Old Town - Plague Cemetery
"Frauenstein was first mentioned in documents in 1218.
Frauenstein Castle was built for national defense and border fortification, later it protected the Meißen-Freiberg-Teplitz-Prague trade route.
The first farmers and later also miners settled in the valley of the Kuttelbach.
From the viewpoint, boundary stone 53 is to the left of the path to the pasture. Between this and stone 57, the "Old Town" lay until the 15th century. It was granted town rights in 1411 by burgrave Heinrich von Meißen.
Devastating war events and devastation by the Hussites, the flooding of the Kuttelbach and the arduous route to the trade route may have prompted the Margrave to order the construction of the new town church on the hill in 1449.
Frederick the Gentle also insisted on securing the town. After 1475, the town was moved to the mountain and planned with a market square. It was only later that the facilities were perfected with town gates and town walls.
Between Buttersteig and the turnoff to the pasture, the plague cemetery lay at the top of the field around boundary stone 57.
The plague broke out in Frauenstein several times between 1427 and 1741 It raged several times in the Dresden area during the Thirty Years' War. It often lasted for weeks. Once it was brought from Freiberg into the mountains by flax. Since almost 1000 people in the parish sometimes died of the plague, additional cemeteries were set up away from the settlements in order to quickly bury the victims of the plague. It was often not possible to carry out the burials in a church setting. The church ceremony was only held after the plague had subsided.
The plague did not appear again in Saxony after 1741.
The plague pathogen was not discovered until 1894 by Alexandre Yersin. It is a bacterial infectious disease that was transmitted primarily by rats to fleas and people. The rats carried the bacteria and were bitten by the fleas. The fleas then infected the people.
The plague cemeteries were closed by the 19th century at the latest.
Source: Information board