 60 000 for cemetery maintenance. The cemetery was maintained by 7 workers hired by the magistrate and in addition 6 women tended the graves on their own.

Thick brown paper cemetery books recorded the date of burial, the cemetery block rows and place numbers, the name and occupation of the deceased.

In 1945, Klaipėda was occupied by the Soviet army.

Rūta Paplauskienė, who was 15 years old in 1945, recalled the following image shortly after the war: “The city cemetery looked terrible: ravaged chapels, a skeleton leaning against the brick walls, a broom stuck in its hand”.

Later, until the establishment of the Sculpture Park in 1977, the city cemetery caused controversial feelings. The old tombstones with German inscriptions used to be overturned and the names of the recently buried people were written on them, usually in Russian. Until the cemetery’s closure, burials were made along Trilapio Street, which is why the most visited graves remain there.

The pre-war order, harmony and peace of the cemetery have vanished.

The old chapels were blown up in 1947, and after 1977 only the monument to the 1923 rebels survived. Historian Vygantas Vareikis believes that it was saved by the fact that the 1923 Lithuanian revolt was against the Germans, and after the war the monument was included in the list of protected monuments of republican significance.

The writer Romualdas Lankauskas, whose father is buried in the city cemetery, ironically called the establishment of the Sculpture Park on the territory of the cemetery “a cultural event of extraordinary significance in the Brezhnev era”. In response to the writer’s call to intervene and stop the destruction of the cemetery, officials replied: “This cemetery is not on the list of cultural monuments of the Lithuanian SSR” (J. Glemža, Deputy Minister of Culture, 17 May 1982).

The destruction of the historic cemetery on the order of authorities started already in 1958 while the main destruction work took place in 1975. The Communist Party was in charge at the time, and to them the heritage of East Prussia was a witness to a foreign ideology. After the war, the cemetery grounds had already become a place of terrible disorder: empty vodka bottles and rubbish were scattered about, Russian women came there to sunbathe, children played among the monuments, while men drank alcohol. The establishment of the Sculpture Park on the city’s old cemetery has brought order.

Approximately 40 000 people are buried in the city’s old cemetery. The city cemetery registration books from the German period have been lost. In the burial registration book from 1948-1959, currently kept in the funds of the History Museum of Lithuania Minor, the record of the last burial was made on 24 January 1959, although, according to the testimony of Olga Irena Vičiulytė-Gedgaudienė (born in 1940 in Klaipėda), the last burial was made even later, in 1964 – her father-in-law, Bubulas Kazimieras, was buried in front of the grave of the 1923 rebels.

In 2016, the Heritage Protection Department of Klaipėda City Municipality launched a contest to prepare a technical project for the improvement of the Sculpture Park. The project was won by architect Margarita Ramanauskienė. She was assisted by designer Kęstutis Mickevičius and landscape architect Rita Goliakovienė. The project is expected to be completed by 2023, when Lithuania will celebrate the centenary of the joining of the Klaipėda region.