SAN JAVIER, Bolivia -- More than 50 years after making his name by documenting the Nazi war machine, renowned German photographer Hans Ertl is prepared to die in the Bolivian Amazon rather than return to his homeland.
The 92-year-old Ertl, who photographed Adolf Hitler and the military campaigns of feared desert tank commander Erwin Rommel, has already readied his grave on a small hillock at the hacienda where he has spent the second half of his life."I don't want to return to my country. I want to remain here, on my land, to the death," the white-bearded hermit told Reuters in his tropical enclave. Ertl was awarded the Iron Cross by Rommel, invented submersible and flight cameras and wrote 12 illustrated books about his wartime experiences.
Already gone are the tools of his trade, including an old Leica still camera and a Bell and Howell movie camera. He gave them away a decade ago and has devoted himself to tending the livestock and fowl on his spread, whose name "La Dolorida," or "The Hurt One," reflects his dark thoughts on Germany.
"They have stolen so many things from me in Germany that I don't want to live there any more," Ertl said. "Here I was always free, without difficulties."
Separated by time and space from the exploding artillery shells of the Third Reich's military advances, Ertl relives the past while he observes the wild herons that flock to his small tranquil lagoon nestled in eastern Bolivia's lush pastures.
He still worships Rommel, the "Desert Fox" whose Panzer tanks battered British forces in the Sahara before a shortage of fuel and Allied resistance stopped him at El Alamein. "Field Marshal Rommel was my boss. He was like a god to me," he said.
Ertl also had contact with Hitler during the 1936 Olympics in Berlin while working with film director Leni Riefenstahl, whose black-and-white documentary of the Games has been heralded as a masterpiece of filmmaking and propaganda. Riefenstahl managed to create an uncharacteristically tender moment with the man known as history's scourge, he recalled.
"I remember she was a petite, pretty woman, with a wide hat and delicate clothes," he said. "She approached Hitler and kissed him while the crowd cheered. (Luftwaffe head Hermann) Goering then gave Hitler a small mirror and, looking into it, Hitler wiped off the young woman's red lipstick."
Ertl said he captured the scene on film only to be threatened by the SS, the Nazi secret service, whose attempts to confiscate the roll were thwarted by Riefenstahl herself.
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.
Ertl's new life led him to travel Bolivia top-to-bottom with his daughter Monika, taking prize-winning photos including the last images of the Siriono tribe, now believed extinct.
The old photographer's second wife returned to Germany six years ago suffering from Parkinson's disease. He maintains contact with his children, who forward money from various points around the globe.
Without a telephone or radio, Ertl is shut off from the outside world save an occasional unexpected visitor. He has three workers on his property, which echoes with the sounds of cattle, ducks, turkeys and horses.
A son who lives in Germany has sent him a sack of earth from Bavaria to cover his coffin when the time comes.
Somewhat frail and bothered by sunlight, Ertl is lucid and focused on reaching 2000 before his workers bury him on the hillock tucked between two enormous pine trees.
He never would have made it so far if fate had not intervened, jamming the gun of an American soldier set to execute him during the war.