Evangelical Lutheran Cemetery

The town of Ilisesti is located in the county of Suceava in what is now Romania. The town was originally called Illischestie, and lay an area known (and still known by some today) as Bukovina (or in German "Buchenland"), which was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Beginning in the 1770's, at the invitation of the Hapsburg Monarchy, German farmers settled in Bukovina, coming in search of arable land, which there was a severe shortage of in their German homeland. It was in this way that Illischestie originated, settled at first by 12 families from Germany, for which the main street in Illischestie was named - "Zwoelfer Strasse". The majority of the Germans who settled in Illischestie were Evangelical Lutherans. They built a church there, and this cemetery was created for the German Evangelical Lutherans' final resting place. In the late 1800's, land was becoming scarce fo