Buzancy

Département Ardennes 5,923 German war dead 1 fallen of the Austro-Hungarian Army First World War The German military cemetery in Buzancy was established after the end of the war by the French military authorities as a collective cemetery for the German fallen who had been given a temporary burial place in 47 surrounding municipalities and districts or who were later found when the battlefield was cleared. There was also a cemetery in Buzancy - the headquarters of an army corps command during the war and equipped with several military hospitals - where the severely wounded in particular were given a first resting place. A small number of those resting in the cemetery today lost their lives during the German advance in 1914, but most of them died during the transition to positional warfare from fall 1914 to January 1915 and during the battles in Champagne in February/March and fall 1915. Further heavy losses were suffered during the battles in the Argonne Forest, where some of the enemy positions were blown up as a new weapon of war, and during the German retreat from September to November 1918. The fallen belonged to units whose home garrisons were located in almost all countries and provinces of the then German Reich. Repair work between the wars The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V. (German War Graves Commission) carried out the first work to improve the condition of the cemetery in 1928 on the basis of an agreement reached with the responsible French military authorities in 1926. This included the planting of trees and shrubs, the greening of the graves and the erection of a high cross made of natural stone. However, the problem of permanently marking the graves remained unresolved due to a lack of foreign currency and the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. Final design Following the conclusion of the Franco-German War Graves Agreement of July 19, 1966, the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V. - financially supported by the German government - was able to begin the final design of the German military cemeteries in France from the time of the First World War. In addition to a thorough landscaping overhaul, the communal grave was surrounded by natural stone walls and the entrance area was redesigned with natural stone walls and a forged gate. A grove-like character was achieved through extensive tree planting. As early as 1965, young helpers from the Volksbund's youth camps had been actively involved in greening the grave area. In 1972, the temporary wooden grave markers were replaced by metal crosses with the names and dates of those buried here cast into them. The year before, volunteers from the Volksbund's youth camps had again moved the 35-kilogram concrete foundations for the new crosses, which had been transported to the graves by the German army. Of the 5,923 fallen, 3,106 rest in individual graves. Seven of them remain unknown. There are 2,817 victims buried in the common grave. The names of only 170 are known. For religious reasons, the twelve graves of the fallen of the Jewish faith were marked with a natural stone stele instead of a cross. The Hebrew characters read: 1. (above) "Here rests buried .... ." 2. (below) "May his soul be interwoven into the circle of the living."