It is the oldest known cemetery within Fredericksburg and is the final resting place for many of the original German colonists who arrived when John O. Meusebach opened up the area to settlement.

When Herman Wilke laid out the town, a plot of land was set aside for the cemetery.

[3] There are upwards of 5,000 graves in Der Stadt Friedhof, not all of them currently marked, many unidentifiable due to the passage of time.

[4] Rather than being grouped in family plots, the deceased have been buried in chronological order according to when they died.

What is possibly the last known work of sculptor Elisabet Ney, that of a tousled haired cherub resting over a grave and known as the 1906 Schnerr Memorial, can be found at Der Stadt Friedhof.