Bundeswehr mission in Heikendorf in July 2015: The tank find was a sensation, its recovery a spectacle lasting several hours
Photo: Carsten Rehder / dpa
When it was snowing too hard, as it did during the winter disaster of 1978, Klaus-Dieter F. did not take a snow shovel out of the garage, but instead opened up heavier guns.
Then the now 84-year-old sat in an old tank and cleared the private road around his villa in the Kiel suburb of Heikendorf.
The neighbors smiled at the millionaire, but nothing more.
For many years no one was bothered by the senior's obvious whimsy.
But from Friday on, F. has to answer to the Kiel Regional Court for violating the War Weapons Control Act and other violations of the law on weapons.
Klaus-Dieter F. recently owned not only a World War II tank of the Panther brand, but also an 8.8-centimeter anti-aircraft gun, a torpedo, a 5-centimeter mortar, machine guns and assault rifles, semi and fully automatic pistols and more than 1000 rounds of ammunition.
"Replica of the Führerbunker"
The "Panther" find was a sensation, its recovery a spectacle lasting several hours.
In the summer of 2015, onlookers lined the way to the property on the Kiel Fjord and watched as almost two dozen Bundeswehr soldiers from the Special Engineer Battalion from Husum pulled the Wehrmacht tank out of the basement garage.
About 50 police officers were on duty.
The pioneer leader spoke of "precision work".
Numerous international media reported.
The 40-tonne colossus came into focus during a house search after Klaus-Dieter F. was suspected of possessing Nazi art.
It was about the huge sculpture of a naked man that F. had put up in his garden.
It should come from the sculptor Arno Breker and once stood in the courtyard of the New Reich Chancellery.
The statue quickly faded into the background when investigators from the Berlin State Criminal Police Office discovered the weapons arsenal in the basement of the house.
In the rooms, which resembled an underground fortress, the investigators also found hundreds of mannequins in Nazi uniforms, unique items from the possession of Hermann Göring, one of the greatest Nazi criminals.
The then mayor of Heikendorf spoke in the local media of a "replica of the Führerbunker".
But that wasn't all.
F., once a financial broker, is said to have furnished and equipped his entire villa in the Nazi style with an obsession with detail and meticulousness.
Investigators found Hitler busts, swastika flags and lamps in the form of SS runes in many rooms.
What kind of man is it who gave himself up to his Nazi passion in an irritating way and now has to appear in court?
Skinheads in the garden?
A witness testified that he sometimes had the impression that F. felt like a rebirth of a person from Nazi Germany.
Investigators' findings suggest that the senior was moving in a brown swamp.
According to the indictment, at least in the past, he was close to right-wing extremists and looked contemptuously at the German constitutional state.
In 1997, for example, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution had the information that skinheads were holding target practice in F.'s garden.
According to SPIEGEL information, this is what the indictment says.
Klaus-Dieter F. had received the »National-Zeitung«, a post from neo-Nazis who are close to the NPD.
He has donated several times to organizations that the protection of the constitution classified as extremist.
For example for the "German Conservatives eV" and the "Aid Committee Southern Africa eV" The committee advocates German influence in former colonies.
In a monitored phone call in 2015, F. is said to have addressed a like-minded person with "comrade".
In Germany, "nothing" was okay, so everyone agreed on that.
It has become a bad and bad state.
Refugees would take housing away from homeless people.
The role of the Bundeswehr
F. and his defense attorney, Gerald Goecke, a lawyer from Kiel, have so far left SPIEGEL inquiries about the allegations unanswered.
A former lawyer for F. said in 2015 that his client was »not a Nazi«.
F. has no criminal record.
According to information from SPIEGEL, F. SPIEGEL apparently maintained good contacts with the Bundeswehr for decades.
According to the investigators' findings, between 1977 and 1984 F. had the »Panther« restored by experts.
The repair battalion of the Bundeswehr in Meppen is said to have taken care of the armored pipe.
Between 2011 and 2014, F. had the tank's engine retreaded by Wehrtechnischen Dienststelle 41 in Trier - for just under 30,000 euros.
The armed forces in Trier assumed that F. legally owned the tank, according to the indictment.
The court has scheduled five trial days until the beginning of July.
A crucial question should be whether the heavy war equipment was still functional and thus falls under the War Weapons Control Act.
The district court already announced in the opening decision on the trial: Unlike the public prosecutor's office, tanks, torpedoes and mortars are not considered to be weapons of war.
After "the expert opinion obtained by the court" they are no longer operational.
Against this background, defender Goecke apparently speculates on a deal.
The opening decision of the court is "a good basis for any legal talks" with which one could come to an "amicable procedural design".
After all, according to Goecke, his client is already "85 years old."
