The chemist and historian of gravemarkers Friedrich Karl Azzola was born in December 1931 into a Siebenburger Saxon family in the Romanian Carpathians. With the collapse of the government in September 1944, Azzola's family left all their possessions behind and fled to Germany, passing through a number of waystations before settling in the state of Hesse. In the early 1950s, Azzola was employed as a skilled woodworker, studying evenings to earn a degree in chemistry at the University of Giessen and a doctorate at the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt in 1965 for electron micrographic research on the morphology and topochemistry of beech wood and beech cellulose.

Following five years work in the chemical industry, Azzola was called to the Fachhochschule Wiesbaden-Russelsheim as professor, where he taught chemistry and materials science to engineers until his retirement in 1997. His success in his vocation was matched by a unique productivity in his avocation. Beginning in the 1950s, Azzola earned a wide reputation for research in "cemetery culture." Although he covered wide terrain in the course of his publications, Azzola specialized in the iconography of Medieval and early modern German gravemarkers, and particularly those that provide a graphic or other indication of the occupation.