Quedlinburg

The Quedlinburg Central Cemetery was laid out according to plans by the Wroclaw garden architect Hans Pietzner and opened in 1904. The layout of the cemetery was based on the extensive landscape parks of the 19th century. There is a military cemetery on the east side of the chapel. The main memorial of the war cemetery is dedicated to the deceased of the prisoner of war camp, which was located at the gates of the town on Ritteranger. The memorial was created in 1917/18 by the sculptor C.E. Poirier based on a design by the architect C.E. Seigneur. The monument has an aedicule with a relief and inscriptions. Surrounded by a cross field, the names of 444 dead are engraved on the back of the monument. The first burial was for an infantry corporal from North Africa who fought for France. 559 war dead are buried here in total. Of these, 147 were German soldiers who died in the Quedlinburg military hospital between November 21, 1914 and July 14, 1919. Stone crosses were erected for the dead from March 1917. Inmates of the Quedlinburg prisoner-of-war camp were also buried in the cemetery. Between September 25, 1914 and February 26, 1920, 700 prisoners of war died in the camp, including 412 Russians, 155 French, 101 British and 32 Italians. Initially, wooden crosses were erected for the deceased prisoners of war, which were made by the prisoners. They also had to look after the POW graves. The memorial was financed by donations from the prisoners of war. The inauguration of the memorial took place on June 30, 1918. The camp commandant had invited guests to the ceremony. Representatives of the town of Quedlinburg and the local military attended. During his speech, Quedlinburg mayor Bansi promised: "[...] these graves and the beautiful monument crowning them are in good hands with us for all time. We will protect and care for them as we do for our own brothers. With this assurance, I take over the memorial for the city of Quedlinburg." While the French, British and Italians were exhumed in the 1920s, the Germans and Russians remained buried here. The memorial was renovated in 2014 and on July 16, 1997, two sandstone plaques naming the fallen of the Second World War were inaugurated. The bodies of 912 prisoners from the Langestein-Zwieberge concentration camp were transferred to the crematorium of the central cemetery for cremation. After 1945, a memorial was erected to the victims from Poland, the Soviet Union, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Luxembourg, Romania and Germany.