Central Cemetery Burges Assebroek, Belgium

I think this was the first time that I have ever looked for a grave that I only knew from social media. This tomb. with skull and crossbones resting on a tasselled pillow. is a favourite on Facebook and Instagram and you see it constantly in cemetery groups. It is all over the internet, along with silly rumours that the haut bourgeois wine and textile merchant who is buried here embraced a career change to pirate in later life. It is not a small tomb and is so distinctive I thought it would be easy to find. But on a freezing January day in a deserted cemetery with a bitter east wind driving sleet into my face, I just couldn’t see it. On my fifth circuit of the grounds, I was about to give up when I saw a bearded man in a windcheater strolling jauntily along the path with a shovel over his shoulder. Luckily everyone in the Flemish part of Belgium speaks English, gravediggers especially. He happily pointed me in the right direction and I soon found the family grave of Antonius Michiel (Flemish version) or Antoine Michel (French version) Wemaer (1763-1837). In summer the skull is covered with a thick layer of moss, its green toothless grin making it resemble muppet Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street more than a memento mori. It is a very eye-catching grave, there is no denying it, and I am glad that I got to see it, but the Central Cemetery of Burges at Assebroek has a lot more to see than a faux pirate’s tomb. 

A prayer card: 'Bid voor de kiel' Pray for the soul of Antonius-Michiel Wemaer

It is not just Wemaer’s grave that is covered in moss. This is the mossiest cemetery I have ever been in; nothing in rainy old England remotely compares to it, maybe you will find a graveyard in the perpetually rainy West of Ireland that approaches it, but almost every horizontal surface, especially in the summer, is plumply upholstered in deep green sphagnum. Add summer ferns and leaves on the trees and the place must resemble a rain forest by the end of Spring. It is Belgium’s oldest cemetery; the first burial took place here in 1787. Belgium at the time was still part of the Holy Roman Empire and in the last years of his life the Hapsburg Emperor Joseph II (who died in 1790) introduced many burial reforms into his multi-nation superstate, including legislation to ban intramural burials in churches or within city walls and to create new cemeteries outside of towns,  legally mandated periods between death and burial, obligatory examinations of the deceased by a medical professional and reusable wooden coffins with trap door floors that dropped corpses into the grave. By 1810 all of Bruges inhabitants had to be buried here.

A short distance from the main entrance is the impressive monument of artists Hendrik (1828-1894) and Gustaf (1862-1921) Pickery. Henrik was the son of a baker who specialised in amandelbrôod (almond bread, actually a biscuit)) and Noeuds de Bruges (similar to palmier pastries). Young Hendrik probably enjoyed eating the produce but he was not remotely interested in entering the family business. Instead, he persuaded his father to allow him to study at the Bruges Academy of Fine Arts. He went to make a successful career as a sculptor and painter.  Perhaps his marriage to baker’s daughter Mathilde Vanneste was a sop for his failure to enter the family patisserie but if so, it didn’t stop the marriage being successful; the couple had six children, fives sons and a daughter. Hendrik’s sculptures are to be found at various locations around Bruges but the most prominent is probably his statue of Jan Van Eyck which dominates Jan van Eyckplein. Hendrik’s eldest son Gustaaf is also commemorated on the memorial; he followed in his father’s footsteps to the extent of even taking over his teaching position at the Art Academy when he died. I don’t whether father or so was responsible for the tomb with its wonderful details, the memento mori with scythes, the bat winged flying hourglass and the four putti bearing the weight of the sarcophagus.

An interesting story about the cemetery appeared in the Shields Daily Gazette of Saturday 22 June 1929;

War’s Dark Secrets: copies of many of the photographs of the sinking of British ships, and taken by German officers on sub-marine service, were developed by a Belgian photographer in Bruges. Although it was a great risk he retained copies in view of the value they would possess after the war. But German search parties were always on the prowl through Belgian homes, and the discovery of such photographs meant instant execution. After successive hiding places for the copies had been abandoned, they were entrusted to a friendly grave digger employed in the Bruges Cemetery, who employed a family vault for their safe custody until after the Armistice. These pictures represent some of the darkest secrets of the war.