Together with the membership card of Orchard House I received a small booklet The Alcotts and Orchard House. Marcia read it with great interest and she came to the section about Lulu, May's daughter and Louisa's later foster child. She was quite excited when she told me that Louisa May Nieriker Rasim (Lulu's full name) had lived the last years till her death in Reutlingen/Germany. Reutlingen is a small town near Stuttgart and only one hour by car away from Karlsruhe where we both study, and so Marcia settled the question whether it would be possible to find and visit Lulu's grave.
The idea pleased me and after a short call the next morning I got the name of the cemetery and the coordinates of her grave. I received this data together with the surprising information, that her urn had been moved to this place just in 1998. (I forgot to ask from where it had been moved)
Some days later we started off to Reutlingen. The old cemetery Unter den Linden was easy to find as it is located near the center and it took only a short walk of about four minutes from the railway station to get there. It took some time till we found the place where she was put to rest, although it is not difficult to find it when you have a description (see below).
Her
urn was buried at the site of the family Ammer, the family of her daughter's
second husband Ernst Ammer. At her side lay the urns of her daughter Ernestine
(Erni) May, Ernestine's husband Ernst and two of Ernestine's sons.
We stood there several minutes in silence, thinking the thoughts that
always come when visiting a cemetery and Marcia laid down some flowers she
had bought at the flowershop we passed....
If
you plan to visit Lulu's grave too, it is easy to find:
Park your car in the center of Reutlingen, e.g. the railway station is a good place. Ask someone to show you the way to the cemetery Unter den Linden or look on the map in front of the station. (You'll have to walk under tracks of the railway to get to the cemetery). You can either take the first entrance or better walk along the cemetery wall and enter the next. If you stand right in front of the main entrance of the church, turn left and walk along the wall until you come to the 10th grave direct at the wall. This is the site of the family Ammer, where Louisa May Nieriker Rasim is buried.