This tomb has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since September 2023.
Burial
6,046 German dead from the First World War are buried at Saint-Mihiel Cemetery. In addition, two soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian army are buried here. Austro-Hungarian Army - Hungary, who belonged to the 35th Infantry Division. After the end of the war in 1918, the French military authorities enlarged the cemetery: they transferred a number of dead from 48 municipalities and districts to Saint-Mihiel, who had been provisionally buried by the troops in many places during the war.
Those resting here today belonged to units whose home garrisons were mainly in Bavaria, but also in West Prussia, Poznan, Silesia, Hesse, Brunswick, Saxony, Baden and the Rhineland. Of the 6,046 German casualties, 2,969 rest in individual graves. Seven of them remain unknown. Of the 3,077 fallen in communal graves, 636 remain unknown. For religious reasons, the graves of the Jewish soldiers were given a natural stone headstone instead of a cross.
History
The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e. V. (German War Graves Commission) undertook the initial work to maintain the cemetery on the basis of an agreement with the French military authorities in 1926: it added young trees and shrubs, designed the entrance with monolithic pillars and a forged gate and planted the grave area with greenery.
The communal grave was bordered with natural stone and flanked by two troop monuments that had been transferred to Saint-Mihiel with the dead from abandoned German cemeteries. 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 - with financial support from the German government - began to finally design the German military cemeteries in France.
In St.-Mihiel, there were difficulties at first because the surrounding land was initially military and later privately owned. Nevertheless, young people who supported the Volksbund on a voluntary basis began preliminary gardening work in the 1960s.
in 1972, the temporary wooden grave markers were replaced with metal crosses with names and dates cast into them. Among other things, the young helpers laid concrete foundations weighing 35 kilos for the crosses. The Bundeswehr took care of the transportation.
During the fundamental restoration of the site, the Volksbund added trees and shrubs, restored the natural stone walls and monuments and planted new greenery on the graves. The names of the dead in the common grave can be read on natural stone slabs on the border.
The cemetery is constantly looked after by the Volksbund's maintenance service.
Special feature
In September 2023, UNESCO declared 139 cemeteries of the First World War as World Heritage Sites. 24 German cemeteries are in the care of the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V. - St. Mihiel is one of them.
