German War Graves Commission

Updated on Oct 10, 2024

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Abbreviation VDK Legal status Association Budget 41.2 million EUR (2013) Headquarters Kassel Number of volunteers 8,000		Formation 16 December 1916 Membership 114,098 (2013) Founded 16 December 1916 Staff 571 (2013)

Purpose To locate, maintain, care for German war graves outside of Germany Region served Europe and North Africa (45 countries) Motto Work for Peace (in German: Arbeit für den Frieden)

The German War Graves Commission (Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge in German) is responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of German war graves in Europe and North Africa. Its objectives are acquisition, maintenance and care of German war graves; tending to next of kin; youth and educational work; and preservation of the memory to the sacrifices of war and despotism.

Foundation in 1919

It was founded as a private charity on December 16, 1919 as the recognised [German] Commission under the war graves provisions of Article 225 of the Treaty of Versailles.

Members, Offices

By the 1930s, the Commission had established numerous cemeteries for German World War I dead. During World War II, the Volksbund's work was mostly carried out by the Wehrmacht's own graves service.

After World War II, the Volksbund resumed its work in 1946 and soon established more than 400 war cemeteries in Germany. In 1954, the German chancellor Konrad Adenauer, tasked the Volksbund with the establishment, care and upkeep of German war cemeteries abroad.

Philosophy

To guard the memory of the victims of war and violence, to work for peace among all nations and to guarantee dignity of men, are the main goals in the statutes of the German War Graves Commission. All activities of German War Graves Commission have to harmonize with these general principles.

Members and private donators

The Commission spent about 41 million Euro (in 2013). Two-thirds of this sum was financed by members and private donations. One third was paid by government (war graves outside of Germany) and states (maintenance of some war graves within Germany).

Casualties, war graves, prisoner of war graves

The commission looks after "832 military cemeteries in 45 countries with about 2.6 million dead" and its work is carried out today by 8,000 honorary and 571 full-time employees. Since the end of the Cold War, the Volksbund has access to Eastern Europe, where most World War II German casualties occurred. Since 1991, 188 World War I cemeteries and 330 World War II cemeteries in eastern, central and south-eastern Europe have been reconstructed or rebuilt and about 759,110 bodies have been buried in new graves. Maintenance of German war cemeteries in France is looked after by the Service d'Entretien des Sépultures Militaires Allemandes (the "German Military Burials Maintenance Service") known as S.E.S.M.A..

With 46 foreign partner countries bilateral war grave agreements were settled by the year 2013. Requests on foreign war graves in Germany will be dealt with by German War Graves Commission.

On behalf of German Government the construction, repair and care of German War cemeteries outside of Germany is dealt with by the section care and repair of war cemeteries (in German: Referat Friedhofspflege und Bauunterhaltung). In 2010 the workload covered more than 330 war cemeteries of World War I and World War II and more than 800 war cemeteries/memorial sites of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71.

The German War Graves Commission (Volksbund) cooperates with and uses the files of Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt) in Berlin (Register of German soldiers killed in action or who became prisoners of war). This bureau collects and preserves data and dog tags of active German soldiers of World War II. The Volksbund is in close contact with other tracing services, e. g. the German Red Cross. Information gathered on occasion of exhumation of bodies will be recorded by Volksbund. These records will be transferred to other tracing institutions in order to identify missing people (for example, by dog tags) and by updating files.

The commission searches for war casualties and when found they are transferred to central cemeteries in Eastern Europe, Germany and Western Europe by the Volksbund exhumation servie (in German: Umbettungsdienst). There were 36,943 exhumations in the year 2013. Search for undetected burial places of war casualties is done by records of WASt, time witnesses, historical photographs of World War II cemeteries, assistance of local people and when new roads or houses are built. Names of missing soldiers are remembered, e.g. in Rossoschka German war cemetery on cubes out of granite as memento for the family members and as warning sign for future generations in their effort to live in peace.

The exhumation service documents in a draft manual document for each body of a soldier found the grave site, the dog tag (if still there), the rests of clothes and other individual belongings, human height, characteristics of human skeleton, state of dental notation to make it easier to identify later unknown soldiers.

From about 6,200 cemeteries for German prisoners of war 180 were reconstructed (state: 2011). All cemeteries for prisoners of war can not be maintained. So only a selection of prisoner of war cemeteries will serve the memory for those who died in war captivity.

War grave database online

The German War Graves Commission offers an accessible online database of 4.6 million individual names for World Wars I and II.

War cemeteries and war dead of World War I and II inside of Germany are also documented in these files (895,561 in 2010). Among these are war dead transferred to Germany or persons who died within Germany. But only those are registered whose remains were transferred to war cemetery areas within civil cemeteries but not to individual family graves.

Further in this database persons can be found who died by aerial bombing of cities, as prisoner of war or in imprisonment, partly foreign members of German auxiliary troops who died in World War II or even some members of Wehrmacht who died before World War II began.

A grave research demand (Grabnachforschungsauftrag in German) can be sent online or as hardcopy to Volksbund (German War Grave Commission) to clarify the unknown fate of a German soldier. As some family names are very common it is important to mention all given names and the date of birth of the missing soldier. As additional data should be given if available: date of death, last unit (Truppenteil in German) and last letters. Often withdrawing troops could not bury their casualties. Detailed data on the war dead of World War I were destroyed in Berlin during World War II, by aerial bombing in February 1945, when the files of the bureau Zentralnachweiseamt für Kriegerverluste und Kriegsgräber (ZNA) were lost.

War cemetery database online

Volksbund has also an online database on war cemeteries. Data collected for each cemetery are location (geography), how to reach, number of dead, course of military events in the region and architecture of the cemetery. The search for war cemeteries can also be done in geographical order (country, cemetery).