Only in Vienna by Duncan J.D. Smith

166 11 th District Canal and Danube proper. Forty-four persons were later identified but the final resting places of most are embellished only with a clump of mournful purple iris and a simple cross inscribed with the word Namenlos (Nameless). The occasional flickering candle and bunch of flowers lends a touching dignity to this melancholic place otherwise marked only by a small Chapel of the Resurrection added in 1935. Between 1840 and 1900 the cemetery had a predecessor on the riverbank itself although its 487 bodies were never exhumed and the site has now been lost to the river forest (a signpost marks the spot). With the construction of the nearby Albern grain dock in 1939 the river currents were themselves altered so that the Danube no longer brings its dead to the Cemetery of the Nameless. Despite this, each All Saint’s Day (November 1 st ) sees the fishermen of Albern build a raft decorated with wreathes bearing a plaque reading “For the victims of the Danube” in German, Slovakian and Hungarian. To the tune of a band playing suitably mournful music, the raft is pushed out into the river from where it drifts slowly downstream to Bratislava, Esztergom, Budapest and beyond… Mourners at the Cemetery of the Nameless in bygone days