Vladslo German War Cemetery

The Vladslo German War Cemetery, about 10 km northeast of Diksmuide, is the resting place of over 25,000 German soldiers who died in Flanders between 1914 and 1918. The landscape of flat basalt crosses and low oak grave markers is deliberately sombre, in contrast to the tidier rows of white headstones in Allied cemeteries. Each dark cross carries two names; many graves hold multiple soldiers buried together.

What draws visitors here beyond the sheer scale is the sculpture by Käthe Kollwitz at the far end of the cemetery — "The Grieving Parents," two kneeling figures in dark stone representing the artist and her husband mourning their son Peter, who is buried nearby. The work is in no way triumphant or heroic; it is simply grief made permanent in stone. The cemetery is freely accessible and worth the detour from the main Diksmuide sights.

things to do sight
A story
In 1914, eighteen-year-old Peter Kollwitz was killed near Vladslo. His mother, the sculptor Käthe Kollwitz, spent fifteen years working through her grief before completing "The Grieving Parents" — two kneeling figures in dark basalt lava, placed in the cemetery in 1932 overlooking her son's grave. The pair are among the most powerful works of mourning in Western art, and seeing them here, among the flat oak grave markers and dark basalt crosses, in the place they were made for, is unforgettable.