Until the 16th century, the Frauenkirchhof was the main burial place for the inhabitants of Dresden, who often buried their dead in the cemetery for several generations due to large family graves.

[2] Otherwise, in the late Middle Ages, only monasteries and hospitals were allowed to bury their dead in their own churchyard - apart from the Frauenkirchhof, only the Cemetery of the Bartholomäushospital existed at this time.

[5] The predecessor building of the ossuary was possibly a small chapel in the churchyard, which was consecrated in 1373, 1375 and 1388 and was dedicated to the Trinity and Saint Anne.

The stonemasons and masons donated an altar of St. Anne, the four crowned martyrs and the Holy Chair of Peter to the ossuary in the Frauenkirchhof in 1514.

112 exclusive hereditary burial sites were thus created, which citizens and noblemen could acquire on the cemetery wall and next to the church.

In 1895, Otto Richter stated: "All in all, the Frauenkirche and its surroundings formed a veritable museum of time-honored works of art and historical memories.

This meant that not only the water houses and fish stalls that stood on the outer wall of the churchyard had to be removed, but also some vaults and graves of town clergymen.

In the same year, Elector Friedrich August I extended his demolition plans to the entire cemetery, forbidding further burials in the Frauenkirchhof on November 21, 1714 and giving instructions to rebury bodies that were still unburied.

Although the dissolution of the entire cemetery was not implemented, the demolition of individual gravesites for the Hauptwacheneubau began in 1715,[9] despite complaints from the Oberkonsistorium under the leadership of Superintendent Valentin Ernst Löscher.

Field Marshal Jacob Heinrich von Flemming wrote to the city council asking them to prevent the demolition of the graves: Once it is in the rule that in residences and fortresses churchyards are not well suited, and where such exist, they are gradually abolished [...] the present undertaking [...] has no other final purpose than merely to introduce what is customary in other residences and fortresses, whereby at the same time the city is put out of danger from worrying infections, which can easily arise through the opportunity of churchyards.The cemetery wall and arches were first removed from the side of the Materni Hospital so that the ground work for the new Frauenkirche could begin there, as decided by the Dresden City Council at its meeting on June 27, 1726.

The reason for this was the new construction of the Hotel Dresdner Hof (later Hilton Dresden) on the corner of Töpferstraße/Münzgasse, during which trenches were dug for pipes and cables and the former churchyard wall was also cut into.

[11] The next investigations extended to the west side of the former Frauenkirchhof at the edge of the then rubble hill of the Bährschen Frauenkirche and took place in 1987.

This involved the construction of underground checkrooms and other rooms outside the church building, which meant that areas of the former Frauenkirche courtyard that had not previously been archaeologically investigated had to be destroyed.

During the rescue excavation on the north-east, east and small parts of the south-east side of the Bährsche Frauenkirche[13] Around 300 grave sites were documented,[14] which mainly involved tombs on the old cemetery wall.

Among the finds was the Kegeler family tomb from the early 17th century with a gravestone and the skeletons of the two people buried in front of it.

[16] Long-term archaeological investigations also took place in the area of the former Frauenkirchhof cemetery due to the redevelopment of the Dresdner Neumarkt from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s.

The destruction was caused by the reburial of graves up to the 18th century, but also by new buildings or the laying of pipes after the cemetery was secularized.

[17] The skeletons found were mostly of older children and adolescents, who were usually buried in a supine position with their arms crossed in front of their chest.

[19] In 2005, art historian Heinrich Magirius summarized the aspects by which the Frauenkirchhof gained significance in the past and present: "While [Johann Gottfried] Michaelis was interested in the [...] still legible inscriptions on monuments, the art historians of the 20th century were primarily interested in the artistically valuable funerary monuments.

Johann Georg Ehrlich requested "the old stonework" for the reconstruction of the collegiate church of the Ehrlichschen Gestifts, which was consecrated in 1738.

[23] The central panel of Christoph von Taubenheim's epitaph served as an altar slab in the collegiate church, for example, with protruding sculptural work being cut off.

The arched tomb with ceiling paintings was one of the most precious in the cemetery; the Ecce homo was originally surrounded by inscription panels and other decorations.

He was the owner of the Dresden paper mill and found his final resting place in 1578 in the 24th Schwibbogen of the Frauenkirchhof.

Fragments of the epitaph of Christoph von Taubenheim, which was created in 1556 and is therefore the oldest datable tomb in the Frauenkirche courtyard,[33] owns the Dresden Annenkirche.

The central relief of Heinrich von Schönberg's epitaph (1575) with a crucifixion scene was initially transferred to the Eliasfriedhof and used there as a burial monument for the Martiensen-Benads family at the beginning of the 19th century.

Among other things, an alabaster relief from the epitaph of Günther and Sarah von Bünau from 1562 and the essay from the epitaph of Caspar von Ziegler depicting the resurrection of Christ (second half of the 16th century) are also in the possession of the Dresden City Museum, but are not part of the exhibition on Dresden's city history.

[15] Investigations of a grave of an eleven to fifteen-year-old girl found in the block also revealed that some of the dead were buried in colorful everyday clothing.

Some of the findings from the Frauenkirchhof excavations, including restored funeral crowns, were presented to the public in 2005 as part of the exhibition Excavations at Dresden's Neumarkt - At the foot of the Frauenkirche[41] As early as 1680, Anton Weck recognized in his chronicle that the epitaphs in the cemetery and in the church should be preserved for posterity through a description.

[44] Presumably in the 1960s, 13 drawings of epitaphs of different sizes were found in the Kupferstichkabinett Dresden, twelve of which Walter Hentschel was able to identify as depictions of funerary monuments from the Frauenkirche.

In that year, the stonemasons received beer, "do sy denn leichstein zu der sonnenn erhubenn".