German Cemetery in Tarabya / Istanbul

[Kurt1959]

Dear colleagues,

a new headline to introduce the story of the German Cemetery in Tarabya / Istanbul. With this and the following small articles I want to give some information about the place and some of the service members who were buried there in WW I .

best regards

Klaus

The cemetery is located in Tarabya[1], the most northern part of Istanbul. Here, on the slopes of the west shores on the Bosporus, the cemetery was founded 1914 with the first burials. Today on four terraces some 677 fallen soldiers from both world wars are buried. Most were later shifted from other cemeteries in Turkey to this place. The graves which are marked with white marble headstones are marking actual tombs, while the old headstones and commemorative tables which were placed in the stone walls do not. On the stone wall of the forecourt on the lowest patio eight brass boards were placed to the left and to the right of the Kolbe monument on which all names of the soldiers buried here were written.

The history of the cemetery in Tarabya began initially with the donation of a 18 hectare park-like area by Sultan Abdul Hamid II (1876 - 1909) to the German Kaiser Wilhelm I in 1879. The estate was given to the German diplomatic re-presentation to build a summer residence in which the diplomatic staff could live and work during the warm months of the year. The 17.66 hectare area, with an estimated value of about half a million golden marks at the time, was handed over by signature of the former Ambassador Prince Heinrich VII Reuss to the German Empire on 7th of June, 1880. In a telegramme from Berlin dated 22nd May, 1880 the appreciciation of this donation to the German empire was expressed briefly:„ ...His majesty sees in this a new proof of the friendship of the sultan and accept the present with special thanks...“

In 1885 the German Reichstag granted the funds to establish suitable embassy buildings on the area. During the years between 1897 and 1901 the summer embassy was build by the German master-builder Dörp based on the revised plans of the architect Cingriyan. The enchanting park and buildings are still in the possession of the Federal Republic of Germany.

The German military presence in Istanbul increased from 1914 onwards due to the intensified training programme. The unusual climate and the lack of vaccination against tropical illnesses caused the death of German soldiers in Istanbul. Initially Germans were buried on the cemetery in Skutari (today Üsküdar, close to the present UK cemetery) or one of the other three German cemeteries in Istanbul, but then the park of the summer residence has been selected to become a cemetery. Here German soldiers were buried who had died in the military hospitals in and around Istanbul or had fallen in combat actions.

In August, 1915 the German cemetery commission was on the suggestion of Navy Attaché Commander Humann in Istanbul. The task of the established commission was to guarantee worthy funerals of the fallen soldiers and to manage the war cemetery in Tarabya. In addition a fatigue party[2] from the Mediterranean division „Mittelmeerdivision“ with a strength of 22 men under the command of a petty officer was put up for the works in Tarabya at the beginning of April, 1916. The money for the necessary materials and plants for the cemetery came from donations and special funds[3].

After the death of Ambassador Baron von Wangenheim[4] Richard von Kühlmann took over as new Ambassador. He knew the sculptor Georg Kolbe who had created relief sculpture for a German Belgian war cemetery in Belgium. On the instigation of the cemetery commission Georg Kolbe was commanded to Istanbul in order to direct the artistic arrangement of the war cemetery in Tarabya. In the meantime Kaiser Wilhelm II had approved „the burial ground in the embassy park of Therapia“.

Kolbe was tasked to create a monument. The choice of the motive for the sculpture, even in the planning phase, was not undisputed because Kolbe did not, as usual common in this time, want to display a heroic soldier but wanted to express a wider theme. His motives behind these considerations are not known but it may be that he wanted to include civilians who were burried on this cemetery. His draft design of an angel in the motherly shape holding a dying warrior was approved by the cemetery commission.

When in October 1917 Kaiser Wilhelm II came for a short visit to Turkey he also visited the war cemetery which he had agreed to be build. He also examined the Kolbe sculpture[5] which was still in progress. The German Kaiser did not like the sculpture, because he desired a heroric figure and deeply disappointed the sculptor with his bitter criticism. Ambassador Kühlmann wrote about this moment in his memoirs: „ In Therapia my friend, the sculptor Georg Kolbe worked on a monument for the German warriors fallen during the war in the orient. Unfortunately, his design did not have the luck to find the pleasure of the emperor. I calmed down the very low-spirited artist and told, the Kaiser is very impulsive and often expresses himself in such a distinct manner; he should not take it tragically, but instead adapt in the details which he had criticised and continue the work quietly. Wilhelm II has never seen the ready monument at the height of the embassy park.“ [6]

Beside this piece of art that he had made from a five-ton-mussel lime block, Kolbe also created the architectural outline for the cemetery. His idea was the arrangement of the graves on the slopes above the Bosporus in terraces. In 1918 Dr. Siegfried Emmo Neulen was commissioned as a grave officer to Turkey. Because the cemetery in Tarabya was not finished yet, he used the Protestant cemetery in Feriköy, a suburb of Istanbul – at that time named Ferikop – as the graveyard for fallen soldiers of the German Asian corps and made preparations to transfer the remains of German soldiers which were resteing still along the Anatolian railway, in Syria and Palestine to this collective cemetery in Istanbul.

With end of the war and the expulsion of the German soldiers in October, 1918 work on the cemetery Tarabya ended, although according to article 225 of the Versailler contract Germany was still responsible for the care of the German soldier's war graves in Turkey[7]. However, the dead soldiers in Turkey remained not forgotten in their home country. For example, Gustav Stresemann had initiated a offertory immediately after the BRESLAU had sunk in January 1918 for a monument stone to remember the fallen soldiers of the GOEBEN and BRESLAU crews. In a letter written in 1922 he wanted to know „whether the monument was really established“. Nevertheless, such a monument was never built, because the cemetery commission had used the of 25,000 Reichsmark collected by Stresemann already in 1918 for the construction of the cemetery in Tarabya which had cost a total of approx. 130,000 DM. It seems that in those times donations were not forthcoming.

After the war the German cemeteries were initially without care because Germany had no own diplomatic representation and was represented only by one German located at the Swedish Embassy in Istanbul. In 1921, 48 German soldier's graves had to be transferred from the German cemetery in Feriköy to Tarabya because the property leased by Germany had been sold without knowledge of the tenants in 1914 to a French monastry. The new owners required the prompt clearing of the property[8]. Therefore, in the beginning of 1925 there were only the soldier's cemeteries in Tarabya with 198 graves and Skutari with 88 graves in Istanbul.

After the war the estate in Tarabya came under supervision of the Allied Powers, which did not undertake the maintenance of the park or the cemetery. The cemetery remained unfinished until 1924. So far five terraces with the support walls were built but not finished. Not before 1924 Rudolf Nadolny[9] became Ambassador in Istanbul the cemetery came out of forgottenness. Nadolny described the work at the cemetery: “The war cemetery was laying elevated from the Bosporus and needed particular care. [...] In the lowest part a relief made by the sculptor Kolbe was mounted [[10]]. Towards the Bosporus a forecourt with a balustrade and cedars was laid out from where it commands a view to Bujukdere and till the Black Sea. A new path allowed direct access to the road. The graves were assembled along three terraces. In the one in the centre were only three graves, the one of Field Marshall v. d. Goltz, the one of Ambassador Count v. Wangenheim und the one of the defense attachè Colonel v. Leipzig. Each one was covered with a marble top. I arranged to put to each of these three graves a stylizesed Iron Cross made of black marble. The other 201 graves of soldiers and nurses were marked with wooden crosses which were trailed by roses. Finally I directed to build a motorpump at the well to sustain the cemetery with water. The Turks who celebrated a memorial service every year at the birthday of Field Marshall v. d. Goltz at his grave showed their satisfaction about the well maintained graves and its surounding. Once a time a father came from Germany to exhume the corpse of his son and to translate the remains to Germany. We went together to the cemetery. When the father stood at the grave of his son and looked towards the Bosporus he said after a while of silence: “No, I will leave him here. It will be never as beautiful at home as it is for him here beside his comrades.” In Skutari was another German war cemetery. After this was restored as well I arranged later that the remains of the German soldiers, who died at the Dardanelles and were buried there, were translated to Skutari.” [11]

In 1925 a representative of the „Reichsbauverwaltung“ from Berlin visited the cemetery and recommanded the completion of the cemetery. From 1926 the Volksbund[12] supported the renovation with 4000 Reichsmark per year. In addition the Foundation of German Iron foundries volonteered to donate 196 cast-iron corsses. However, the crosses never appeared and 1932 wooden crosses were still marking the graves.

In November 1935 employees of the constuction bureau of the Volksbund visited the cemetery at the Bosporus in order to make recommendations for a central monument to commemorate all fallen German soldiers in Turkey. However even basic preparations like topo-graphical survey to support this endevour were never executed. Instead there was made a plan for the cemetery to centralize all known German war graves in and around Istanbul.

During the time of the national socialistic regime in Germany and World War II the property in Tarabya was also used for training and hero worship of the national socialistic movement which was also entrenched within the German population in Istanbul. In the park the local Hitler Youth conducted exercises and a shooting range was built. On the cemetery a big wooden cross was errected with the writting „Faithful until death“ and members of the Hitler Youth and SA periodically conducted ceremonies. On the back of the picture below was written: „German honor guard hour at the Bosporus. At the marvelous located war cemetery of Stambul, from where a wide ranging view over the Bosporus is commanded, a moody memorial service in combination of the money collection campaign of the German Kriegsgräber-Fürsorge took place. The church court received a honor guard by the members of the German SA from Stambul, the graves were beautiful decorated. – picture shows the central point of the Gemran cemetery at the Bosporus with the SA – honor guard.“ This cross is still there between old wooden waste as a forgotten relict on the estate in Tarabya.

From 1962 the remaining German cemeteries in Istanbul, for example the war cemetary Skutari, had be desolved because of the costs of maintance. Remains were be translated to Tarabaya. With this closing, a number of marble plates were shifted to Tarabya, which are now located at the extention part of the cemetery.

1979 the Volksbund finally decided to assemble all fallen soldiers from Turkey at the cemetery in Taraby. For that reason the cemetery was surveyed in spring 1980 and an extention area at the slopes built in order to accomodate the translation of remains from different parts of the country. Remains of some 220 fallen service members from different cemeteries were finally buried in Tarabya. On 10th October 1982 the new cemetery was solemnly inaugurated. Participating in this ceremony, were the German Ambassador, representatives from the Volksbund, guests from Germany and representatives from the Turkish military including the Commander of 1st Army Orgeneral Haydar Saltik and the Commander of the 3rd Corps in Maslak, Korgeneral Doğan Güres.

The war cemetery is still maintained with great care. Ist serene beauty is the result of the of Mr. and Mrs. Richard E. Meier and some 15 gardeners working over the past 20 years. In October Mr. And Mrs. Teksoy took over this task and continue this important work with new ideas and ambition.

Since a number of years at the German Remembrance Day „Volkstrauertag“ a common memorial service of the German Ambassador, the German Consul General und the German soldiers who are serving at the NATO Rapid Deployable Corps Turkey (NRDC-T) has been conducted. Also a Turkish delegation has always taken part in the wreath laying ceremony. In 2012 also diplomats and officers from aother nations present in Istanbul took part in the ceremony.

The cemetery and park is open after registration at the german consulate general in Istanbul. The wide park area is also used for other events, i.e. the German school or for movie shootings. For examples the outdoor shootings for the famous Turkish series „Muhteşem Yüsyıl“ was made here.

In some further chapters, following this general description, will discribe more episodes around the cemetery – mainly the story about some of the persons who were buried here. But also the question what really happend to the German war graves of the battle of Gallipoli happened should be answered.

[1] In this area in former times warm healing wells were located, from which the greec name „Therapia“ (healing) came, which later changed into Tarabya. After a severe earthquake in 1894, which destroyed almost the whole city, also this well was covered and never came back to life.

[2] BA/RA 40 / 729, S. 18

[3] Fischbacher, Tarabya, S. 12

[4] Von Wangenheim died 25th October 1915 in Istanbul because of a brain stroke

[5] Georg Kolbe was compared with other artist of his generation priviliged during the war. He never went to the frontlines and continued with his artistic work. Between 1917 and 1918 he stayed in Istanbul also for different artistic works.

[6] Metger/Goltz, Von Konstantinopel nach Ankara, S. 301

[7] Auswärtiges Amt, Akte R 48065

[8] AA/PA, R 48064, German Representative at the Royal Swedish Embassy in Konstantinopel the the Ministry of Foreign Affairs 17. August 1921

[9] German Ambassador in Istanbul and later in Ankara 1924 - 1932

[10] Apparently the relief was not mounted after the critism of the Kaiser but was stored in Tarabya

[11] Nadolny, Mein Beitrag, S. 93

[12] Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge = German War Grave Commission

[paul swann]

certainly more pleasing to the eye than the German cemeteries in France & Flanders.

RIP.

[Kurt1959]

here more impressions...

[egbert]

Thanks Klaus for the historic excursion. Truly a marvel of silence in busy Istanbul.

R.I.P.

[michaeldr]

Thanks Klaus,

a very enjoyable tour

and I am looking forward to seeing and learning more here

regards

Michael

[Kurt1959]

Here is a picture which I recently received and shows the cemetery in 1917

[Warwick]

Does anyone recognise the cemetry?

I came across these two tiny (passport sized) photos of a cemetry. I suspect they were taken in Salonika by my GG Uncle just after the end of the war.

sorry I cannot get them any bigger or clearer!

Many thanks

Warwick

[apwright]

Interesting photos! One grave-marker shaped and painted like an Iron Cross, and several like the Bulgarian Orthodox cross. I doubt the Entente forces would have bothered with such niceties for POWs, so I'd say it's a cemetery somewhere behind Bulgarian/German lines which your GGuncle encountered during the final advance.
But where? Somewhere coastal or beside a lake... Maybe near Doiran. Or Xanthi seaplane base. Or anywhere on the Black Sea.
What a pity we can't read the names!

Adrian

[Kurt1959]

And here a prominent visitor of the cemetery in 1917...

[egbert]

Looks like an annoying matter of duty for Wilhelm. But what the heck should I expect from despotic emperors, kings, generals, presidents and such contemporaries who do not care about those entrusted to their leadership and misuse their people as canon-fodder.

The dead deserve better remembrance.

[Warwick]

Adrian, I think you are correct - well spotted and thank you!

It makes sense as he was posted to Constantinople from Salonika at the end of the war (March - April 1919) with the 22nd Division Theatre company to entertain the occupying forces

I have no clues as to why he took (and kept) the pictures - that will forever remain a mystery to me I suspect

Kind regards

Warwick

[michaeldr]

See above – Posted 27 January , 2013 - “Thanks Klaus, a very enjoyable tour and I am looking forward to seeing and learning more here”

At last, after nine years, the Gallipoli Association and their May 2022 Hidden Gallipoli Tour have permitted me to fulfil my ambition and to visit Tarabya. This visit was not only thanks to the GA, but also to Battle Honours Ltd, who over-see these tours on their behalf. In particular however, this visit was thanks to Colonel Klaus Wolf. He not only managed to get permission for the GA to enter what is still today diplomatic property, but he also took the time to guide us over the ground here and to ensure that no significant element was overlooked.

We could not go into the villa itself, but understood its importance as the site where the treaty between the German and Ottoman empires was signed on 2^nd August 1914, and which thus ensured that Turkey entered the war on the side of the Central Powers.

Ambassador von Wangenheim was instrumental in securing that alliance, and he too remains here in Tarabya.

In Çanakkale Naval Museum we had already seen some parts of the hull of UB-46 and here in Tarabya we saw the memorial to her crew.

This cemetery holds not only graves and memorials to soldiers, sailors and diplomats, but also there are nurses buried here too.

           

           

The grounds here are very extensive, being the largest granted to any diplomatic body in Istanbul. Not only is the site well wooded and the gardens beautifully maintained, but the hillside provides marvellous views over Tarabya and the Bosphorus.

A most impressive site and cemetery. If given the chance of visiting here, then the opportunity should certainly not be passed over, but should be grabbed with both arms.

[seaJane]

(Moving off topic somewhat, Tarabya / Therapia was also the site of the Royal Naval hospital during the Crimean War. Its staff included a team of nurses led by Mrs Eliza MacKenzie. Florence Nightingale went there to convalesce, and there are some naval graves in the old part of the cemetery.)

[michaeldr]

Hi Jane,

Thank you for pointing out this locality's connection with Florence Nightingale; fascinating.

In ancient Greek times the place was called Pharmakia or Therapeia (Θεραπειά) which alluded to the healing springs found there. So it was highly appropriate that a hospital should have been sited there.

There is more on the British links to this area to be found in this article https://thecrimeanwar.com/yazi/therapia-road

As the above article points out, the British graves in what had previously been the Therapia Crimean Cemetery, have now been moved to Haidar Pasha Cemetery [https://www.cwgc.org/visit-us/find-cemeteries-memorials/cemetery-details/49601/haidar-pasha-cemetery/]

According to the title of this file FCO 9/1472, the area which had previously been that cemetery has, since 1971, been allowed to revert to nature:

see https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C11011586

[egbert]

thanx for the latest pictures. Truly a marvel.