Langemark German Cemetery or Deutscher Soldatenfriedhof

What you see depends upon where you’re standing.
C.S Lewis

I discovered a new perspective on Ieper's war cemeteries while we were wandering yesterday ... Deutscher Soldatenfriedhof or Langemark German Cemetery, a German burial ground, something I hadn't imagined the reality of.

There was a different feeling to that found in the Commonwealth cemeteries ... it began as a small group of German graves in 1915, later the unknown German dead were exhumed from locations all over Flanders and taken to Langemark for reburial. It resulted in 24,917 unidentified German soldiers being reburied in the Kameraden Grab – a 'Comrades Grave', an area which probably goes some way towards explaining the deep sadness that hangs over the cemetery.

The total number of soldiers buried or commemorated in Langemark stands at 44,234. Eight soldiers are buried in a plot marked by a flat stone inscribed with their names, when known. In recent years research by the Volksbund has identified 16,940 of the 24,000 previously 'unknown' soldiers buried here and since 1984 their names have been inscribed on granite blocks by the communal grave.