THE last German soldier to have fought in the First World War has died, aged 107.
The death of Dr Erich Kaestner means there are now only four men left alive from the big powers of Europe who fought in the conflict that was meant to be "the war to end all wars".
Three are British – infantryman Harry Patch, 109; Royal Navy
stoker William Stone, 107; and Royal Naval Air Service mechanic Henry Allingham, 111. The other is Lazarre Ponticelli, 110, of France.
Recently the death of the second-to-last French soldier made headlines worldwide, but the death of Dr Kaestner, who passed away quietly at his home in Hanover on New Year's Day after a long illness, was simply marked by a family remembrance notice.
"In Germany, such an event doesn't have the same kind of significance," a Germany army spokesman told the news magazine Der Spiegel.
Dr Kaestner joined up in July 1918, as Germany faced its worst crisis. Its commanders had committed an exhausted army to one last push on the Western Front to try to break the Allied defences. Called Operation Michael and launched in April that year, it failed. As a member of Sonderbattalion Hauck – a "special battalion" of highly-trained recruits named after a prominent commander – he served as an infantryman trying to halt the Allies as they pushed the Germans back, causing great losses.
In November 1918, shortly before the Armistice and before Kaiser Wilhelm II went into exile in the Netherlands, Dr Kaestner was among a number of troops reviewed by him. After the war, he dedicated his life to the legal profession.
The death notice says he was a retired judge and had earned the Lower Saxony Cross of Merit, a state order for distinguished public service.
In Germany, the First World War is inexorably linked with the Second World War and the Nazis – one reason, Bernhard Chiari, of the German army's Military Research Institute, believes, that the death of Dr Kaestner has gone unmarked by the national media.
"Any form of commemoration of military events is seen as problematic," he said. "Our veterans only take part in public ceremonies when they are invited abroad to join commemorative events with veterans from other countries."
The full article contains 384 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
