Fallen memorial Notre-Dame-de-Lorette

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Ring of memory

The Fallen Memorial Notre-Dame-de-Lorette (French Mémorial de Notre-Dame-de-Lorette , English Notre Dame de Lorette International Memorial ) is a monument completed in 2014 in memory of those who lived in the region around the memorial in the First World War fell . The "Ring of Memory" ( Anneau de Mémoire ) is located on the edge of the "Notre-Dame-de-Lorette" military cemetery near Ablain-Saint-Nazaire .

description

The memorial was designed by the Parisian architect Philippe Prost on behalf of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region and opened by President François Hollande on November 11, 2014, the 96th anniversary of the 1918 armistice . Prost placed an elliptical ring made of concrete with a circumference of 328 meters in the hillside below the military cemetery; at 58 meters the ring hovers freely over the slope. Inside, 500 metal steles list the names of almost 580,000 fallen in northern France in alphabetical order, without any reference to their nationality. The design of the memorial is reminiscent of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, designed by Maya Lin in 1981. The construction costs amounted to over 6.5 million euros.

The steles name 241,214 Commonwealth soldiers (including many from Canada , South Africa , British India , Australia and New Zealand ), 173,876 German soldiers and 106,012 soldiers from France and its colonial empire .

In Britain there were persistent reservations about this form of commemoration. Queen Elizabeth II mediated; eventually the Commonwealth War Graves Commission participated in the project.

Desecration of Muslim graves

576 Muslims who fell for France are buried in the cemetery. Their graves face Mecca. Muslim graves were desecrated three times between 2014 and 2016. In 2016, strangers sprayed graffiti , including swastikas , on 500 Muslim gravestones .

See also

Web links

Commons : L'Anneau de la Mémoire  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Diameter at the widest point 129 m, at the narrowest point 75 m
  2. ↑ Joseph Haniman: Above the Abyss . Süddeutsche Zeitung , November 11, 2014, p. 12.
  3. ↑ Notre Dame de Lorette international memorial review - a different perspective (2014) in The Guardian
  4. ↑ New monument near Notre-Dame-de-Lorette in northern France connects former opponents of the war (2014) in Westfälische Nachrichten
  5. ↑ a b FAZ.net November 11, 2014: A memorial for all those who fell
  6. ↑ Article in the Telegraph
  7. ↑ Homepage of the Center

Coordinates: 50 ° 23 '59.4 "  N , 2 ° 43' 12.3"  E