FOR THE past two decades, every August 17th has seen the small Bavarian town of Wunsiedel overwhelmed by neo-Nazi pilgrims, gathered to commemorate the death of Rudolf Hess.
Hess was Adolf Hitler’s deputy and was buried in the town cemetery. Now officials in Wunsiedel are hoping they have come up with a way of keeping the right-wing hordes away. Early on 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 family members, Hess’s remains are 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, 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.
The far-right has long considered Hess to be a “martyr to the Fatherland”; they first rallied in Wunsiedel for a first march in his honour in August 1988.
One of Hitler's closest aides, Hess was an early and fervent member of the Nazi party. He spent time in prison with Hitler in the early 1920s and helped to edit Mein Kampf.
He was captured after flying to Scotland in 1941 in a failed attempt to convince Britain to negotiate a peace agreement with Nazi Germany. He was later convicted of war crimes at the Nuremberg trials and sentenced to life imprisonment.
He was the sole remaining inmate in Spandau prison in the British-occupied part of West Berlin when he killed himself on August 17th, 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, mayor Karl-Will Beck began to campaign, together with town councillors, church officials and citizens, to block the neo-Nazis from gathering at the grave.
The German parliament passed an amendment in 2005 to the law 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, the neo-Nazis kept coming. Now Mr Seisser 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 service; additional reporting Reuters)