About three kilometers southeast of Leipzig's center lies a botanical garden of nearly two hundred acres, a haven amid what is today an energetic modern European city. This verdant ground hosts the Leipzig South Cemetery, opened in 1886 on a bold plan by the architect Hugo Licht and the Leipzig landscape gardener Otto Wittenberg. The concept of the Südfriedhof—the integration of a civic burial ground and a planned green space resembling an English garden—was relatively new at the time, modeled on similar projects elsewhere. Its creation speaks to the rapid expansion of Leipzig's population, as rural Germans increasingly turned to industrialized urban environments, and cities continued to absorb the villages that had grown up around their medieval walls. But there is more than pragmatism here. The cemetery's remarkable aesthetic betrays a restless optimism anchored ultimately in Bismarck's unification of the Reich in 1871, and in a collective sense that the city Goethe had once cited in Faust for its educated citizenry was rising to realize a grand cultural mission.

Entering at the east gate and turning right off the central promenade at the first opportunity, one soon emerges in a small clearing, the meeting of several pathways that marks the eastern end of the cemetery's eleventh partition. There, adjoining a corner grove of evergreen, stands the stone that marks the resting place of Karl Straube, his wife Hertha, and their daughter Elisabet. By the standards of this cemetery's grand monuments, artworks in their own right created by the likes of Klinger and Seffner, this one is modest, easy to miss were it not for its relatively isolated position at this peaceful crossing of ways. The three names appear in equal lettering, none larger than the other, in the order of their passing: Elisabet (1904–1924), Karl (1873–1950), and Hertha (1876–1974). The only additional piece of information appears under the second of these: Thomaskantor 1918–1939.