In the middle of the year of 1925, our family decided to transfer the mortal remains of Manfred von Richthofen to Germany, and bury him in native soil. Our first intention was it to lay Manfred's coffin down at the Schweidnitz cemetery, beside the graves of his father and his brother Lothar. But important German authorities of the Empire - above all the Imperial Ministry of War as well as the aeronautical organizations - expressed the imperative wish the final place of rest for the dead body of Manfred should be at the Invaliden Cemetery in Berlin, where already so many German heroes and commanders found their eternal rest. The family agreed to this in the knowledge that the memories of Manfred did not just belong to them, but to the whole German nation. The necessary and time-consuming negotiations with the French authorities were initiated, and by the midst of November I traveled to the place in France where Manfred's grave was located. This was not the initial grave, because after the war his dead body was brought to the German military cemetery of Fricourt, a small village located about 8 Kilometers from Albert that was once so violently fought for.

 A man named Lienhard was assigned to me by the responsible authorities. His primary task was it to get through the necessary formalities with the French officials as well as to manage the exhumation. It was on November 14, 1925, when I came from Amiens to meet Mr. Lienhard in Albert. I found this canny and ambitious man in considerable excitement because at first the French authorities did not bother about anything despite being informed of the exhumation in time. After a certain time we were able to find an old gentleman who was a sergeant during the war but now occupied the position of a cemetery administrator. We took him with our car and soon reached Fricourt. The local German military cemetery offered really a devastating view and the impression I got is hard to describe in words. According to the information we got from the cemetery administrator who escorted us, there lay about six thousand German soldiers in single graves plus twelve thousand more in one huge mass grave. No green leaf nor any wreath gave this sad and deeply moving place a bit of a friendly character. Only at the mass grave laid a simple tin wreath, maybe dedicated by an old mother to her son who fell for the fatherland and now laying amidst of thousands of his comrades. From thirty different cemeteries they had collected the dead bodies of German heroes to bring them to this place. However, the installation of the cemetery might not have been finished yet at that time. In the meantime (1933) the "Volksbund für deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge" (public alliance of welfare for German military graves) certainly looked after this place of rest of dead warriors, and it hopefully has a nicer and friendlier look today.

 Also at the cemetery of Fricourt itself, nothing was prepared yet for the exhumation. We needed to summon single workers and it took nearly three hours until the digging finally began. We found a zinc plate, where Manfred's names as well as his date of death were engraved in the German and English languages. At that time, the plate was fixed on the coffin by the Englishmen who laid him to his first rest. Now it is in possession of my mother in Schweidnitz. After the transfer of everything mortal on Manfred was completed, we brought the zinc coffin containing his remains to Albert, where - under the direction of French authorities - it got loaded onto a train to Kehl, at the French-German frontier. It was at midnight on Monday, 16. November, when a locomotive of the French Northways with only a tender and a freight car slowly rolled over the Rhine bridge of Kehl. The whistles were screaming, and as the little train entered the German station, some of the rail men being in office took their hats off in affection. Manfred's mortal remains had reached the homeland!