The man believed to have been Germany’s last World War I veteran has died peacefully at the age of 107.
Erich Kaestner, who at 18 was sent to the Western Front but served only four months in the army, died in a Cologne nursing home, his son said.
The death on Sunday of Louis de Cazenave, France’s second-last World War I veteran, made global headlines.
But in a country that keeps no record of its veterans, Kaestner’s death on 1 January went largely unnoticed.
“That is the way history has developed,” said Peter Kaestner, the soldier’s son. “In Germany, in this respect, things are kept quiet – they’re not a big deal.”
Erich Kaestner was unrelated to the writer and poet of the same name.
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