Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
A tomb of the unknown soldier is a special form of war memorial that commemorates the fallen soldiers who cannot be identified by name in a particular war or in all wars . In many wars of the past, but especially in the trench warfare of World War I , the fallen soldiers were buried anonymously in mass graves .
In a figurative sense, the tomb of the unknown soldier does not only stand for the soldiers who died anonymously in an unknown location, but also represents the tomb of every soldier who died in the war or who died from war-related wounds, and is often a symbolic cenotaph (empty grave) .
Algeria
The Monument to the Unknown Soldier of Algeria is located in the port city of Bejaia .
Australia
Since November 11, 1993, Australia has also had a grave of the Unknown Soldier. It is located in the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra .
Bulgaria
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Sofia is in the immediate vicinity of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral . There is a sculpture of a lion at the entrance, an eternal flame burns in front of the monument . The first three lines of the poem "The new grave at Slivnitsa" by the poet Ivan Wasow are carved in the stone :
"БЪЛГАРИЙО, ЗА ТЕБЕ ТЕ УМРЯХА, ЕДНА БЕ ТИ ДОСТОЙНА ЗАРАД ТЯХ И ТЕ ЗА ТЕБ ДОСТОЙНИ, МАЙКО, БЯХА!"
In German:
"Oh Bulgaria, they died for you, you were only worthy for them, and they were for you, oh mother!"
Germany
In Germany , the Neue Wache in Berlin serves as the central memorial for the victims of war and tyranny. Wreaths are laid here during state visits.
The Neue Wache initially served as a memorial for those who fell in the coalition wars against Napoléon I , and from 1931 for those who fell in the First World War .
In 1960, the government of the GDR dedicated the rebuilt Neue Wache to the "victims of fascism and militarism". Since 1969 it has been the tomb of an unknown German soldier and an unknown concentration camp prisoner.
In 1993 the government of the Federal Republic of Germany dedicated the Neue Wache to the memory of the “victims of war and tyranny”.
France
During the First World War , the right of fallen soldiers to an individual grave was recognized; However, under the conditions of this war, many corpses of the fallen had been physically destroyed and thus no longer identifiable or even nowhere to be found. France was the first to find a way out of this dilemma . On November 11, 1920, the body of an anonymous soldier who died in the Battle of Verdun was buried under the triumphal arch .
The measure was very controversial in the National Assembly . The parliamentary left preferred to bury the unknown soldier in the Panthéon , where traditionally the heroes of the republic were honored. The place under the triumphal arch seemed to them to inappropriately emphasize the glory of war. To accommodate the left, the heart of Léon Gambetta , who had organized the national resistance in the Franco-Prussian War (1870/71), was transferred to the Pantheon on the same day . The tomb was accepted by relatives and relatives of fallen soldiers. They visit it to this day to express their grief there.
The soldier's origin is unclear. In 1925 the magazine "Der Stahlhelm" claimed that the unknown soldier was the German soldier "August Schultz von Württemburg".
Gambia
In Gambia, the tomb of the unknown soldier is located directly behind the triumphal arch " Arch 22 " in the capital Banjul.
Greece
The tomb of the unknown soldier is located in Athens on Syntagma Square . It was erected on the parliament building in 1923 .
There is an hourly change of guard in the Evzones . On Sundays and public holidays, the changing of the guard is celebrated at 11:00 a.m. with a parade of the Evzones and a military band. This begins behind the parliament building at the Evzones camp and leads through Vassilissis Sofias Allee to the tomb of the unknown soldier, where the changing of the guard takes place. The Leoforos Vasilissis Sofias and the Leoforos Vasilissis Amalias will be closed to traffic for about 10 minutes on this occasion.
Italy
The tomb of the unknown soldier is located in the Monumento Vittorio Emanuele II (Vittoriano) in Rome . General Giulio Douhet proposed the construction of the tomb in the Pantheon on August 24, 1920 , and Parliament then unanimously decided on August 4, 1921 that Vittoriano should be the site. A commission selected eleven unknown Italian casualties from the First World War, of which Maria Bergamas from Trieste , mother of a fallen war volunteer, was to designate one for the tomb in the Basilica of Aquileia on October 28, 1921. Since she collapsed before the tenth coffin, it was taken and brought to Rome from October 29 to November 2, 1921 by train at a slow pace with great public sympathy and buried in Vittoriano on November 4 . The tomb is under the equestrian statue of King Victor Emanuel II ; on the outside there is always a guard of honor , inside the monument the tomb is part of a crypt . Wreaths are laid on the outside of the tomb on major holidays and state ceremonies.
Japan
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was erected in 1959 at the Chidorigafuchi National Cemetery and houses the remains of more than 358,260 unidentifiable war dead - mostly soldiers, but also civilians who died outside the country.
In Ogose the prefecture Parliament Saitama the "tomb of the unknown soldier of the world" (1955 at the initiative of Vice President 世界無名戦士之墓 Sekai Mumei senshi no haka built), where the 2.5 million fallen soldiers of World War II from more than 60 Nations is thought.
Austria
The tomb of the unknown soldier is located in the outer castle gate of Vienna's Heldenplatz . On October 26th, the national holiday, the fallen and missing of the two world wars are commemorated here regularly.
Poland
In Warsaw in 1925 the tomb of the unknown soldier was installed in the former Saxon Palace on Piłsudski Square and an honor guard was introduced for it. Towards the end of the Second World War, the palace was destroyed when the German Wehrmacht withdrew , only the part of the building with the tomb remained somewhat intact and could be restored again. In later years an Eternal Flame was also lit.
Russia
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The Moscow Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is located in the Alexander Garden at the Kremlin . This is where the Soviet fallen in World War II is commemorated. There has been an honor guard since 1997 , which changes every hour. It is the tradition of newly married couples to lay a bouquet of flowers at the tomb and to commemorate their ancestors.
Serbia
The Monument to the Unknown Soldier on the Avala was erected between 1934 and 1938 by the Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrović on behalf of Alexander I on the Avala in the southeast of Belgrade .
Czech Republic
The tomb of the unknown soldier of the Czech people with a memorial for the fallen is located in Prague near the national monument on Vitus Hill .
Ukraine
The tomb of the unknown soldier is in Lviv .
There has been a 'Tomb of the Unknown Sailor' in Odessa since 1960.
United Kingdom
In Great Britain, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is located in the entrance area of Westminster Abbey in the center aisle, so everyone - including members of the royal family on official occasions - has to walk around the tomb and pay his respects to it. Since 1919, the British monarch has been honoring the fallen at the Cenotaph in London's West End on the Sunday closest to November 11th . Both places are adorned with (artificial) poppies , which in the collective memory of the British are associated with the four battles of Flanders .
United States of America
The central Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is located in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington , Virginia, near Washington. The changing of the guard is every half hour in summer and every hour in winter.
The War Graves Commission ( American Battle Monuments Commission , ABMC) gives the following information about the inscription of the graves of unknown soldiers in the various American war cemeteries of the Second World War: If the origin of a fallen victim is unknown, the tombstone bears the wording "Here Rests in Honored Glory to American Soldier Known" but to God ”the words Here Rests in Honored Glory a Comrade in Arms Known but to God .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Time Magazine, Monday, March 2, 1925 “Foreign News: German or French?”
- ↑ Milite Ignoto In: Enciclopedia Italiana di scienze, lettere ed arti , Roma: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana , 1934, on treccani.it
- ↑ AFP: Kerry visits 'Japan's Arlington' in apparent US Yasukuni push. October 3, 2013, accessed on August 12, 2017 .
- ↑ "kiw": Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi visited Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. In: Welt Online. June 1, 2005, accessed August 12, 2017 .
- ↑ 世界 無名 戦 士 之 墓 慰 霊 大 祭 (せ か い む め い せ ん し の は か い い い い た い さ い) . Ogose Congregation, accessed August 12, 2017 (Japanese).
- ↑ according to christoph-links-verlag, p. 101 , photograph no.131.
- ^ ABMC, on the history of the organization ( accessed Mar. 26, 2017).