Nazis marched, the counter-demonstrators jeered and whistled from the sidewalks. But there were some tense moments when the counter-demonstrators, led by Wunsiedel mayor Karl-Willi Beck, staged a sit-down in the streets in a bid to stop the neo-Nazi march. The group disbanded when police threatened to use force to clear the street. Hess, who was Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's top deputy, committed suicide on August 17, 1987 as the sole prisoner serving a life term in Spandau prison in Berlin. His supporters claim he was murdered. After his death, Hess was buried in his home town of Wunsiedel, and every year since then, neo-Nazis from all over Germany have converged on the town to mark the anniversary, to the fury of local residents. Wunsiedel's government issued a ban on the neo-Nazi demonstration, but the state of Bavaria's administrative court lifted the ban last week, citing constitutional rights of free speech.
