Département Moselle; 2,002 German war dead, 3 victims of the k.u.k. Austro-Hungarian army
First World War
The Fey German military cemetery was established by the French military authorities in 1923 as a collective cemetery for German war dead, whose temporary graves were located in the west and northwest of Metz between Gravelotte and Ars up to the area of the Priests' Forest near Flirey. Further bodies were recovered south of Metz from areas between the Moselle and the Northern Vosges. Some of those buried lost their lives at the beginning of the war during the "Battle of Lorraine" in mid-August to early September 1914 as a result of the extremely hard fighting in the Priests' Forest - west of Pont à Mousson.
In the years 1915-1917 as well as in the "quiet periods" between the major battles. The defensive battles in the final phase of the war in October-November 1918 were particularly costly, with many soldiers succumbing to their injuries in the military hospitals or dying from accidents and illnesses at the front and in the stages. The soldiers resting here belonged to units whose home garrisons were mainly in Bavaria, but also in Lorraine, Westphalia, West Prussia, Poznan, Silesia, Brandenburg, Baden, Württemberg, Saxony and the Rhineland.
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 responsible French military authorities in 1926. In 1931, the planting of trees, shrubs and a hedge surrounding the entire cemetery began. A new entrance was created in the form of a forged gate between pillars of red Vosges sandstone. The communal grave was given a new border made of the same stone material. A monolithic memorial stone crowned by a copper cross was erected as the central marker. 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 begin the final design of the German military cemeteries in France from the time of the First World War. Young volunteers from the Volksbund had already carried out preliminary gardening work beforehand.
In 1973, the previous temporary wooden grave markers were replaced by metal crosses with the names and dates of the dead cast into them. Here too, young people helped to move the 35 kilogram concrete foundations. The Bundeswehr took care of the transportation.
Of the 2,005 fallen, 1,484 rest in individual graves; 18 remain unknown. In the common grave with 521 victims, 176 remained unnamed. For religious reasons, the five graves of the fallen of the Jewish faith were marked with a natural stone stele instead of a cross. The Hebrew characters read: 1. (above) "Here rests buried .... ." 2. (below) "May his soul be interwoven into the circle of the living."
