The back of the church and the organ above

Tanya's picture

Close up of the organ

Tanya's picture

Grossropperhausen School House

Tanya's picture

Picture of the church from the school

Tanya's picture

This is also supposed to be a picture of the cemetery in Grossropperhousen.

Sad thing with German cemeteries, you do not own your plot it is rented, as long as someone plays for the space you stay there. But no payment then the body is removed and the plot re-used. I never asked what happens to the remains... I'll try to find out. 

Nelda

Don from the Hessian Mailing List at rootsweb.com wrote an explanation:

The old remains usually go to a charnel house or to a basement of a church. Under the floor of St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, there are thousands of bones disinterred from Catholic cemeteries in the diocese. Sometimes the old bones (skulls) are carefully marked with a number identifying the deceased and placed artfully in a church basement/crypt. I suddenly came nose to nose with some of these in the dark in an old church crypt. It's very systematic in the Germanic countries. Don