Katholischer Friedhof Köln-Mülheim

The exact year the cemetery was founded is not documented. But because the surviving cemetery chapel of Alt St. Mauritius was built in the 13th century, and church and churchyard usually formed a single unit in the Middle Ages, it is assumed that burials took place here as early as the 13th century or before. Those laid to rest were members of the St. Mauritius parish living in Mülheim and neighbouring Buchheim, today likewise part of Cologne. No details survive from the period up to the 18th century, and none of the very earliest graves remain – the oldest verifiable one dates from 1841.

When the Duchy of Berg, which included Mülheim, was occupied by French revolutionary troops in the late 18th century, the Napoleonic burial laws came into force in 1804. These banned burials inside towns and required existing inner-town burial grounds to be relocated – the same reason that led to the founding of Cologne's Melaten Cemetery at the time. The St. Mauritius parish resisted the demanded relocation, arguing that neither the funds nor suitable land were available. Since the Berg administration did not press its demand forcefully, the parish avoided the obligation for decades. The matter was finally settled in 1865, when a Prussian decree confirmed churchyards as parish property wherever ownership had been long and undisputed.

The oldest datable headstone, from 1841, belongs to the grave of the Keup family, who once donated a hospital to the parish and after whom Mülheim's Keupstraße is named. Also striking is the 1868 monument of landowner Ludwig Köhler – a stele with an angel figure and reliefs, at the same time the tallest grave marker in the churchyard. The oldest section, with numerous and sometimes elaborate 19th-century headstones, lies on a rise around the chapel and near the entrance gate on Sonderburger Straße.