This tomb has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since September 2023.
Burial
This war cemetery in the Département of Ardennes is home to 1,843 German dead from the First World War. On the neighboring French cemetery, 2,476 fallen soldiers are buried, including members of the Czech Legion, which fought alongside the Allies against the Germans in the First World War. Like the French cemetery, the German military cemetery in Chestres was set up by the French military authorities as a collective cemetery. The dead from more than 40 surrounding communities and districts were exhumed from provisional graves and transferred to Chestres.
A small number of the fallen died during the advance of the German armies in the summer of 1914 and in the military hospitals in Vouziers and the surrounding area. However, the majority fell during the defensive battles in September and October 1918. After the end of the war, German prisoners of war who died in captivity were added to the list.
The soldiers buried in the cemetery belonged to units that had their home garrisons in almost all Prussian provinces and in the countries of the former German Reich.
Of the 1,843 fallen, 874 rest in individual graves; four remain nameless. In a common grave with 969 victims, 873 remained unknown. For religious reasons, the five graves of fallen Jews were given a gravestone made of natural stone instead of a cross.
History
The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e. V. (German War Graves Commission) undertook the initial work of maintaining the cemetery in 1927 - based on an agreement with the French military authorities from the previous year. However, the problem of permanently marking the graves remained unresolved - first due to a lack of foreign currency and later because of the Second World War.
After the conclusion of the Franco-German War Graves Agreement of July 19, 1966, the Volksbund - financially supported by the German government - began the final design of the German military cemeteries in France. in 1972, it replaced the temporary wooden grave markers in Chestres with permanent gravestones made of natural stone with the names and dates of the dead engraved on them.
in 1974/1975, the Volksbund implemented a landscape gardening design concept. It planted trees and shrubs, renewed the hedge as an enclosure and renovated the memorial, which dated back to the First World War. The entrance was fitted with a wrought-iron gate. The communal grave was given a natural stone border.
Special feature
Around 200 of those who were reburied in Chestres were originally buried in the nearby village of Falaise - in a military cemetery that the German Reserve Infantry Regiment No. 236 had established next to the communal cemetery. The regiment had built a chapel between the two sites in 1917, with the names of its fallen and those of other units engraved on granite slabs on the back wall.
After the reburials, the Falaise chapel almost completely fell into disrepair, but was completely restored between 2010 and 2014 by a local citizens' initiative and - through the mediation of the German War Graves Commission - thanks to the Püttlingen reservist comradeship from the Saarland. A visit to the chapel on the south-western edge of the village cemetery is highly recommended.
In September 2023, UNESCO declared 139 First World War cemeteries as World Heritage Sites. 24 German cemeteries are in the care of the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V. - Chestres is one of them.
