The German Military Cemetery, Glencree

, This military cemetery was constructed by the German War Graves Commission between 1959 and 1961. It is located, by agreement with the Government of Ireland, in this peaceful setting of an abandoned quarry beside the Glencree River. On the 9th July 1961 the then president of the German War Graves Commission, Herr Walter Trepte, handed over the German Military Cemetery to the care of the Irish Government. 134 war dead, 75 of whom are unidentified, lie buried here. The remains were exhumed and re-interred here from more than 100 burial sites in 15 counties throughout the Republic of Ireland. Six of the burials are soldiers from World War I who died while interned in Ireland and 128 are from World War II., Among them are 80 airmen/sailors who died in either aircraft crashes or whose bodies were washed up on the Irish shoreline and 46 civilian detainees whose ship "The Arandora Star" was torpedoed en route to Canada by a German submarine off the Irish coast., A wrought-iron gate leads along a pathway to the Hall of Honour, the ceiling and interior walls of which show a mosaic pieta by German artists Franz Steigenberger and Konrad van Treeck. Close to the Hall of Honour is a triangular pillar of polished stone on which are carved three poems with similar meaning. These individual poems were written by Stan O'Brien (1906-1967), Irish Educationalist, Artist, Musician and Poet and recipient of the Bundesverdienstkreuz (Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany) for his work on behalf of German children ('Operation Shamrock') after World War II., At the rear of the cemetery, to the right, is a lone upright headstone on which is carved a sword encased in barbed wire and which stood on the original grave of Brevet Major Hermann Goertz in Deangrange Cemetery. His remains were the last to be re-interred in Glencree in 1974., Located on a height impressively overlooking the cemetery is a fine Celtic type High Cross. It was designed and carved in Wicklow granite by Professor Frederick Herkner, a German national who was Professor of Sculpture at the Irish National College of Art., The annual German Remembrance Day Ceremony for all war victims takes place at Glencree each November. , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . ,