Can anyone kindly help me identify the nationality of this headstone?
Whatever it is, it's not written in a script that I readily understand.
He's buried in Cologne Southern Cemetery and died 30.1.19 - perhaps a Russian POW victim of the flu pandemic?
Regards,
Michael

It is a Serbian Army headstone

Jovan JOVANOVIN
Died 30.01.19

Thanks for the answer Terry, very much appreciated.
I had thought that it might be Serbian the first time I saw it, but then for whatever reason I dismissed the idea.
Anyway it's good now to have the nationality confirmed.

Just a short follow-up question. Why might he be buried in an Imperial War Graves Commission Cemetery with a British pattern headstone? Any ideas?

Best regards,
Michael

Foreign national graves are maintained by CWGC by agreement with the foreign government concerned. That was probably the case here as it was in a British Cemetery.

He was probably buried there before IWGC took over the cemetery and so they 'inherited' him. If there is no national stone design stipulated by a foreign government, CWGC usually uses their own design but suitably badged and inscribed. Sometimes the foreign government agrees to a similar style to the of CWGC stone for the sake of the look of the cemetery - especially when there are few graves concerned amongst many Commonwealth (this is so with American graves in British cemeteries).

Thanks again Terry for that comprehensive reply - I'm learning all the time.
mb

Michael,
Can you post a close-up of the inscription please? Particularly the last letter of the second line, as it's 9,999 to 1 that the surname should be JOVANOVIĆ (ЈОВАНОВИЋ) not JOVANOVIN.

Terry, do you know if a gravestone of the pattern shown would have have been manufactured by a CWGC-contracted stonemason?

I ask because, AIUI, the Bulgarian POWs buried here in Greece have headstones produced in Bulgaria, and while the Bulgarian Cyrillic is correct on the stones, the transliteration into Latin letters in CWGC records is not always perfect (apparently!), as it is based on the system for Russian > English. In the case of Cyrillic letters used in (Old) Bulgarian that aren't used in Russian, the transliterators appear to have resorted to the closest Russian letter in appearance.

As the last letter of JOVANOVIĆ is the Serbian-only letter Ћ, I was just wondering if it's possible that the stonemasons thought it was the Cyrillic H (= N) ...

Adrian

P.S. Not sure if the letter in question will display properly on all computers. In case it doesn't, it looks like a small h with a line across the upright.

It displays okay for me, Adrian, and I would agree with what you say. The image posted here fuzzes out under magnification, so we need a better pic to tell what the last character is. Even if it is carved as H, I agree that it almost certainly should be Ћ.

Adrian

As it was obviously produced after CWGC took over the cemetery, I would guess that a CWGC contracted mason undertook the work.