After the opening of the Pobrežje Cemetery on August 1, 1879, it was primarily soldiers who were buried there, alongside convicts and the poor.
Following the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Pobrežje became the main military cemetery in Maribor. Units of the Austro-Hungarian army – Slovenes, Germans, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, Poles, and others – moved through the city on their way to the Balkans or the Isonzo Front. The fallen were left behind: many, including the unknown, found their graves right here.
Later, numerous Russian and Italian prisoners of war, who died during forced labor on the construction of the factory in Ruše and the hydroelectric power plant in Fala, were also buried here.
During the Second World War, fallen German soldiers and deceased Soviet and British prisoners of war were buried in the cemetery. After the war, a tomb and a monument to the fallen partisans were arranged in the southern part of the cemetery.