LA PAZ, Bolivia Hans Ertl, a renowned German photographer who made his name documenting the Nazi war machine, died on Monday at the age of 93 in the Bolivian hacienda where he spent the second half of this life, newspapers said on Thursday.
Ertl, who photographed Adolf Hitler and the military campaigns of the feared desert tank Commander Erwin Rommel, was buried in his "La Dolorida", or "the hurt one", property in the town of Chiquitania in the Department of Santa Cruz, some 530 miles (851kms) east of capital city La Paz.
La Paz's La Prensa newspaper said Ertl died of multiple illnesses.
"I don't want to return to my country. I want to remain here, on my land, to the death," the white-bearded hermit had told Reuters from his tropical enclave in April 1999.
Ertl was awarded the Iron Cross by Rommel, invented submersible and flight cameras and wrote 12 illustrated books about his wartime experiences.
Ertl landed in Bolivia in 1950 to test photographic plates at high altitude for German firm Seimens. Within a few months he bought La Dolorida, where he has holed up ever since.
Many high-profile members of the Nazi Party also chose to spend their retirement in South America, including the "Butcher of Lyons" Klaus Barbie, the "Angel of Death" Dr. Josef Mengele and concentration camp architect Adolf Eichmann.
But Ertl steadfastly maintains that his link to them and their party was via his work, not his political beliefs. "I never shared the Nazi ideals and I never had anything against the Jews, particularly the Jewish women," he said in April.
La Prensa noted that Ertl liked to wear a German Army jacket and, in his last months, penciled his age on the wall so that he would not forget it.
It also said he had a drawer with 600 unedited poems.
(Reuter)