ABANDONED CREMATORIUM [DE]

Exploration #36 Abandoned crematorium. This abandoned crematorium, a building with a dome roof now protected as a historic monument, is located in a big graveyard somewhere in Germany. It was constructed in 1910 and in working order until the late 1980s. Probably more than 100,000 bodies were cremated here, many buried in an adjoining urn grave field. Inside the abandoned cremation there is a rotary hub on tracks and two furnaces. The crematorium is not the only abandoned building: There are more signs of abandonment in the eastern part of the cemetery. In this part of the cemetery also many tombstones have fallen over and stone urns lay on the ground.

The most famous person who was burned here was the social democrat and anti-fascist Wilhelm Feuerherdt, who was killed in 1932 in Zerbst during a pub fight with a group of Nazis. He died from severe stabbing wounds in the face and the back and was later cremated here. In 2012 it was visited by the Austrian filmmaker Nikolaus Geyrhalter to shoot a documentary about abandoned and deserted places in the world.