Ohlsdorfer Friedhof

This guide to Ohlsdorfer Friedhof in Hamburg follows Wilhelm Cordes, who in 1877 took charge of a stretch of heath and swamp north of the city and spent the next four decades insisting a cemetery could be a place of beauty rather than decay. It traces how he modeled the grounds on English landscape gardens, tucked family graves behind hedges, and turned clay too wet for burials into the ponds and curving paths you see from where you stand. Look at the trees he planted to screen the graves from view, and the water he made a feature instead of a flaw.