A LESSON IN DEMORALIZATION

Reinhold Elstner, born 1920 in Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia (now in the Czech Republic), was a German Wehrmacht veteran and Diplom Chemist who poured petrol over himself and committed suicide at about 8 pm on April 25, 1995, on the steps of Munich’s historical Feldherrnhalle military memorial, opposite the statue of General Tilly, in protest against what he called “the ongoing official slander and demonization of the German people and German soldiers 50 years after the end of World War II”. Twelve hours later, on April 26, he died in a Munich hospital.