German military cemetery Futapass

The German military cemetery Futapass (Italian Cimitero militare germanico della Futa ) is the largest military cemetery in Italy. According to the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge, 30,800 German soldiers who died in Italy during the Second World War rest here .

location

It is located on the Futapass (Italian Passo della Futa , 903 m) in the Apennines and in the Mugello near Traversa, a district of the municipality of Firenzuola . It is located about 40 kilometers north of Florence and 40 kilometers south of Bologna on state road 65 near the regional borders of Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna .

history

Gravestones, wall ring and monument

The pass was part of the Gothic line that was supposed to stop the advance of the Allied troops. In the period from April 9 to 21, 1945, there was bitter fighting north of the pass near Bologna. Most of the buried fell at the end of August 1944 between Carrara on the Ligurian Sea and the Rimini area .

According to the agreement of December 22, 1955 between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Italian Republic on war graves in Bonn and its ratification by the Italian legislature on August 12, 1957 through Act 801, the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge commissioned the architect Dieter Oesterlen with the realization of the 1959 Project. In addition, the garden architects Walter Rossow and Ernst Cramer and the sculptor Helmut Lander were involved in the planning and execution. The forging is done by Fritz Kühn .

The soldiers were transferred from the surrounding field graves and community cemeteries in the provinces of Bologna , Florence , Forlì-Cesena , Lucca , Modena , Pesaro and Urbino , Pisa , Pistoia , Ravenna and Reggio Emilia and in some cases were identified. With 30,683 dead, it is the largest German military cemetery in Italy.

Cemetery and monument

The area covers an area of 12 hectares. There are a total of 16,000 stone slabs made of granite for 72 grave fields covered with wild grass, which are spiral-shaped by a 2000 meter long wall with 67 natural stone crosses. For every two graves there is a stone slab measuring 70 × 140 cm. At the highest point of the cemetery is the main monument, which at the end rises like a pyramid as part of the spiral wall. This last part of the wall includes the main courtyard . The crypt with 397 graves is located under the main courtyard . The smaller crypt, known as the Cervia room , contains the grave slabs of the former military cemetery in Cervia , which were moved when the graves were moved. The cemetery was inaugurated on June 28, 1969.