Tranquebar - cemeteries and grave monuments

Danish and Norwegian tradesmen and officials, military personnel, German missionaries and British officers with their wives and children-a motley assortment of people-all found their last resting place in the former Danish trading station of Tranquebar in southern India. The bereaved relatives devoted great care to the erection of monuments with long personal inscriptions for the deceased.Some of the epitaphs are composed with talent and skill, while others are maladroit. The monuments and the church registers tell the story of the early inhabitants of Tranquebar, their ideals, their sorrows and their hopes. In 1935 Knud Heilberg, a missionary, registered some of the inscriptions in the old Danish cemeteries. In 1999 the art historian Karin Kryger and the archtect Lisbeth Gasparski completed this registration work. This book presents complete documentation of the stillexisting gravestones in the three Danish cemeteries in Tranquebar. It consists of descriptions and photographs of the monuments, casts and rubbings of the inscriptions, together with surveys of the cemeteries, supplemented with information about the deceased from the church registers.