It was an American, General Douglas MacArthur, who famously reflected that "old soldiers never die; they just fade away."
But the phrase seems to apply better to the quiet passing of a German believed to have been the country's last World War I veteran.
Erich Kaestner died on Jan. 1 quietly in a nursing home in Cologne at the age of 107, his son said.
When France's second-last surviving veteran from World War I, Louis de Cazenave, died on Jan. 20, the news made international headlines.
But in Germany -- which lost both world wars and has had to cope with the shame of the Nazi atrocities for more than six decades -- there is not even an organization keeping track of the remaining veterans.
"That is the way history has developed," Kaestner's son, Peter Kaestner, said in a telephone interview. "In Germany, in this respect, these things are kept quiet -- they're not a big deal."
The news did not even trickle out into the German press until this week and the stories were more about how Germans remember than Kaestner's death itself.
"The losers hide themselves in a state of self-pity and self-denial that they happily try to mitigate by forgetting," the daily Die Welt wrote on Friday in its obituary for Kaestner.
Der Spiegel magazine said that "the German public was within a hair's breadth of never learning of the end of an era" until someone who had read Kaestner's death notice in a newspaper figured out who he was and updated a Wikipedia entry on the Internet.
Kaestner was born in 1900 and had just graduated from high school in 1918 when he entered the army, his son said.
Following training, he was sent to the Western Front to fight in France, but was never sent to the front lines.
"He was just a soldier for a quarter to a half a year," Peter Kaestner said.
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
Packed crowds in India celebrating their cricket team’s victory ended in a deadly stampede on Wednesday, with 11 mainly young fans crushed to death, the local state’s chief minister said. Joyous cricket fans had come out to celebrate and welcome home their heroes, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, after they beat Punjab Kings in a roller-coaster Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket final on Tuesday night. However, the euphoria of the vast crowds in the southern tech city of Bengaluru ended in disaster, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra calling it “absolutely heartrending.” Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said most of the deceased are young, with 11 dead
RSS