The Protestant Mount Zion Cemetery (a.k.a., Jerusalem Mount Zion Protestant Cemetery, ; ) on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, is a cemetery owned by the Anglican Church Missionary Trust Association Ltd., London, represented by the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East. In 1848 Samuel Gobat, Bishop of Jerusalem, opened the cemetery and dedicated it as ecumenical graveyard for congregants of Anglican, Lutheran, Reformed (Calvinist) and old Catholic faith. Since its original beneficiary, the Bishopric of Jerusalem was maintained as a joint venture of the Anglican Church of England and the Evangelical Church in Prussia, a united Protestant Landeskirche of Lutheran and Reformed congregations, until 1886, the Jerusalem Lutheran congregation preserved a right to bury congregants there also after the Jerusalem Bishopric had become a solely Anglican diocese.
Location
The cemetery is located on the southwestern slope of Mount Zion in Jerusalem, southerly surrounded by the street Ma'alei haShalom (מעלי השלום). Mount Zion Cemetery is reached passing the site of the former Bishop Gobat School, since 1967 housing the Jerusalem University College, founded as American Institute of Holy Land Studies in 1957. ּBetween 1948 and 1967 the congregations using the cemetery, with most of their congregants living in then East Jerusalem, had very complicated access to the cemetery then located in what was West Jerusalem.Gottfried Mehnert, see Bibliography for details, p. 43. So in those years a further ecumenical Protestant cemetery in Beit Safafa, Jarmaleh Cemetery, was opened on the road to Gush Etzion opposite the Tantur Ecumenical Institute for Theological Studies.
History
Mamilla Pool
"Early attempts were already made in 1839 by John Nicolayson to acquire some land for a London Society cemetery site in Jerusalem. In June of that year he reported that, with the collaboration of Vice-Consul Young, he had located a suitable plot of land on Mount Zion that would meet this need, but that he had postponed closing the deal until matters were clarified about land acquired earlier for residential construction."Yaron Perry (ירון פרי), see Bibliography for details, p. 64.
However, British Vice-Consul William Tanner Young then succeeded to acquire another site for the cemetery: "It is a Parallelogram of long and broad – It is 335 paces West of the Jaffa Gate and 182 paces East of that Turkish Burial-ground which is in the vicinity of the Upper Pool of Gihon, North West of the [Old] City."William Tanner Young in a letter of 30 May 1844 to British Foreign Secretary George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen, here after Yaron Perry (ירון פרי), see Bibliography for details, pp. 65 and 88. Additions in brackets not in the original.
"He later requested and received approval from the Foreign Office in London to build walls around the site. Among those buried in this first cemetery were Missionary Ferdinand Christian Ewald’s wife, Mary Ann (b. 1819), in January 1844 and Bishop Alexander in December 1845. However, because of the proximity to the Muslim cemetery and all the problems this entailed, the small British community in the city was forced to find a new site. In January 1844, during negotiations with Constantinople about the firman for building the [Christ] church, Nicolayson also asked the Sublime Porte for a permit to buy a plot of land for a cemetery on Mount Zion outside the city walls, where other Christian burial grounds were situated."Yaron Perry (ירון פרי), see Bibliography for details, p. 65. Additions in brackets not in the original. The other Christian burial grounds on Mount Zion are an Armenian, a Greek Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Franciscan cemetery, the latter containing also the grave of Oskar Schindler.
Mount Zion
"Only in spring of 1848 did the British consul general in Constantinople and his colleague in Jerusalem,[ James Finn,] receive a firman to purchase a cemetery plot for the Protestant community." Prepared by Nicolayson, later buried there, and with the support of Hugh Rose, British consul-general for Syria, and the Mutasarrıf of Jerusalem, Zarif Pasha, Bishop Gobat acquired the tract of land on Mount Zion in the same year, paying £ 350 (= 4,200 French francs) for the land, its enclosure and levelling.Cf. Samuel Gobat's annual episcopal report of 30 October 1848, published in: Samuel Gobat, Samuel Gobat, Evangelischer Bischof in Jerusalem – Sein Leben und sein Wirken meist nach seinen eigenen Aufzeichnungen: mit Gobat's und seiner Frau Bildern in Stahlstich und 8 Landschaften in Holzschnitt, Basel: Spittler, 1884, p. 302 Gobat financed the expenses with private funds earlier donated by Britons, Germans and Swiss, of which by December the British Government recovered £100 and later private British donators another £46.2.0, while Prussians did not specifically contribute to the project at that time. Mount Zion Cemetery replaced the old cemetery West of Jaffa Gate. So Gobat transferred the graves from there to the new cemetery on Mount Zion.Gottfried Mehnert, see Bibliography for details, pp. 2 and 4 By the end of November 1848 it was completely enclosed by a wall.
Between early 1850 and September 1852 Gustav Thiel (1825–1907) and his wife Maria Katharina Großsteinbeck (1826–1862) were employed as gardeners and guards of Mount Zion Cemetery at an annual income of 75 taler.On 4 February 1850 they had arrived in Jerusalem and belonged to a group of Protestant German settlers coming mostly from Westphalia. Among them were also Maria Katharina's brothers Friedrich Wilhelm and Johann Adolf Großsteinbeck (1832–1913), the latter becoming in 1902 the grandfather of John Steinbeck. Cf. Ejal Jakob Eisler (איל יעקב איזלר), see Bibliography for details, footnote 203 on p. 50. . They lived in a house directly at the cemetery and improved their livelihood with cows and other livestock. Jerusalemites of all background took a fancy to their European style butter, and other dairy products they produced. So their house outside the city walls attracted visitors who bought and also immediately consumed at their kind of an inn.Ejal Jakob Eisler (איל יעקב איזלר), see Bibliography for details, p. 51. . After they quit their post Maria Katharina's brother Friedrich Wilhelm Großsteinbeck (1821–1858) succeeded them. However, Consul Finn prompted his dismissal after half a year in 1853.Ejal Jakob Eisler (איל יעקב איזלר), see Bibliography for details, footnote 220 on p. 56. .
In 1853 Gobat separated a part of the cemetery, which had not yet been used for burials, and moved the Bishop Gobat School (Bischof-Gobat-Schule; est. 1847, erected between 1853 and 1856 on that site) thereto, taken over by the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in 1877.Gottfried see Bibliography for details, p. 13. The actual burial ground was then demarked by a new wall with a lychgate separating it from the school ground and garden. Therefore, the cemetery has no direct access to a street, but is reached passing the site of the school. However, in order to enlarge the burial ground again, once a shortage of gravesites would occur, Gobat – on the occasion of separating the school ground from the cemetery – recorded a pursuant clause protocolled by the British consulate.Gottfried Mehnert, see Bibliography for details, p. 8.
Consul-General (1815–1882) aimed at dissolving the Anglican-Protestant ecumenical cemeterial community, however, the German Foreign Office and Bishop Gobat opposed him, the latter even threatening to resign if this cemeterial separation would lead to finally cancel the joint bishopric.Gottfried Mehnert, see Bibliography for details, pp. 6seq. Gobat assured that he did not and was not intended to consecrate the cemetery following Anglican rite, on which grounds non-Anglicans could be excluded from being buried. Furthermore, a bill had been entered to Westminster parliament to generally open Anglican consecrated cemeteries for believers of other Protestant denominations.
Alten's successor (1835–1909) instigated Gobat to execute a formal deed of foundation of the cemetery, issued on 18 September 1874, dedicating Mount Zion Cemetery for the burials of Anglicans and congregants of the Protestant churches of Augsburg (Lutheran), Helvetic (Reformed) and Utrecht Union (old Catholic) Confession.Gottfried Mehnert, see Bibliography for details, p. 4. Thus Münchhausen considered Alten's concerns and objections against the joint cemetery to be obsolete and ended any attempt to dissolve the cemeterial ecumenical community.
Furthermore, the deed states that the site had been bought using monies of the bishop, while it claims that the British government funds were used to actually prepare the site as a cemetery (levelling and enclosure). This formulation obviously was meant to forestall claims, that the cemetery were to be exclusively owned by the Anglican diocese because its purchase were financed by British funds.
In 1883, while negotiating the succession of the late Bishop Joseph Barclay, the Prussian Minister of Cult and Education, Gustav von Goßler (1838–1902), in charge of the Evangelical State Church of Prussia's older Provinces,In the 19th century the old-Prussian state church, comprising Prussia's pre-1866 territory (so-called Altpreußen (Old Prussia)), adapted its name several times to denominational or territorial changes. relaunched the cemeterial issue in order to institutionalise the cemeterial community. He proposed to either reach equal rights as to Mount Zion Cemetery for both sides or to legally divide the cemetery.Gottfried Mehnert, see Bibliography for details, p. 15. Generally Goßler suggested to establish an easement on the site of the Bishop Gobat School as to free access to the cemetery. His proposals remained unrealised.
With the dissolution of the contract on the joint bishopric in 1886 diplomatic notes were exchanged confirming the status quo ante of the cemetery with its prior ambiguities. So technically the cemetery continued to be used and administered by the now purely English Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem and the Evangelical Jerusalem's Foundation, represented by the pastor of Jerusalem's Evangelical congregation of German language (ranked provost at Redeeemer Church since 1898).After the contract of bishopric had been dissolved in 1886 Britain repaid the Prussian share in its original endowment capital in 1889. Combining the repaid £21,500 (= ℳ 430,000) with the Jerusalem Alms Fund of £11,000 (= ℳ 220,000) and the Jerusalem Church Construction Fund of £26,500 (= ℳ 530,000; collected between 1869 and 1888) King William II of Prussia (also German Emperor) in his function as summus episcopus (supreme governor) of the old-Prussian united Protestant state church (cf. Supreme Governor of the Church of England), established the Evangelical Jerusalem's Foundation () on 22 June 1889. Its purpose was and is the maintenance of then existing and establishment of new Evangelical institutions in Jerusalem, especially congregations, church buildings, and schools. The Evangelical say in matters and usage of Mount Zion Cemetery was assigned to the new foundation.
In 1890 the Bishop Gobat School intended to acquire the unused reserve land of the cemetery, retained by Gobat in 1853 for its extension.Gottfried Mehnert, see Bibliography for details, p. 16. In order to compensate for this loss a tract of land adjacent to the area already used for burials was to be purchased. The Evangelical congregation was asked to contribute a third of the incurred cost.