Historical Information (Volksbund)

4.643 German war dead First World War

The German military cemetery Proyart was laid out by its own troops during the so-called "Great Battle in France" in March 1918. After the end of the war, the French military authorities enlarged the cemetery considerably by adding beds to the German dead who died in British hospitals or in captivity and had been provisionally buried in 27 local areas.

In the thirties, more than 500 dead were found during the recultivation of the former battlefields and buried in Proyart. From August 1914 to the beginning of the Battle of the Somme at the end of June 1916, only a few deaths lay in the cemetery.

The number rose suddenly with the breakout of the Allied offensive, especially since numerous British hospitals began their activities in Proyart and the surrounding area. However, more than half of those resting here died during the German offensive in March / April 1918, the subsequent positional war and the Allied counter-offensive that began in July 1918 and threw the German lines back on Peronne in the course of August.

Those resting here belonged to troops whose home garrisons were in almost all Prussian provinces. The Marine-Inf.-Rgt. 1 to 3, who also suffered heavy losses in this area.