One ground, three denominations
Nineteenth-century Łódź was a city of arrivals: Polish weavers, German master craftsmen from Saxony and Silesia, Jewish merchants, Russian officials. The cemetery opened in 1855 where Ogrodowa meets Srebrzyńska reproduced that arrangement literally — three separate Christian burial grounds on one site, each with its own gate, its own grid of plots and its own chapel.
The proportions tell the story. The Catholic section covers about eleven hectares, the Lutheran one nine, and the Orthodox one barely a single hectare, some twenty-one hectares in all. Work went on for several years into the late 1850s, and this was never meant to be a parish graveyard: it was the burial ground of a city that had gone from weaving village to industrial giant within one lifetime.
Walking it is really three walks. On one side of a wall stand the stone crosses and family vaults of Polish townspeople; on the other, the heavy and often German-inscribed slabs of the mill-owning dynasties; and in the smallest plot, Cyrillic lettering above the graves of tsarist clerks and soldiers who never went home.
The Scheibler chapel and a competition that took three years
Karol Scheibler, the greatest of the Łódź cotton magnates, died in 1881. His widow Anna née Werner wanted a mausoleum to match the fortune, so the city architect Hilary Majewski announced a competition in June 1883 — the first open architectural competition in the history of Łódź. The jury picked a design by Jan Hinz of Warsaw out of eleven entries, and the family turned it down.
A second competition followed that December. Sixteen designs with thirteen models went on show in Warsaw in March 1884; no first prize was awarded and the second went to Piotr Brukalski and Mikołaj Tołwiński. That did not satisfy the client either. In 1885 she commissioned the Warsaw architect Edward Lilpop directly, and he brought in Józef Pius Dziekoński.
The building went up between 1885 and 1888. Its Gothic Revival draws on French and German models, with clear nods to St Stephen's in Vienna and the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris; Warsaw papers at the time called it the costliest monument in the country. It was consecrated on 1 September 1888, and the crypt received Scheibler himself along with his two sons who had died young, Leopold and Feliks. Later burials included his son Karol Scheibler II and his widow.
Half a century of neglect
After 1945 the Lutheran section was effectively abandoned. A tiny congregation could not maintain twenty hectares, and the authorities saw no reason to protect German surnames carved in stone. The chapel's crypt was broken into and the coffins destroyed; pinnacles, finials and the metal angels designed by Andrzej Pruszyński came off the elevation one by one over the decades.
Serious rescue work began only in the late 1970s. A detailed photogrammetric survey of the chapel was made in 1978 under the engineer Jacek Tyrowicz, the windows were bricked up and the ground fenced. The real turning point came in 1991, when the Lutheran parish replaced the roof and saved the vaults beneath it.
What to look for
- The Scheibler chapel — Gothic Revival, in the Lutheran section; the most important structure on the site
- The Heinzl chapel — a neo-Renaissance mausoleum of 1899–1904 by the Berlin architect Franz Schwechten, dominating the Catholic section; Juliusz Heinzel was the first laid to rest in it
- Vaults of the Grohman, Geyer, Kunitzer and Kindermann families — the same names you will read on mill facades across the city centre
- The Gojżewski mausoleum — in the small Orthodox plot, among the graves of tsarist officials and soldiers
- Gilded-age funerary sculpture — the Sophie Biedermann monument, or the grave of a child asleep on a pillow that stops visitors without any guide
The collection that keeps it standing
Since 1995, volunteers with collection tins have stood at the gates every All Saints' Day. The idea came from Wojciech Słodkowski, a Łódź television journalist who ran the appeal himself until 2012; since 1999 it has been organised by the Society for the Care of the Old Cemetery, led from the start by the veteran city guide Stanisław Łukawski. Several dozen monuments have been restored, and it shows — finished vaults stand next to ones the queue has not reached.
A 2009 documentary, Nekropolis, directed by Andrzej B. Czulda, tells the story of the cemetery and of the city's mill-owning decades as one subject rather than two.
Protection
All three sections were entered in the register of monuments on 16 September 1980, under the separate numbers A/273, A/274 and A/275. On top of that, more than two hundred individual tombs carry their own listings, a density matched at very few Polish cemeteries.
In 2015 the complex was included in the Monument of History "Łódź — the multicultural landscape of an industrial city", recognised by presidential regulation on 16 February 2015 and in force from 7 March. The regulation names the Old Cemetery alongside Piotrkowska Street, Plac Wolności, the Geyer, Scheibler and Poznański complexes and the new Jewish cemetery.
Getting there
- By tram — lines along Legionów and Zachodnia drop you near Ogrodowa, then a few minutes west on foot
- On foot — from Manufaktura and the Poznański palace, straight west along Ogrodowa, about fifteen minutes
- By car — approach along Srebrzyńska or Ogrodowa; the whole district gridlocks in the days before All Saints
- Gates — the Catholic section is entered from Ogrodowa; the other two have their own entrances, reached by walking around the walls
Before you go
This is a working cemetery where families still leave flowers, not a sculpture park, so it asks for a quieter register than Piotrkowska. Allow an hour to walk one section attentively, or half a day for all three with time at the chapels.
Paths are largely unsurfaced and soft after rain, and the mature trees throw deep shade, so footwear matters more than a map. You see most in the leafless half of the year, when the Scheibler chapel's tower stands clear from a distance and the inscriptions are easy to read. For atmosphere rather than architecture, come on the evening of 1 November, when the whole ground is lit with candles.
How to get there and practical info
- Location
- Łódź, junction of Ogrodowa and Srebrzyńska streets, west of Manufaktura
- Area
- about 21 hectares: Catholic 11 ha, Lutheran 9 ha, Orthodox just under 1 ha
- Founded
- 1855
- Highlights
- the Scheibler chapel, the Heinzl chapel, the Gojżewski mausoleum, the Grohman, Geyer, Kunitzer and Kindermann vaults
- Protection
- register of monuments nos. A/273, A/274 and A/275, 16 September 1980; over 200 separately listed tombs; inside the Monument of History of 16 February 2015
- Time needed
- an hour per section, half a day for the whole complex
- Admission
- free; the cemetery remains in use for burials and family visits
- Current hours and tickets
- the city tourism portal of Łódź
When to go
The old trees are only coming into leaf, so the architecture of the tombs stays visible. After winter it is obvious which stones are still waiting for restoration.
The quietest season, and under the maples and ashes noticeably cooler than the streets nearby, though dense growth hides parts of the plots.
All Saints' Day is the peak: thousands of candles, all three sections open and the annual appeal for conservation funds. The rest of November is close to empty.
With the leaves down the layout reads clearly and the chapel tower is visible from the far end of the avenue. Paths are firmer, if sometimes slippery.
Other sights in Łódź Voivodeship
Straight-line distances from „Old Cemetery in Łódź" — calculated from real coordinates. By road it is often further.
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