On foot of the funeral decress introduced by Joseph II there are virtually no headstones or marked graves in Vienna cemeteries dating from the closing years of the 18th century. Further, it was customary for bones to be dug up from grave plots after from seven to ten years and ploughed back into the ground to make way for further interments. Constanze Mozart went to the cemetery in 1808 but could not find where her late husband had been buried. As the 1856 centennial of Mozart's birth approached, further enquiries were instigated by the Vienna city authorities and a best estimate made of where he may have been buried but it was still only a guess. Buried in known graves in St. Marx are Franz Niemetschek, Johann Albrechtsberger, Maximilian Stadler and Anna Gottlieb, all characters in the Mozart story and the grave of Josef Rothmeyer, the 1808 gravedigger, has also been identified in recent times. Alois Blumauer and Franz Xaver Sussmayer (who completed the Requiem and died in 1803) are buried in unmarked graves as is Mozart's infant son, Johann Thomas Leopold.
