Equality in death: Sigurd Lewerentz and the planning of Malmö Eastern Cemetery 1916-1973

The exponential growth of industrialized cities at the turn of the twentieth century led town planners and architects in Sweden to design new cemeteries and engage in the discussion with novel approaches to commemoration. Malmö Eastern Cemetery (1916-1973) was designed by Sigurd Lewerentz (1885-1975) and represented an ambitious experiment: a new scale of cemetery landscape, which involved planting vegetation anew and detracted from sweeping picturesque designs. This paper analyses how Lewerentz's approach to the equality of individual tombstones affected his design of Malmö Eastern Cemetery, both in terms of burial spaces for individuals and the commemorative public realm. Based on archival research and field work, this paper delves into the interplay between the cemetery designers and the different urban planners of Malmö over a period of dramatic transformation in the eastern districts of the increasingly industrialized city. Although Lewerentz initially differentiated between tombstones, after 1922 he reconsidered his cemetery plans, setting standards that made commemoration accessible to everyone while limiting individual choices. Lewerentz's homogenizing decisions in planning Malmö cemetery provide a lens through which to examine how equality has shaped discussions around commemoration, representing ideals of societies across history and the underlying tensions between individual freedom and society.