German casualties from the First and Second World Wars are buried at the Noyers-Pont-Maugis war cemetery.
Cemetery description
The Noyers-Pont-Maugis war cemetery is located around five kilometers south of the town of Sedan, not far from the border with Belgium. The site consists of two cemeteries. The First World War cemetery is divided into two blocks. The cemetery of the Second World War consists of eight blocks. The grave markers in blocks 1 to 4 are horizontal grave slabs for two fallen soldiers each due to the hillside location. There are groups of crosses in this section. In blocks 5 to 8 and on the First World War cemetery, there are grave crosses bearing four or six names each. The common grave for the dead of the Second World War is located above the Plattenweg. It contains seven known and 30 unknown dead. It is marked by a horizontal memorial stone made of gray sand-lime brick. An eleven-metre-high cross made of grey granite was erected on a bastion. A terrace offers a view of the Meuse Valley and the Belgian Ardennes. The visitors' room in the vestibule contains the name books. A path leads from the entrance building up the slope to the memorial hall. The interior is designed as a cross vault and is illuminated by three round windows made of colored glass. The statue of a female figure made of shell limestone, created by Prof. Dr. Kurt Schwippert, stands here as a symbol of mourning for the fallen of both world wars.
Occupancy
Almost 26,900 dead rest on the site in Noyers-Pont-Maugis, around 14,000 from the First World War and almost 12,800 from the Second World War.
History
in 1922, the French authorities established a German war cemetery on the ridges west of the Meuse, where they reburied the German soldiers who had fallen in this area during the First World War. In 1940, there was again fierce fighting in the Sedan area during the Second World War. The fallen were initially buried by the wayside and in makeshift cemeteries. Between 1940 and 1942, they were reburied by the Wehrmacht burial service in a special field next to the First World War cemetery. After the end of the war, the French buried some of the soldiers. By the time the Franco-German War Graves Agreement was signed in 1954, 4,880 dead from the Second World War had already been laid to rest here. As part of the agreement, the German government entrusted the Volksbund with the burial of the dead from the wider area and the landscaping of the cemetery. The reburials began in the summer of 1959. The war cemetery was consecrated on September 17, 1966.
