Military cemetery in Mauthausen
The international military cemetery Mauthausen, also known as the Italian cemetery , is the largest military cemetery in Upper Austria , is located in the village of Reiferdorf in the cadastral municipality of Haid in the market town of Mauthausen in the district of Perg and contains, in addition to a chapel, monuments and several thousand graves of foreign soldiers , especially Italian and Serbian prisoners of war from the First and Second World Wars as well as concentration camp prisoners. The area was and is the venue for Italian-Austrian peace meetings in memory of the war victims .
history
The military cemetery was initially set up for the prisoners of war who mostly died of typhus between 1914 and 1918 and were buried there in the POW camp in Reiferdorf near Mauthausen . During a visit to the camp, the Bishop of the Diocese of Linz , Rudolph Hittmair, became infected and also died of the disease on March 5, 1915.
Based on a resolution of the General Commissariat for War Graves Care of the Italian Ministry of Defense , individual graves were laid in an extensive block at the end of the 1950s, to which, according to a bilingual leaflet by the Italian Commissariat, 1254 Italian war dead from World War II were reburied from cemeteries and graves throughout Austria. Individual transfers or repatriations to Italy can be carried out at the request of relatives .
A total of 10,845 soldiers from the first and 5,212 war dead from the Second World War are buried in the military cemetery.
Memorials
Monument to the Italian Government
The Italian sculptor Paolo Boldrini , who himself as Lieutenant in this camp internment was initially created in the 1920s on behalf of the Italian government a 4.5 meter high sculpture made of Carrara marble on a one-meter-high flat truncated pyramid , which at 14 June 1922 was inaugurated. The base shows a band of Carrara marble with inscriptions in German and Italian between paved granite bands .
- The inscription on the east side reads: Built by the royal. Italian government in 1920 on application and under the direction of the then Krgref. at Hwst Linz Mjr J. Dollansky. The monument is under the care of the o.ö. Black cross.
- The inscription on the south side reads: Here rest in peace: Italians 1759, Serbs 8000, English 3, French 2, Romanians 2, Poles 7, Russians 7, Czechoslovaks 5, Hungarians 30, Austrians 3, unknowns 7.
- The inscription on the west side reads: Spinti dalle sorti di guerra / su questi campi stranieri / accomunati dalla sorte / in nouve fratellanze profonde / figli d´Italia e Serbia / qui nell esilio han pace. / Possano i nudi spiriti / da un alta libera dimora / rivedere ogni giorno / le dolci patrie lontane. ( By the coincidences of war / pushed onto these foreign fields / united by fate / in new deep brotherhood / have sons of Italy and Serbia / peace here in exile. / May their disembodied spirits / from a free place high above / every day far away / beloved home again. )
- The inscription on the north side reads: Mothers from their distant homeland recommend this monument to the piety of the noble Upper Austrian population.
chapel
The octagonal chapel , built after the First World War, is about ten meters high and has a floor plan of 5.6 × 5.7 meters.
In the cemetery chapel there is a publicly accessible book, an Albo d'Onore with the status, names and grave numbers. Soldiers indicating higher ranks, partisans and civilians , including Italian women. The soldiers were regarded as Italian military internees ( IMI ) who had been transferred to the German Reich in autumn 1943 . A metal plaque in the chapel also shows in which places throughout Austria other Italian war dead (more than 700) remained in the grave sites or were not assigned or could no longer be found.
Visitors
Visit of the military cemetery and memorial effected on the one hand in connection with the visit which is also in Mauthausen and Langenstein -off memorial Mauthausen and Gusen Memorial and also in connection with the use of the Danube Bike Path , Donausteig and St. James Austria .
literature
- Italian military cemetery , in: Monuments - Small and field monuments in the Danube market Mauthausen, Working group for small and field monuments Mauthausen, Linz 2000, 2nd edition on the initiative of the Mauthausen Tourist Association, Linz 2005, p. 84f, ISBN 3-902488-27-1
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Invitation to the 13th Austrian-Italian peace meeting in 2004
Coordinates: 48 ° 14 ′ 49.8 ″ N , 14 ° 32 ′ 46.9 ″ E