Tornado Alley (PROG)

[F6]

Rudolf Hess's body removed from cemetery to deter Nazi pilgrims


The grave of Rudolf Hess has been removed from the Wunsiedel cemetery because the small Bavarian town had become a pilgrimage site for neo-Nazis.
Photograph: Lennart Preiss/AP

Neo-Nazis have been paying annual visits to the grave of Adolf Hitler's deputy in the Bavarian town of Wunsiedel

Siobhan Dowling in Berlin
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 21 July 2011 15.27 BST

For the past two decades, every 17 August has seen the small Bavarian town of Wunsiedel become overwhelmed by neo-Nazi pilgrims. The far-right gathers to commemorate the death of Rudolf Hess, the Nazi deputy to Adolf Hitler, who was buried in the town cemetery.

Now officials in Wunsiedel are hoping they have come up with a way of keeping the rightwing hordes away. In the early hours of Wednesday morning, Hess's remains were exhumed and the gravestone – which read "Ich hab's gewagt" or "I have dared" – has been destroyed.


With the agreement of his family members, his remains were then to be cremated and his ashes scattered at sea. The opportunity to remove the grave came when Hess's granddaughter applied for a 20-year extension of the grave's lease, which was due to expire in October.

"We decided not to extend the lease because of all the unrest and disturbances," said Peter Seisser, the chairman of the parish council.

Although some relatives initially objected to the exhumation, negotiations between the church's pastor and Hess's granddaughter resulted in the agreement to remove the remains from the town.

The far-right has long considered Hess to be a "martyr to the Fatherland" and they rallied in Wunsiedel for their first march in his honour in August 1988.

One of Hitler's closest aides, Hess was captured after flying to Scotland in 1941 in a failed attempt to convince Great Britain to negotiate a peace agreement with Nazi Germany.

He was convicted of war crimes at the Nuremberg trials and sentenced to life imprisonment. Hess was the sole inmate in Spandau prison in the British-occupied part of West Berlin when he killed himself on 17 August 1987 at the age of 93.

Wunsiedel's Protestant parish council reluctantly agreed at the time to honour his final wishes to be buried with his parents in the cemetery.

However, local people became increasingly annoyed with the town's status as a Nazi pilgrimage site. In 2004, the mayor, Karl-Will Beck, launched the "Wunsiedel is colourful and not brown" campaign and, together with town councillors, church officials and citizens, he tried to block the neo-Nazis from gathering at the grave.

The German parliament passed an amendment in 2005 to the existing legislation on incitement to hatred, specifically to prevent such gatherings. Otto Schily, Germany's interior minister at the time, said it was done "in solidarity with the democratic public of Wunsiedel".

However, this failed to solve the problem and the neo-Nazis kept coming. "The Hess marches may have been forbidden but groups like the far-right National Democratic party could still hold demonstrations on other issues," Seisser told the Guardian.

He hopes the removal of the remains will put an end to the annual invasion. "At least the pilgrimage site for the radical right has been removed," he said. "The grave no longer exists."

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/21/rudolf-hess-body-removed-nazi


===


Hitler Aide’s Grave Is Removed to Stop Neo-Nazi Pilgrimages


Rudolf Hess's marked grave in Wunsiedel, Germany, shown in 2000, was unusual for a top Nazi. The town had his remains and gravestone removed on Wednesday.
Michael Dalder/Reuters


Rudolf Hess, standing, with Hitler in Berlin in 1938.
Associated Press

By JUDY DEMPSEY
Published: July 21, 2011

BERLIN — The bones of Rudolf Hess [ http://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/18/obituaries/rudolf-hess-is-dead-in-berlin-last-of-the-hitler-inner-circle.html ], Hitler’s deputy, have been exhumed and will be disposed of because his grave in the small Bavarian town of Wunsiedel has become a pilgrimage site for neo-Nazis, the town’s mayor said in an interview on Thursday.

Karl-Willi Beck, 56, who has been mayor of Wunsiedel since 2002, said the cemetery administrators removed Hess’s remains and his gravestone early Wednesday. “It was the right thing to do,” Mr. Beck said.

He said the bones would be cremated and scattered over a lake, but he gave no other details.

Hess was born in 1894 in Alexandria, Egypt, the son of a German importer. He was an infantryman and pilot for the German forces during World War I. Afterward he became caught up in nationalist politics. He joined the National Socialist Party in 1920 and became a confidant of Hitler, who dictated much of his book, “Mein Kampf,” to Hess when they were both imprisoned.

After Hitler rose to dictatorial power, Hess became his deputy, but as World War II drew near, his influence declined compared with that of other top Nazis.

In May 1941, Hess created an international sensation by secretly flying his personal Messerschmitt fighter plane to Britain and parachuting into Scotland, apparently hoping to negotiate a peace between Britain and Germany as the Axis was preparing to invade the Soviet Union. Instead, Hess was disowned by Hitler and imprisoned by the British for the duration of the war.

At the Nuremberg trials, Hess was given a life sentence, which he served in Spandau Prison in what was West Berlin. He was found hanged on Aug. 17, 1987, at age 93. It was unclear at the time how such an old man, under close guard as the last inmate of Spandau, could have hanged himself.

Hess requested in his will that he be buried in Wunsiedel, a town of 9,600 people where his family had a vacation home. His parents were also buried there. At the time, the supervisor of the graveyard, the local Lutheran church, did not object and said the wishes of the deceased could not be ignored, according to the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Hess was unusual among top Nazis in having a marked grave. Most, including those executed at Nuremberg after the war, were cremated and their ashes scattered.

Since 1987, Hess’s grave has been treated as a shrine by neo-Nazis, who call Hess a martyr. Mr. Beck, the mayor, said that as many as 6,000 to 7,000 neo-Nazis converged on the town each year around the anniversary of Hess’s death.

“When I was elected, we organized a resistance against these neo-Nazis,” said Mr. Beck, a member of the Christian Social Union, the governing party in Bavaria. “The churches and all the political parties and the trade unions and other organizations rallied together to demonstrate against the neo-Nazis, and have them banned from visiting the cemetery each August.”

A court issued an order in 2005 banning the gatherings, but neo-Nazis continued to visit the grave and lay wreaths, so the town obtained an agreement from the church and the family to demolish the grave.

© 2011 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/22/world/europe/22hess.html


===


(linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=54568354 and preceding and following