Hohrod-Bärenstall

The French municipality of Hohrod is located in the Haut-Rhin department in the Grand Est region. It lies 15 kilometers west of the city of Colmar.

2,460 German soldiers who lost their lives in World War I are buried there. Alsace and the Vosges Mountains were repeatedly the scene of fierce and costly battles. After the war ended, French military authorities exhumed the remains of the dead—who had previously been buried in makeshift graves in numerous communities throughout the region—and reinterred them at the cemetery in Hohrod.

1,518 war dead rest in individual graves, 40 of whom are unidentified. Of the 942 buried in a mass grave, 519 are unidentified. For religious reasons, the graves of six fallen Jewish soldiers were marked with a gravestone made of natural stone instead of a cross.

The home garrisons of the 2,460 German war dead buried in Hohrod were primarily located in Bavaria, Baden, and Württemberg, but also in the Rhineland as well as in Hanover, Braunschweig, and East Frisia.

The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e. V. undertook the initial work to maintain the cemetery based on an agreement with the French military authorities dating from 1926. This included redesigning the entrance, building a rubble stone wall along the street side, and edging the communal grave with rubble stones. The graveyard grounds were planted with heather, shrubs, and several trees. However, the problem of permanently marking the graves remained unresolved—first due to a lack of foreign currency, and later because of World War II.

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. A youth group from the Black Forest initially carried out preliminary gardening work and, in 1971, helped replace the temporary wooden grave markers with metal crosses bearing the names and dates of the interred. As part of this effort, the young people laid heavy concrete foundations, among other tasks.

From 1978 to 1980, the cemetery underwent a comprehensive renovation. The heather planting along the rows of graves was largely renewed, and the tree population was thinned out. New grass paths were created, damaged masonry was repaired, and the entrance gate was replaced. The Volksbund’s maintenance service provides ongoing care for the cemetery.

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.—Hohrod-Bärenstall is one of them.