A few kilometres away from Simnas, on a hill in Mergalaukis, a German Military Cemetery is located, where soldiers who had been killed in World War I are buried. A grave in the very centre of the Cemetery is the burial place of Ernst Wurche. This soldier was a friend of the prominent German writer and poet Walter Flex. Ernst Wurche became a prototype of the main character of Flex’s renowned book The Wanderer between Two Worlds: An Experience of War. The setting for the book is Simnas and its environs. This book has been translated into Latvian, Swedish, French and Italian languages.
In 2014, when marking the centenary of the First World War, the graves of soldiers, on the initiative of the reserve personnel of the Bundeswehr, were put in order together with the local community.
Author of photograph G. Bernatavičius
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