Almost 73 years ago, the Wehrmacht General Alfred Jodl was executed as a convicted major war criminal. The handling of the memory of the convinced National Socialists, however, still heats the minds in the Bavarian Chiemgau - because there is still a tombstone commemorates Jodl.
However, only Jodl's wives are buried in the cemetery on Fraueninsel in the Chiemsee. The ashes of the war criminal, who had been sentenced to death by hanging in the Nuremberg Trials, scattered Allied soldiers in an arm of the Isar. Because a grave, so the fear, could have created a place of pilgrimage for right-wing extremists.
Nevertheless, a mocking grave reminds of Jodl for decades, in the form of an iron cross and with mention of its military rank. This has long caused outrage and triggered several lawsuits. In a recent case, the Administrative Court of Munich has now decided in favor of the grandnephew Jodl that the controversial tombstone may remain for another 20 years.
The gravestone had become a political issue, after protests by an artist had caused a stir in recent years. Wolfram Kastner stuck a sign to the stone cross ("No honor to the war criminal"), broke the letter J out of Jodl's name ("Odl" is a dialect term for manure) and painted the tomb in red. At the end of 2018, a court ordered him to pay for the cleaning costs of around 4,000 euros.
DPA
Action artist Kastner with a photo of the red painted Scheingrab Jodl (archive image)
Kastner described the grave as "unbearable malady" and questionable "memorial" - just a few meters from the famous Herreninsel, where in 1948 the Basic Law was launched. "I do not want to live in a country where convicted war criminals are honored," he told SPIEGEL in December (read more about the case here).
In fact, Jodl had a significant amount of atrocities during the Nazi dictatorship: As head of the High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW), he was responsible for the war of extermination in Eastern Europe. He signed, for example, the so-called commissar order, according to which prisoner commissioners of the Red Army were to be shot. He was also involved in the deportations of European Jews and ordered the brutal expulsion of many Norwegians from the north of the country.
AP
Alfred Jodl (during the Nuremberg trials in November 1945)
The controversial grave inscription on the Fraueninsel is currently covered by a tall thuja. Last fall, it had looked like an amicable settlement by means of a settlement, which had proposed the court: Accordingly, Jodl's grandnephew would have the name and the life of the war criminals permanently covered with a plate and waived further funerals of family members there.
In return, the community should extend the grave use right for ten years - with an option for another ten years, should there be no lack of space in the cemetery until then. However, the community revoked this comparison a few months ago: It insisted on the complete removal of the tomb, among other things, with reference to lack of space in the cemetery.
This comes after the current judgment of the Administrative Court, file number M 12 K 18.1936, but probably not. The tomb is "not a monument, but a family grave with a common grave stone, as it can be found in many cemeteries," decided the judges. Lack of space on the island cemetery could be no question that had a local date shown.
Andreas Gebert / REUTERS
Fraueninsel im Chiemsee (view from the shore in Seebruck)
The court also denies the danger that further protests or neo-Nazi marches may be expected at the Jodl-Grab in the future: "Disturbances by Mr. Kastner could have been counteracted by the defendant in the past by issuing a ban on the house." Right-wing action would not have taken place at the grave, except for "a one-time action by five NPD supporters". All in all, according to the court, there are "milder means of eliminating such disturbances".
Whether the dispute is now over, decides the Munich "Abendzeitung" according to the next council meeting: Then it must be decided whether it goes in court in the next instance. Action artist Kastner urged the committee to loud "Bayerischer Rundfunk" on: "so that the brown manure finally disappears."