Biography|Klaus Töpfer — The Ehrengrab on Höxter's Wall Cemetery

Töpfer died in a Munich clinic on 8 June 2024, aged 85, after a fall in a hotel the month before.

The family death notice gave the birth as Waldenburg in Silesia and the death as Munich.

It asked for the funeral in Höxter an der Weser, the town that had taken the family in after the 1945 expulsion and where he had again lived after leaving Nairobi.

On Saturday 22 June 2024 the requiem was sung in the Catholic parish church of St. Nikolai on the market square.

From there the cortège went to Friedhof Am Wall, the cemetery on the old town earthworks.

RND and other German wires reported the burial that afternoon, with family, friends, and CDU colleague Andreas Jung present.

Days later the town council, after a minute of silence called by Mayor Daniel Hartmann, voted unanimously to reclassify the plot as an Ehrengrab.

The designation keeps the grave in municipal care and bars ordinary reuse.

Höxter already keeps several such graves.

The cemetery is an active burial ground.

Visitors should keep voices low, stay off neighbouring plots, and follow posted hours.

Do not photograph other mourners.

The church on Marktstrasse is the public building of the funeral day; the pin is the cemetery where the city chose to keep him.

He had been an honorary citizen of Höxter.

The last chapter of the life that began in Waldenburg ends on this wall above the Weser.

Photo: St. Nikolai, Höxter, the church of the funeral. Wikimedia Commons.