Langemark German War Cemetery

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Langemarck War Cemetery (1932)

The German military cemetery Langemark in the Belgian town of Langemark (older spelling Langemarck) is a cemetery for 44,304 German soldiers who died in the First World War during the Battle of Flanders in 1914 . It is related to the Langemarck myth .

history

Dedication of the Langemarck monument on July 10, 1932

Immediately after the Battle of Flanders in 1914, Langemark had become a special symbol of German propaganda . In 1928 the Council of the Confederation Internationale des Etudiants, made up of representatives from more than forty national student associations , met in Paris . On their trip, German student representatives drove through West Flanders to visit the battle sites of the First World War, particularly Langemarck. There they noticed that the fallen English, French and Belgian soldiers were buried in well-tended cemeteries, while there was no cemetery for the German soldiers. Instead, they found individual graves overgrown with weeds and fallen crosses with inscriptions such as “Unknown. German". After this observation, the German student body decided to expand the "German military cemetery No. 123" near Langemarck. The "Langemarck donation of the German student body" was established to finance the event , and the Langemarck Committee for University and Army celebrations were held - in 1929 with 15,000 participants in the Berlin Sports Palace. The foundation stone was laid in 1930; 10,500 German soldiers were reburied. On the occasion of the inauguration of the cemetery on July 10, 1932, the Munich writer Josef Magnus Wehner , who was himself wounded on the Western Front and joined the NSDAP a year later, gave a speech that was later widely used; at the same time commemorations took place throughout the German Reich.

"The storm of the so-called student regiments of volunteers in the Flemish region of Langemarck on November 11, 1914 became a symbol of the students' willingness to make sacrifices and the military senselessness of their blood toll."

- Konrad Jarausch

location

Former concrete shelter and row of steles from student corporation associations
Stone at the entrance to the military cemetery
View from the memorial cross in the northeast corner of the area
Commemorative plaque with the inscription " 44,061 German soldiers from the 1914/18 war are resting in this cemetery"

The German military cemetery Langemark is located at the northern exit of the village, on the road to Houthulst-Diksmuide.

layout

Figure group “Mourning Soldiers” by Emil Krieger

You enter the cemetery through an entrance building made of red Weser sandstone. Inside there are two memorial rooms. The left-hand room contains a map of Belgium carved in wood, showing the location of the previous and current cemetery locations. The name book and a condolence book are also located here. The room on the right contains - carved in oak panels - the names of the well-known fallen soldiers who were lying in this cemetery before the start of the great communal campaign between 1956 and 1958.

When you leave the entrance building, a small courtyard leads to the large communal grave in which the remains of more than 25,000 unknown German soldiers rest. The Volksbund was able to determine the names of approximately 17,000 . These are cast in bronze panels, which - attached to heavy stone blocks - were placed on three sides of the communal grave. In the background you can see the group of figures of four “grieving soldiers” cast from bronze, which are the work of the sculptor Emil Krieger . The cemetery itself is planted with oaks and surrounded by a wall with a ditch in front of it. In the northern area, part of the former German front line is marked by three restored bunkers and granite blocks in between. These blocks bear the names of troop units that were involved in the fighting and student associations that contributed to the expansion of the cemetery through donations between the wars.

Redesigns

This cemetery, which was lifted out of the group of four main cemeteries in Flanders as the “student cemetery”, was redesigned in 1957. As a result of numerous relocations from soldier cemeteries that were subsequently abandoned and also individual soldier graves from Flanders, 44,304 German soldiers are buried in the cemetery. The cemetery is now open, crosses have been removed and replaced by simple slabs, which, lined with pedunculate oaks, form a harmonious image in the Flemish landscape.

In 2006, a tunnel-like building was erected on the north side, in which three sequential film sequences are shown, depicting images from the war, a geographical overview of the location of the places and former military cemeteries in the region and the history of the Langemark military cemetery.

In 2015 the entrance building, the paths and the areas of the war cemetery were renovated. On October 16, 2015, it was reopened with a solemn commemorative event organized by the Volksbund Deutscher Kriegsgräberfürsorge eV in the presence of, among others, the German Ambassador in Belgium, Rüdiger Lüdeking.

Graves

  • Werner Voss , German fighter pilot in the First World War

Cemetery as a memorial

View through the tunnel of the memorial

The cemetery is a memorial to the fact that many young volunteers were knowingly sent to their deaths and that many dead were no longer identifiable. The political and military failure was played down by propaganda. The cemetery has 100,000 visitors annually.

There is an information and memorial site between the cemetery and the associated parking lot. Access from the parking lot to the cemetery leads through this. The information and memorial site is designed in the form of a dark tunnel. Information about the First World War and the Battle of Flanders is provided on screens installed in the tunnel, while on the opposite side several "loopholes" provide a view of the cemetery.

See also

literature

  • Karl August Walther (Ed.): The Langemarck book of the German student body. Koehler, Leipzig 1933.
  • Ernst Loewy : Literature under the swastika. The Third Reich and its poetry. A documentation. European Publishing House, Frankfurt am Main 1966.
  • Ernst Keller: Nationalism and Literature. Langemarck, Weimar, Stalingrad. Francke, Bern et al. 1970, ISBN 3-317-00011-2 .
  • Helma Brunck: Ideological currents in the German fraternity during the Weimar Republic and National Socialism. In: then and now. Yearbook of the Association for Corporate Student History Research . Vol. 45, 2000, pp. 161-175.
  • Rainer Ludwig: "Plant the pillars of the empire in the decay of the world!" On the history and conception of the German war cemetery Langemarck-Nord . In: Burschenschaftliche Blätter . tape 119 , no. 4 , 2004, p. 117-122 .
  • Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge eV: Information sheet Belgium - German war gravesites. Kuthal, Aschaffenburg 2008.

Web links

Commons : German War Cemetery Langemark  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge eV on Langemark, accessed on July 7, 2012
  2. ^ Daniela Lehmann: Construction site in Belgium. Volksbund renovates Langemark and Vladslo. In: peace. Vol. 91, No. 1, April 2015, ISSN  2196-4734 , p. 19, ( digital version (PDF; 2.26 MB) ).
  3. ↑ Jürgen Feldhoff: A place of horror and lies. In: Lübecker Nachrichten , from November 13, 2011, p. 3
  4. ^ Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge eV on Langemark, accessed on April 18, 2015

Coordinates: 50 ° 55 ′ 12 "  N , 2 ° 55 ′ 1.2"  E