They drowned in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.

But the German soldiers found their final resting place in the heart of Spain.

The only German military cemetery in the country lies lonely below the medieval monastery of Yuste.

Charles V died there in 1558 - the emperor in whose empire "the sun never set".

His successor on the Spanish throne, Felipe VI., Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) awaits this Thursday.

In Extremadura, a good 200 kilometers from Madrid, Felipe VI draws.

she awarded the European Prize "Karl V" for her European commitment.

Hans-Christian Roessler

Political correspondent for the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghreb, based in Madrid.

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The narrow road up to the monastery is lined with oak trees. The entrance to the "Cementerio Militar Alemán" is inconspicuous on the right-hand side behind a wall of roughly hewn stones. The Chancellor will not have time to visit the 180 gray granite tombstones on Thursday. José Violat Bordonnau, on the other hand, stops by at least once a year - and has been for a long time. “I'm definitely coming to Memorial Day,” he says.

The police superintendent from Cáceres knows so much about the German men who are lying in the cemetery like little else: for more than 15 years he has been researching the fate of soldiers from the First and Second World Wars.

The updated edition of the book that the 56-year-old policeman wrote about the cemetery will soon appear.

This spring, the German ambassador awarded him the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon.

The identity of eight dead is unknown

Spain had declared itself neutral in both world wars. Most of the bodies were washed ashore after their boats sank or their planes crashed. Two dozen names also have “im” (in memoriam): They remember the dead, whose remains could no longer be recovered. Eight of them are labeled: "An Unknown German Soldier". But a lot is known about most soldiers, almost all of them belonged to the air force and the navy. For years, an employee of the German embassy in Madrid had searched all of Spain for places where the remains of the soldiers could be found. These were finally brought from more than 50 locations to the cemetery near the municipality of Cuacos de Yuste. It was completed in 1983 and the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge is in charge of it.

Bordonnau says: "For the Germans it is a suitable place near Charles V, whose empire extended into what was later to become Germany." His interest in German submarine warfare led him to the cemetery. 38 of those who were buried were part of the crew of the U77, which British bombers sank in the Mediterranean on March 29, 1943. The chief machinist mate Karl Schukalla, on the other hand, died in 1918. The U39 on which he rode was badly damaged in an attack. During the First World War, it was considered one of the most successful submarines in the German Navy and sank 151 merchant ships.

A total of 26 dead from the First World War are resting in the cemetery.

In addition, numerous aircraft crews from the Second World War - but no members of the German Condor Legion, which fought on Franco's side in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and bombed the Basque city of Guernica.

Two years ago the cemetery was desecrated anyway.

Unknown people had knocked over tombstones and posted slogans such as “No honors for Nazis”.

But that was an exception.

Spaniards who visit the monastery like to stop by.

José Violat Bordonnau likes the cemetery so much that he should one day be buried there.