‘A common humanity’: the British families who tended graves of German soldiers

The grave of a Bavarian officer who died in May 1917 while being held as a prisoner in Altrincham, Greater Manchester. Photograph: Stadtarchiv Lünen, 07.32, Nr. 86.

For some, tending the graves was an act of reconciliation. For others, it was about acknowledging shared losses and shared grief.

Thousands of Germans who died in Britain during the first and second world wars were laid to rest in local graveyards. British people tended these graves for decades, even laying flowers and wreaths for their former foes.