Established during World War I, the cemetery originally held 3,233 wartime burials.

The cemetery is administered by the German War Graves Commission (Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge).

The cemetery also contains a pair of statues – The Grieving Parents[2] – by Käthe Kollwitz, a noted German sculptor.

[3] She made the statues in the 1930s as a tribute to her youngest son, Peter, who was killed in October 1914 and is buried in the cemetery.

The eyes on the father-figure gaze on the stone directly in front of him, on which Kollwitz's son's name is engraved.