Museum

wayside shrine

Here lie the two innocent children…

Gravestone for two children
1871
Zinc sheet, painted in various colors; 37 x 29,5 x 6 cm

At the end of 2010, the Museum of Sepulchral Culture was fortunate enough to acquire a new piece for its collection at auction after a long hiatus. Offered by the auction house as a "grave marker," it is actually a zinc inscription panel, the kind typically found on wrought-iron grave markers from the Alpine region. These grave markers, which became increasingly common from 1700 onward, generally depicted crosses, with the inscription panel forming the intersection of the cross. The piece acquired at auction likely also originated from a wrought-iron grave cross in the German-speaking south.

The painted tablet is bordered at the top by jagged edges and adorned with a rosette in the center. The tablet has a small door behind which the inscription is located. Its content is extraordinarily moving, as it laments the death of two children – siblings who never even had the chance to know each other:

Here rest the two / innocent children /
Anton Mosner, / which was born /
died on June 5, 1870 and / passed away peacefully on /
April 13, 1871. Jakob / Mosner is deceased.
Ben on July 19, 1871 / at the age of 7 /
Hour.

The text continues on the back of the gravestone door, but the tone changes and it exclusively expresses the parents' feelings of grief:

The longing for the two / children, /
All the encouragement could not lessen / dern, /
They were their victims, must er- / blassen. /
And let them live far too young;
Their death struck a deep wound- / de /
To the parents, and from them mouth- / de /
Speaks of pain; this will / exist, /
Until we see them again on the other side.

The text makes it clear that the parents experienced the death of their two children as a profound loss and great suffering. The loss of one's own children was by no means uncommon at that time. Many infants and children died from improper or insufficient nutrition, or from all sorts of illnesses that would be considered trivial today, but which, due to a lack of appropriate medication, could not be treated back then. Even at the beginning of the 20th century, many children in Europe died as a result of unsanitary conditions. Since there was little understanding of antiseptics, or not everyone was aware of their importance, many children—and just as many new mothers—were threatened with death, for example from infections, shortly after birth. Given the high infant mortality rate and the much lower life expectancy of people at that time, faith and the associated popular piety were important elements in coping with the blows of fate that were so much more frequent back then. The expressed hope for a reunion in the afterlife, which the parents describe on the inscription tablet as the end of what may have been a long period of grief, clearly conveys this sentiment. The tombstone also reflects this iconographically, with the door front painted with the Archangel Raphael and Saint Tobias. Tobias is the main character in the Book of Tobit in the Old Testament. The Archangel Raphael repeatedly intervenes and helps him. Tobias, in turn, trusts Raphael, which is why he becomes a symbol of faith in God and piety. Furthermore, Tobias means "God is good" in Hebrew. Dr. Ulrike Neurath