Département Aisne , 1613 German war dead First World War
The Viry-Noureuil German military cemetery was established in 1919 by the French military authorities as a collective cemetery for the German war dead who were provisionally buried scattered over 29 communal areas. More than 100 of those buried here lost their lives in August and September 1914 in the fighting during the German advance to the Marne and the defensive battles after the retreat from the Battle of the Marne. During the subsequent transition from the war of movement to the war of position, there were sometimes very fierce battles with heavy losses in order to achieve the best possible position. Almost 85% of those resting here were victims of the battles and skirmishes of 1918, in particular the major German attacks from 21 March in the direction of Amiens and Compiegne and the defensive battles when the Allies launched large-scale counterattacks in July and August. The troops resting in Viry-Noureuil belonged to units whose home garrisons were in East and West Prussia, Pomerania, Mecklenburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Brandenburg, Saxony, Lower Saxony, Westphalia, Thuringia, Hesse, as well as in the Hanseatic cities of Bremen, Hamburg and Lübeck.
Repair work between the wars
The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e. V. (German War Graves Commission) carried out the first work to improve the condition of the cemetery on the basis of an agreement made with the French military authorities in 1926. This involved extensive planting of trees and hedges, greening of graves and paths, design of the entrance area with a forged gate and natural stone wing walls, edging of the communal graves with natural stone walls and erection of a memorial in the form of a sarcophagus. This was made according to a design by Prof. Geiger, Munich, by a sculptor from Metz, who was a member of the construction team at Reims Cathedral.
However, the problem of permanently marking the graves remained unsolved 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 undertake the final design of the German military cemeteries of the First World War in France. In addition to a fundamental landscaping overhaul, the previous temporary wooden grave markers were replaced in 1976 with metal crosses bearing the names and dates of those buried here. The German Armed Forces supported the Volksbund by, among other things, transporting the 35 kilogram cross foundations required for the metal crosses. Participants in the Volksbund's youth camps placed them at the graves. Of the 1,613 fallen, 1,198 rest in individual graves; one remains unnamed. In the two communal graves with 415 victims, only eleven are known by name.
For religious reasons, the five graves of a fallen of the Jewish faith were given a gravestone made of natural stone instead of a cross, the Hebrew characters of which read:
1. (above) "Here rests buried ... ."
2. (below) "May his soul be included in the circle of the living."
Maintenance
The cemetery is constantly cared for by the Volksbund's maintenance service.
