Tombstones by Herman Bollé and the School of Arts and Crafts in Zagreb Cemetery of Mirogoj

Prilog govori o nadgrobnim spomenicima koje je Herman Bollé projektirao za Mirogoj. Većinu su realizirali učenici i/ili profesori zagrebačke Obrtne škole i odreda se radi o kvalitetnim primjerima historicističke i secesijske sepulkarne arhitekture i primijenjene umjetnosti.From the very beginning of his career in Croatia, Herman Bollé’s name is connected to the Zagreb Cemetery Mirogoj, which was founded in 1876 and became inseparably linked to his biography. The fi rst arcades with the “pavilion“, as the part of the arcades covered with a dome were called in the nineteenth century, were some of his earliest independent projects. Since they were fi nished in 1879-80, and were almost completely undamaged by the great earthquake from 1880, they served as one of the crucial proofs for Bollé’s advocates (fi rst and foremost Iso Kršnjavi) who claimed that his work was highly solid. However, that wasn’t the only way the earthquake “benefi ted“ Bollé. At the time, the most important Croatian sculptor of the era Ivan Rendić moved from Zagreb. At the end of 1880s and the beginning of the 1890s, Rendić was the one that more affl uent citizens of Zagreb usually came to for the design of their tombstones. Bollé and Rendić could not compete, but Rendić’s departure enabled Bollé to take up the dominant position when it came to designing and constructing gravestones, which was further boosted by the opening of the School of Arts and Crafts that trained a relatively large and highly competent, but cheap, work force that would turn Bollé’s ideas into reality. First a workshop for the restoration of the Cathedral opened, then the School of Arts and Crafts. This resulted in a number of high quality gravers, who later trained a whole new generation of gravers. The key names in that respect are Ignjat Franz, a long term professor at the School of Arts and Crafts, who in 1879 moved to Zagreb with Bollé from Vienna, where they both worked on the projects of Friedrich von Schmidt, and later that of Adolf Baumgarten, who worked on the termination of the Đakovo Cathedral until the year 1882. The statute of the Mirogoj Cemetery determined only the basics when it came to the overall design and the size of tombs, so the gravestones in the arcades, where tombs were permanently sold to families, had to be positioned next to a wall, there had to be a certain aesthetic in the way they were ordered, and they could not weigh more than 160 kg. The representative value and the size of gravestones depended on the fi nancial possibilities of a patron family and the talent and imagination of an architect or a sculptor. The gravestones Bollé made for Mirogoj therefore vary and can be divided into a few groups: gravestones resembling an altar retable, aedicules, tablets and stelae, pillars, fi alae, closed baldachins, crosses and obelisks. The same types were used by all the other architects in the European cemeteries of the nineteenth century and later. Bollé actually continued building on the experience he gained working with architects Heinrich Wiethase in Köln and Friedrich von Schmidt in Vienna and there is no doubt that living and working in Vienna had a profound impact on him. There he had a chance to see a whole array of tombstones by different architects, especially after the new Central Cemetery was founded on the south eastern outskirts of the city in 1870. The type of tombstones resembling a Catholic alter retable is the most representative and a relatively rare model both in Bollé’s work and in Mirogoj in general since only members of the highest class could afford it, mostly those of the political, clerical and economic elite. All gravestones of that type in Mirogoj are located in the arcades and executed in a Neo-Renaissance or Neo-Byzantine style. We can single out the Jurković, Borojević and Savitz Nossan family tombs as well as that of the canons of Zagreb. Among the simpler type of gravestones in the form of an aedicule, we can single out that of the Weiss family. When it comes to those of the pillar type, the most noteworthy is that of the Sermage countess (1887), which is probably the most representative example of the Historicist sepulchral architecture in Mirogoj, whereas for the stone stelae the gravestones of Danilo Stanković, and Juričić and Radivojević families stand out. At the end of his career, just before the beginning of World War I, Bollé turned to Art Nouveau style (families Frank and Jurčić tombstones). Bollé made designs for the families or individuals of the political, economic and clerical elite of Zagreb and Croatia of the time and therefore bear witness to his position in society. The greatest number of tombs was constructed in the Neo-Renaissance style and sometimes in the Neo-Byzantine (for those of the Orthodox faith), Neo-Maori (for Jews) and Neo-Gothic style