Frost Berlin, Elysabeth Merx - Der Père-Lachaise - 1983

IMPRESSIVE GERMAN PHOTOBOOK ABOUT THE MOST FAMOUS CEMETERY IN PARIS -
AND ONE OF THE FAMOUS ONES WORLDWIDE.

"Père Lachaise Cemetery (French: Cimetière du Père-Lachaise, formerly cimetière de l'Est) is the largest cemetery in Paris, France, at 44 hectares or 110 acres. With more than 3.5 million visitors annually, it is the most visited necropolis in the world. Notable figures in the arts buried at Père Lachaise include: Colette, Michel Ney, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Frédéric Chopin, George Enescu, Édith Piaf, Alice Harriet Blosse Lynch, Marcel Proust, Georges Méliès, Marcel Marceau, Olivia de Havilland, Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, Madho Rao Scindia, J. R. D. Tata, Georges Bizet, Jim Morrison, Michel Petrucciani, and Sir Richard Wallace.

Edition Silberblick, Berlin. 1983. First edition, first printing.

Paperback (as issued). 280 x 300 mm. 72 pages. Black and white photos by Frost Berlin. Text: Elysabeth Merx. Text in German.

Condition:
Inside excellent, fresh and flawless; clean with no marks and with no foxing. Outside quiet fresh covers with light trace of use only; lightly rubbed at the edges. Overall fine condition.

Great photobook about the very famous Parisien cemetery "Père Lachaise" - in better than usual condition.

"The Père Lachaise is located in the 20th arrondissement and was the first garden cemetery, as well as the first municipal cemetery in Paris. It is also the site of three World War I memorials. The cemetery is located on the Boulevard de Ménilmontant. The Paris Métro station Philippe Auguste on Line 2 is next to the main entrance, while the station Père Lachaise, on both Line 2 and Line 3, is 500 m (1,640 ft) away near a side entrance.
Père Lachaise is still an operating cemetery and accepting new burials. However, the rules to be buried in a Paris cemetery are rather strict: people may be buried in one of these cemeteries if they die in the French capital city or if they lived there. Being buried in Père Lachaise is even more difficult nowadays as there is a waiting list: very few plots are available. The grave sites at Père Lachaise range from a simple, unadorned headstone to towering monuments and even elaborate mini chapels dedicated to the memory of a well-known person or family. Many of the tombs are about the size and shape of a telephone booth, with just enough space for a mourner to step inside, kneel to say a prayer, and leave some flowers.[citation needed]
The cemetery manages to squeeze an increasing number of bodies into a finite and already crowded space. One way it does this is by combining the remains of multiple family members in the same grave. At Père Lachaise, it is not uncommon to reopen a grave after a body has decomposed and inter another coffin. Some family mausoleums or multi-family tombs contain dozens of bodies, often in several separate but contiguous graves. Shelves are usually installed to accommodate their remains.[citation needed]
During relatively recent times, the Père Lachaise has adopted a standard practice of issuing 30-year leases on gravesites, so that if a lease is not renewed by a family, the remains can be removed, space made for a new grave, and the overall deterioration of the cemetery minimized. Abandoned remains are boxed, tagged and moved to Aux Morts ossuary, still in the Père Lachaise cemetery.
Plots can be bought in perpetuity or for 50, 30 or 10 years, the last being the least expensive option. Even for the case of mausoleums and chapels, coffins are usually below ground.
Although some sources incorrectly estimate the number of interred as 300,000 in Père Lachaise, according to the official website of the city of Paris, one million people have been buried there to date. Along with the stored remains in the Aux Morts ossuary, the number of human remains exceeds 2–3 million."
(Wikipedia)