Cerny-en-Laonnois

7,546 German soldiers who fell in World War I are buried here at this cemetery in the Aisne department. In the adjacent French military cemetery, 5,125 soldiers from all parts of the country are laid to rest. In 1924–1925, the cemetery was significantly expanded with additional burials from the Chemin-des-Dames battle zone. Most of those buried here died during the fighting from the fall of 1914 through the spring of 1915, during the major French offensive in April/May 1917, during the German offensive in May 1918, and during the retreat battles in September/October 1918.

Those laid to rest here belonged to military units whose home garrisons were located in Westphalia, Brandenburg, Saxony, Württemberg, Schleswig-Holstein, and West Prussia. Regiments from the Rhineland, Lower Saxony, and Mecklenburg suffered particularly heavy losses.

Of the 7,546 fallen soldiers, 3,553 are buried in individual graves. Of these, 66 remain unidentified. A total of 3,993 victims are buried in a mass grave. Only 964 of them are identified by name. For religious reasons, the twelve graves of Jewish soldiers were marked with a natural-stone stele instead of a cross.

The Volksbund carried out initial work to improve the condition of the cemetery in 1928. This was based on an agreement with the relevant French military authorities dating from 1926. The Volksbund planted trees and roses, erected a hedge as a boundary, and landscaped the grave sites. The problem of permanently marking the graves remained unresolved due to a shortage of foreign currency and the outbreak of World War II in 1939.

Following the conclusion of the Franco-German War Graves Agreement on July 19, 1966, the Volksbund—with financial support from the Federal Government—began the final landscaping of the German military cemeteries in France.

In 1974, a comprehensive landscaping overhaul of the entire cemetery grounds began. In the process, the Volksbund expanded the tree population, enclosed the communal grave with natural stone masonry, planted roses, landscaped the graveyard, and redesigned the entrance with a wrought-iron gate.

In 1972, the Volksbund replaced the temporary wooden grave markers with natural-stone crosses engraved with the names and dates of those laid to rest here.

In September 2023, UNESCO designated 139 World War I cemeteries as World Heritage Sites. Twenty-three German cemeteries are under the care of the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V.—Cerny-en-Laonnois is one of them.

Photo by the German Armed Forces: Matthias Krebbers