Erich Kästner Passport: Last German WWI Soldier, Age 107
Dr. Erich Kästner died on January 1, 2008, aged 107, in a retirement home in Cologne-Pulheim. He was the last German to have served as an active soldier in the First World War, the second oldest German citizen at the time of his death, and married for 75 years, a record in Germany. Not one German newspaper ran the story. His passport, issued in Taucha near Leipzig in 1936, is the document you see on this page.
The Man History Almost Forgot
Two months after Kästner’s quiet death, France buried its last WWI veteran with full state honors. Lazare Ponticelli, who died on March 17, 2008, aged 110, received a funeral at Saint-Louis Cathedral in Les Invalides. Government ministers attended. President Sarkozy unveiled a commemorative plaque. Legionnaires from the 3rd Foreign Infantry Regiment, the very unit Ponticelli had served in, carried his coffin. Flags flew at half-mast across France.
Kästner’s death was not worth a single line in any German newspaper.
Why Germany Lost Track of Its WWI Veterans
Unlike France, Britain, the United States, or Australia, Germany maintains no registry of its World War I veterans. The Ministry of Defence, the Bundeswehrverband, and the Militärgeschichtliche Forschungsamt in Potsdam hold no records of who served in the Imperial German Army between 1914 and 1918. When a veteran dies, no institution notices.
The veterans of 1914-18 occupy no space in Germany’s collective memory. Overshadowed entirely by the Second World War, they became a lost generation. Their lives, their suffering, and their deaths disappeared into the trenches of the Marne and the Somme.
How the World Finally Learned He Had Died
The news reached the outside world by accident. Kästner, born March 10, 1900, in Leipzig-Schönefeld, had a short entry in Wikipedia, added anonymously. A few sentences identified him as the second oldest German citizen and the last German soldier of the First World War.
The Neue Zürcher Zeitung was the first outlet to notice, publishing a brief note on January 13, 2008, nearly two weeks after his death. The first substantial piece appeared on January 22 on the English-language Spiegel Online. The Hannoversche Allgemeine followed with a detailed tribute. British and French media picked up the story. The Daily Telegraph implicitly called on Chancellor Angela Merkel to pay official tribute.
From overseas, recognition had already begun arriving in the final months of his life. Since the summer of 2007, the 107-year-old had received autograph requests and letters from England, the United States, and other distant countries, including a student from Iowa who wanted to know on which battlefields he had served.
Kästners Four Months in the War
Kästner served for just four months, assigned to a Royal Saxon infantry regiment in Flanders, near Lessines, close to the historic Waterloo battlefield. He never reached the front line. The stories he told his family in later years involved horses, not combat. He was part of the class of 1900, young conscripts rushed into a decimated, demoralized German army as the war entered its final collapse.
The Allied counteroffensive opened on August 8, 1918, what Ludendorff called the “Black Day of the German Army,” when the front collapsed at Amiens under more than 500 Allied tanks. Within days, the Supreme Army Command accepted that the military situation was hopeless. The defeat of Germany was already sealed.
Kästner was spared from the worst of it. The climax of his military service, as he later told his family, was attending a Kaiser Parade with Wilhelm II, possibly the last one ever held.
After the armistice, he and his comrades marched home on foot from Flanders to Leipzig. He studied law, entered the legal profession, founded a family in 1928, and was later awarded the Order of Merit of Lower Saxony, 1st Class.
His sons Peter and Ralph knew little of their father’s war. In the family’s memory, as in Germany’s collective memory, the First World War was buried under the Second. Kästner senior went on to serve as a major in anti-aircraft artillery in France and as a staff assistant in the Air Force High Command during the next war. The earlier war simply disappeared.
The Passport
How This Passport Was Saved
The document’s survival is owed to one person. Ralf, the seller, in his own words:
“About 20 years ago, I worked for a roofer in Taucha near Leipzig. We were hired to clear an attic. The passport caught my attention because of the name. I initially assumed it might belong to the famous German author Erich Kästner. It was headed for the trash. I took it. Later I researched the details and was amazed by the story attached to it. The house belonged to the Fischer family, a well-established family in the Leipzig area with roots going back over 180 years. Dr. Kästner’s wife was a born Fischer. He had likely spent time in that house in Taucha.”
Thank you, Ralf. You saved a document of genuine significance to German passport history.
The Last WWI Veteran of All
The last surviving veteran of the First World War worldwide was Florence Green, a British citizen who served in the Allied armed forces. She died on February 4, 2012, aged 110.
With the death of Erich Kästner on January 1, 2008, no German remained who could speak from personal experience of what it meant to serve in that war. He lived to 107. He died unannounced. And almost no one in his own country knew he was gone.
Tom Topol | Passport History Expert & Author.
Featured in media incl. CNN, BBC, Newsweek. Awarded by the U.S. Department of State.
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