Friedhof Roggeveld

About

The Friedhof Roggeveld (Ehrenfriedhof nr. 156) was a German military cemetery on Roggeveld, a hamlet of Esen in the Belgian city of Diksmuide. At the cemetery about 1530 German soldiers rested from the First World War. The cemetery was evacuated in 1956.

Esen was at the front. At the Battle of the Iron, the place fell into German hands in October and November 1914. On the hamlet of Roggeveld there was a German rest quarter. The old inn "'t Roggeveld" was put into use by the German as "Ortskommandatur." The inn "'t Nieuw Roggeveld" as emergency hospital. During these first battles a cemetery was set up here.

The cemetery remained in use, and after the war, in the 1920s there were more than 1530 graves here. Peter Kollwitz rested at the cemetery. His mother was artist Käthe Kollwitz, who created a sculpture group, the "Treorent Parents," which was placed in the cemetery in 1932. In the 1950s several smaller German cemeteries were evacuated in the region, and the graves were concentrated in some large German cemeteries. The cemetery on the Roggeveld was so cleared, and...