A resting place for two world wars

Blumau brings together the war dead of two catastrophic conflicts in a single, carefully tended ground. The Volksbund records some 4,499 buried here—roughly 4,001 dead of the Second World War and 435 of the First, whose comrades rest in a shared grave in one of the blocks. Inscribed tablets at the entrance give a more personal breakdown of the nations represented: thousands of German soldiers from 1939–1945, hundreds of soldiers of Austria-Hungary from 1914–1918, and over a hundred war dead of various other nations. Most of the remains were exhumed from scattered battlefield graves, field cemeteries and local burial plots in the Wiener Neustadt region and transferred here.↗↗

Built over the late 1970s and early 1980s through a joint effort of Austrian and German war-graves bodies, federal and provincial authorities and neighbouring communities, the cemetery was consecrated on 14 September 1985. It was the final mass graves site the Volksbund laid out in Austria; day-to-day care has since passed to Austria's Ministry of the Interior, while volunteer and military work parties still tend the hedges, clean the crosses and renew the names.↗↗

What to notice

The design is deliberately restrained. The field of graves is divided into four blocks filled with low crosses cut from natural Waldviertel granite, the stone's soft grey catching the light across the open plain. Planted banks inside the site and a broad protective belt of greenery around it close off the view of the surrounding training grounds and gravel pits, so the interior feels enclosed and calm.↗

You enter through a small building housing visitors' and caretakers' rooms, and from there the eye is drawn to the centre, where a tall forged high cross stands above the rows of graves. It is the cemetery's defining monument and the gathering point for commemorative services. Reading the inscriptions on the individual crosses and on the marble grave slabs—each name freshly renewed by caretakers—is the heart of any visit.↗↗

Visiting the cemetery

The cemetery lies just off the Sollenau–Neurißhof road, immediately beside the municipal cemetery of Blumau and right at the boundary of a restricted military training area. The setting—flat, wide-open and on the margins of the small village of Blumau-Neurißhof in the Baden district—explains both why so many scattered war dead were gathered here and why the planting was used to shield the graves from their industrial and military surroundings.↗↗

As a place of burial, it asks for a respectful, quiet visit rather than a tour: walk slowly along the paths, pause at the high cross, and keep voices low. If you are researching a particular relative buried here, the Volksbund's online grave-search service is the practical starting point before you come, since staff on site cannot guarantee access to individual records. The grounds have a wheelchair-accessible entrance and parking, which makes the main areas reachable for most visitors.↗

In the area

Blumau sits in the Industrieviertel of Lower Austria, a short drive from the historic garrison city of Wiener Neustadt and within easy reach of Vienna, so the cemetery can be combined with a broader look at the region's military and memorial heritage. The neighbouring communities of Schönau an der Triesting, Sollenau, Teesdorf and Pottendorf all frame the same gravelly Vienna Basin landscape in which many of the dead were originally laid to rest.↗↗