In need of a break between all the interesting sites in and around Rostock?
If you stay in Rostock and want to take a rest after you’ve visited lots of various places over here, then take a deep breath and discover lots of interesting things by visiting one of Rostock’s parks.
The LINDENPARK is a really good example. It is located in the KTV – Kröpeliner Tor-Vorstadt – a quarter of Rostock that is the center of Rostock’s student area – near the city center of Rostock and like the STEPHAN-JANTZEN-PARK, it used to be a graveyard once.
The namesake of this park was of course the beautiful avenues of linden trees, some of which are still preserved in the original structure of 1831.
In 1831, the LINDENPARK was created by its designer Johann-Christian-N. Wilcken (1794-1875) and opened as the first municipal cemetery of Rostock.
Since 1870, it has even contained an old Jewish section that still exists today. This Jewish section of the cemetery is surrounded by a hedge and bordered by a fence, so you can easily distinguish it from the rest of the park.*1)
In 1979, the LINDENPARK was transformed into a public park for the residential area after the final rest periods of the graves had expired. The rest period is the time to rest a grave before it can be occupied again. Urns may be buried in a grave before the end of the rest period. In Germany, this rest period is 20 years. In the LINDENPARK, the last burial took place in 1959 which enabled the transformation into a public park after this period of time.
Today, the LINDENPARK is used by people of all ages. Parents go for a walk with their children and older people like to sit on a bench at the playground in order to watch the kids building their sand castles or sliding down the chute. Many young people, especially students, love to go jogging in the park. Cindy has written two nice blogs on running in Rostock and on cross country running in Rostock. You should definitely have a lock at both of them.
From 1982, the cemetary has been gradually transformed into a park but today, you can still find the orthogonal structure of the old avenues and some left-over tombstones between the, at times, wild bushes and shrubs. Since 1984, the entire park has been a nature reserved area.
Because legal restrictions are placed on the activities on German nature reserves, any activities visitors would like to engage in have to corollate to the signs put up by the local council. Only by this means e.g. are walkers able to know that they are entering a nature reserve where it is not allowed to leave the tracks and paths, pick up plants or even touch animals and where you have to keep quiet. For historical reasons there is no standard sign used across Germany. Detailed information on nature protection areas and signage are provided here.
In the LINDENPARK of Rostock natural monuments are signed with a long-eared owl on a yellow pentagonal sign. For a closer look, just click on the picture. →
Among the many trees in the park, four natural monuments are hidden away.*2)
Do you think you can find all of them?
Here are a few more of my pictures of the LINDENPARK just as an impression.
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*1) At this point I’m going to give additional information about the Jewish section of the cemetery.
*2) I’m going to provide some further information concerning these natural monuments.
