The memorial stone was erected here in honor of the soldiers of the 4th Mountain Division in the fall of 1970. The Wehrmacht soldiers were deployed from October 25, 1940 to March 20, 1941 in the Balingen, Ebingen, Tailfingen area and at the Heuberg military training area. It was a so-called “war formation”. This mountain division never had a garrison/barracks, so never a peace location. Therefore, the memorial stone should be placed on the Lochenhörnle.
The division then stood on the 5,633 m high Elbrus/Caucasus on August 21, 1942. She fought in the Kuban, Crimea, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia. Around 10,800 soldiers died and around 2,450 soldiers were missing. The division's remains were partially recovered by the People's Association for War Graves Commission in 2005 and rest in the German military cemetery in Absheronsk in the Caucasus.
The idea for the memorial stone came from the Balingen Gebirgsjägercomradeship e.V. For the design of the memorial, a mighty boulder was chosen that had come off the Tailfinger Castle Rock and had to make way for a construction area there. The transport was supported by the Tailfinger building contractor Rudi Bitzer, who provided a crane, and by the Bundeswehr. The Bundeswehr, led by Lieutenant Colonel Harald Mieg, Airborne Supply Battalion 256 in Calw, provided a recovery vehicle and a low-loader.
I would like to close with the inscription on the memorial plaque:
"The dead oblige the living!"
Source of information: Local history papers Zollernalb