The grave of former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and his wife Loki, located in a cemetery in Hamburg (North), was vandalized with swastika paintings, police said on Saturday (December 23). An act that Interior Minister Nancy Faeser described as “abhorrent.”
“The red-painted swastikas were discovered on her grave in a Hamburg cemetery on Friday evening and were immediately deleted,” Hamburg police told Agence France-Presse. She said she currently has no information about the identity of the person or people who allegedly destroyed the grave, nor their motivation. The investigation is ongoing.
Minister Nancy Faeser, who like Helmut Schmidt is a member of the Social Democratic Party, strongly condemned this “hideous act that history forgets.” “Helmut and Loki Schmidt have always spoken out against inhumanity, racism and anti-Semitism – aware of our history,” she continued Xbased on the painting with Nazi symbols on the grave of the Schmidt couple.
The social democrat, born in Hamburg on December 23, 1918, died on November 10, 2015. He would have been 105 years old on Saturday. He led West Germany (FRG) from 1974 to 1982 as the country emerged as a global economic power. As a convinced European who embodied realpolitik during the Cold War, he brought a new economic liberalism to life within German social democracy.