Soldierfriedhof – Wikipedia

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A Soldatenfriedhof (also: Ehrenfriedhof , outdated: Fallen cemetery ) is a grave on which soldiers have been buried during a war. Soldiers’ cemeteries are protected as a military expression of a war grave site.

Soldier cemeteries are not always at the actual theater of war. Some of these systems are separated burial grounds within Civil Cemeteries. Soldier graves can often be found in the spatial connection with prisoners of war or hospitals. Fells were also partially transferred to their homeland and buried there at Ehren cemeteries. According to the British tradition, shipwrecks can also war grave (English, literally translated War grave ) are declared and thus receive the special protection status of the Geneva conventions.

The reason for language change from Soldatenfriedhof to the War graves In the past decades, a large part of the buried were by no means combatants and died as a victim of immediate military fighting, but from the inhumane conditions of the warehouses, for example in captivity. In addition, there are civilian deaths from bombing and the victims of forced labor in the period of National Socialism.

Soldier graves were previously considered to be a place of “heroic memory”, today war burial sites are viewed by the majority of Europeans as places of the warning for peace and against war and violence – especially because of the experiences of the First and Second World War with millions of dead.

The Geneva conventions today provide internationally binding foundations for the system and the preservation of war graves. In the additional protocol from 1977 it says in Art. 34 remains :

“Mutual remains of people who died in connection with a line -up or during an inventory deprivation caused by occupation or hostility, and are paid to people who were not relatives of the state in which they died as a result of hostility; The graves of all of these people are also observed, maintained and marked according to Article 130 of the IV.

– Additional protocol for the Geneva Agreement, June 8, 1977. [first]
British military cemetery Rheinberg was Cemetery 1939-1945
Memorial: „Their Name Liveth For Evermore“

Graves of German soldiers [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

War graves in Saarland

In the Federal Republic of Germany, the Law on the preservation of the graves of the victims of war and tyranny (grave law) . [2] This put the domestic war burial sites into the care of the respective communities. The Volksbund Deutsche Wargräberfürsorge e. On behalf of the federal government, V. is devoted to the task of capturing, maintaining and maintaining the graves of the German war dead abroad.

Most of the buried in Lazarettes at the time of the First World War in soldier’s cemeteries on German soil, in combat acts in the border areas in the northeast and southwest or in the first bombing raids in West Germany. Combats only took place to a comparatively small extent at the beginning of the war on German territory, in East Prussia and in Oberelsass (see border battles#First World War). [3]

During the Second World War, especially from 1944, far more German soldiers and civilians died in the field of today’s Federal Republic of Germany. For example, you are buried in the forest cemetery in Brandenburg, on the Hill Golm on Usedom, the Obermarchtal soldier’s cemetery (Baden-Württemberg) or at the Eversberg Ehrenfriedhof in North Rhine-Westphalia. The soldier’s cemetery Bitburg-Kolmeshöhe in the Rhineland-Palatinate district town of Bitburg became particularly well known by visiting Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl and US President Ronald Reagan on May 8, 1985 and the “Bitburg Controvers”.

Some of the German soldiers who died in both world wars are buried in parishes (→ category: cemetery in Germany), often in separated and as Soldatenfriedhof or Ehrenfriedhof marked areas, for example in the main cemetery of Dortmund, the Öjendorf cemetery in Hamburg or the Cologne south cemetery.

Soviet war graves [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

In Germany there are a total of 760,000 graves of war dead from the Soviet Union. This includes individual graves at parishes and large war graves with tens of thousands of dead. The majority dates from the time of the Second World War, the years from 1940 to 1945. These are soldiers of the Red Army, Soviet prisoners of war or victims of forced labor in the Nazi era.

  • Soviet cemetery in Hagenow (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania)

  • Soviet cenotment meal and war graves in Berlin-Schönholz

War graves of the Commonwealth was Graves Commission [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

Further war graves [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

In Austria, the permanent preservation of soldiers’ cemeteries on Austrian territory falls after the War Graves Act from 1948 to the federal government. But already after the First World War it was regulated in the peace treaty of St. Germain en Laye in Article 171 and 172 that the grave spots of the army and naval members, from the respective government, on whose territory they lie, with To treat and maintain respect are.

After the Second World War, the topic was only regulated in the Austrian State Treaty in 1955. Not only soldiers, but also all civilians who were forced to be brought to Austria are included.

The care of both the cemeteries and individual graves took over the Austrian Black Cross, which they also looked after abroad.

Graves of German soldiers [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

German soldier cemetery near Rovaniemi, Finland
German military cemetery during the First World War on the Eastern Front, around 1916

On behalf of the Federal Government, the Volksbund Deutsche Wargräberfürsorge takes over the care of cemeteries abroad, on which German soldiers are buried. Germany has concluded bilateral agreements with numerous states. German war graves are located in 100 countries around the world, the Volksbund looks after a total of two million war graves in 44 states. [4]

The largest foreign cemetery for German soldiers is the soldier’s cemetery of the Second World War in Sologubowka near Saint Petersburg with 56,416 buried people. Large cemeteries for German soldiers of the Second World War in western and southern Europe are:

Other well -known soldier’s cemeteries are, for example, the German soldier’s cemetery in Belgium for 44,304 German soldiers who fell in the First World War, the soldier’s cemetery Lommel, also in Belgium, with 39.102 buried, the small German soldier’s cemetery in Nazareth in Israel for 261 German soldiers from the first World War II, the Bordj Cedria war burial site in Tunisia with the 8,562 German deaths of the Tunisia campaign 1942–1943 and the German soldier cemetery Maleme in Crete with 4,465 dead, mainly fallen by the air land battle for Crete. Around 9,900 Germans in Greece were buried in the German soldier’s cemetery Dionyssos-Rapendoza near Athens.

Numerous German soldiers are also buried in international soldiers’ cemeteries and memorials, many victims of the Battle of Verdun (1916), for example in Douaumont. The southernmost German soldier’s grave is located on the Kerguelen in southern Indian Ocean.

  • German Feldfriedhof (Soviet Union). In order to enable the ditch in the frozen soil, fire were previously lit over the grave sites.

  • German Feldfriedhof (Soviet Union). Funeral of a fallen lieutenant

  • German Feldfriedhof (Soviet Union at “Schazilki” (??))

  • Cemetery of the IX. RK on the northern edge of Noyons (1914)

France, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

Especially in France and Belgium (e.g. soldiers’ cemetery Lommel) there are large soldiers on which soldiers are buried both of the middle powers and from the area of ​​the British Commonwealth and the United States, which have fallen in both world wars (see memory of the operation overlord).

Numerous soldiers’ cemeteries from the First World War can be found for Verdun, on the Somme, the Ainse (all in France) and in Ydel in Belgium. In Great Britain, the Commonwealth was founded in 1914 Graves Commission; Her first president became Edward, Prince of Wales (later King Eduard VIII). The German counterpart, the Volksbund Deutsche Wargräberfürsorge, was founded in December 1919. The Austrian Black Cross was also founded in 1919. In March 1923, the US Congress established the American Battle Monuments Commission by law.

All German soldiers who died in the Netherlands have been buried in the Dutch soldier cemetery Ysselsteyn, where 32,000 wars of the Second World War are buried. The German soldiers, who were falling in northwestern France and on the canal islands, are located in the Mont d’uisnes soldier’s cemetery. In Andilly there are 33,000 German soldiers of the Second World War in the northeast.

In Luxembourg, 10,913 German soldiers are buried in the Sandweiler soldier’s cemetery. With the exception of the Milder Cemetery Clausen, on which there are 459 soldiers’ graves, all German soldiers fallen in Luxembourg are buried here.

United States [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

Since the Second World War, fallen US soldiers have been transferred back to the United States as possible. American soldiers are buried either, depending on the wishes of the relatives, in their home town or on one of the 139 United States National Cemeteries (National Court of the United States).

In particular, care is taken to ensure that soldiers who came to death on the territory of opposing states will not finally find their last peace on this territory. However, there are US war graves on the territories of the states with which the USA were allied in the world wars or that were neutral. At the Cambridge American Cemetery and Memorial west of the university city of Cambridge in England, a total of 3812 fallen in US soldiers who had to live their lives in France, Italy and North Africa in World War II.

After the Ardennes Battle of the Second World War, US soldiers who had fallen east of the German western border were permanently buried in cemeteries in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. [5]

Denmark [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

24,204 German war deaths, including 14,757 refugees, rest on Danish soil (as of 1966). These were buried on 479 different cemeteries.

In 1962 Denmark and Germany concluded a German-Danish war grave agreement. It stated that many of the dead “for the purpose of better surveillance and care of the graves” to 30 cemeteries on which most of them rest. When the 1965/66 kit was supposed to begin, there was a controversy. [6]

“The War Graves Photographic Project” initially had the goal of photographing every single grave and monument in cooperation with the CWGC (Commonwealth War Graves Commission). This was very popular; It was decided to photograph war graves of all nationalities and make them found in a database. [7] In March 2012 it contained over 1.7 million photos.

  1. ↑ Additional protocol of June 8, 1977 on the Geneva Agreement of August 12, 1949 on the protection of the victims of international armed conflicts , Section III Missing and dead (SR 0.518.521), in the Federal authorities of the Swiss Confederation , [28. October 2007].
  2. ↑ Federal Ministry of Family Affairs: Announcement of the new version of the Gräber Act of January 29, 1993 ( Memento from July 20, 2004 in Internet Archive ) (PDF, 568 KB), October 28, 2007.
  3. ↑ On August 7th, French troops conquered Mülhausen; On August 9th they lost it again. After a renewed conquest, the city and all Alsatian areas fell to the Germans with the exception of the Dollertal and some Vosges heights on August 24 for the rest of the war. General Louis Bonneau commanded the French attack was released by Joffre. (Jean-Jacques Becker, Gerd Krumeich: The big war. Germany and France 1914–1918. From the French by Marcel Küstner and Peter Böttner. Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8375-0171-1, p. 202 ff.; John Keegan: The First World War. A European tragedy. 2nd Edition. Reinbek near Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-499-61194-5, p. 136 ff.)
  4. ↑ The Volksbund Deutsche Wargräberfürsorge e.V. … , Short profile on the official website Volksbund.de , [28. October 2007].
  5. ↑ Martin Fröhlich: War graves and memorials in the district of Düren
  6. ↑ Spiegel.de February 14, 1966: What Danes think . Citation:
    “Most Danes not only criticized the grave contract because it allowed the German to shovel around on their churchyards. Even more, she disturbed that the war graves created by the Federal Republic are privileged:

    Dead Danes usually rest 20, at most 60 years at the request of the relatives. Then their graves are leveled. But the Germans should keep their places in Danish earth forever.

    This eternal relaxation for fallen warriors is not a German, but an American invention. It comes from the US Citizens ‘War and was taken over by the European nations after the First World War-in the hope that the long ranks of soldiers’ graves would remain forever to reconcile peoples.

    The Danes had little understanding for this. Peaceful and not actively involved in arms for arms for 100 years, they make no difference between war and peace dead.

    Eternal relaxation only enjoys kings and celebrities such as the storyteller Hans Christian Andersen, the philosopher Sören Kierkegaard, nuclear researcher Niels Bohr and the pastor and playwright Kaj Munk – shot by the Gestapo as a resistance fighter. And now the Germans claimed the right of the Danish kings. ”

  7. ↑ http://twgpp.org/