Cemetery "After Life"
"Here rests the attourney..." is written on a granite plaque half-sunk into the ivy carpet. The name has broken away, the grave site disappeared in the thicket of trees, bushes and thorny vines.
Only a few meters from the old road between the city of Halle and the Harz Mountains, hidden under trees and dense ivy, lies a forgotten cemetery from a bygone era. The gravestones are slowly bowing under the weight of the years.
Next to the attourney rest a timber merchant and his wife, while a little further the gravestone of Leopold August Julius von Zimmermann rises
from the ground, a Royal Prussian lieutenant who died in July 1915 at the age of only 28 from blood poisoning following a war wound, and who was once a manor owner in Salzmünde and the owner of a sugar factory.
The largest grave site that can still be found is that of the Boltze family. It is a hereditary burial site. The Boltze family was an important business family in the region. Johann Gottfried Boltze Jr., who died in Salzmünde on May 30, 1868, was involved in agriculture and also owned an inn and a mill. He specialized in sugar beet cultivation. Politically, he was active in the Prussian National Assembly, the Prussian House of Representatives and the Reichstag (parliament) of the North German Confederation. He was a co-founder of the Werschen-Weißenfelser Braunkohlen AG (a coal mining company).
One of his daughters was married to Leopold August Julius von Zimmermann.
The Old Cemetery Salzmünde is located in the middle of a small forest and the grounds are terraced. The graves are partly enclosed with metal fences, and some of the gravestones beautifully designed.
Sometime in the early 20th century, the cemetery was given up in favor of a larger, more open site, but the old cemetery has been listed as a regional monument.
