Département Meuse, 3,589 German war dead of the First World War and a soldier of the Austro-Hungarian Army. Austro-Hungarian army
The majority of the more than 600 dead had to be walled up in a casemate in the fort, as the constant bombardment of the fort by French artillery made it impossible to recover all the fallen.
The senior physician Dr. Johann Breuer, co-initiator of the German Wandervogel youth movement and publisher of the song collection "Zupfgeigenhansl", rests here. He fell on April 20, 1918.
After the end of the war, the French military authorities dissolved numerous provisional military cemeteries in the area (including Loison with 6 cemeteries, Grémilly 5 cemeteries) and reburied the dead in Mangiennes.
The fallen of the Austro-Hungarian army belonged to the k.u.k. Field Artillery Regiment 206, which had been sent with other artillery regiments to support the German allies on the Western Front, particularly in the Verdun area, from February 1918. The troops resting here belonged to units whose home garrisons were in East and West Prussia, Brandenburg, Silesia, Saxony, Thuringia, Hesse, Hanover, Westphalia, Baden, Württemberg, Bavaria, Lorraine and Alsace.
Repair work between the wars
Initial work to improve the condition of the cemetery was carried out by the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V. (German War Graves Commission) on the basis of an agreement reached with the French military authorities in 1926. As early as the fall of 1928, the Volksbund was able to commission the necessary earthworks. The communal graves were edged with natural stone and the graves were planted with greenery. in 1930, more than 250 trees were finally planted. 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
After the conclusion of the Franco-German War Graves Agreement of July 19, 1966, the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V. - with financial support from the German government - was able to undertake the final landscaping of the German military cemeteries of the First World War in France. Prior to this, young volunteers from the Volksbund cleared overgrown trees and bushes and created the conditions for new plantings. They also helped to renew the greenery on the graves. in 1969, the previous temporary wooden grave markers were replaced with natural stone crosses engraved with the names and dates of those buried here.
Of the 3,589 fallen, 3,332 rest in individual graves; five remain nameless. In the two common graves with 257 victims, 116 remain unknown.
For religious reasons, the 17 graves of the fallen of the Jewish faith were marked with a natural stone headstone instead of a cross, the Hebrew characters of which read: 1 (above) "Here rests buried.... ." 2. (below) "May his soul be bound into the circle of the living."
The design of the entrance with a gate between natural stone walls followed. A high cross forms the center of the complex. The names of the known dead in the communal graves were engraved on stone plaques and attached to the enclosing walls.
Maintenance
The cemetery is constantly cared for by the Volksbund's maintenance service.
