Rudolf Wolters - Later Life and Death

Later Life and Death

Wolters bequeathed his papers to the Federal Archives, ensuring the record would be corrected one day. However, in late 1979, Speer was approached by Matthias Schmidt, a doctoral student, who sought answers to a number of questions for use in preparing his thesis. After answering Schmidt's questions, Speer referred Schmidt to Wolters for further information. Wolters took a liking to Schmidt, and showed him both the original Chronik and the correspondence in which Wolters had informed Speer of the censoring of the record. When confronted by Schmidt with this information, Speer both denied knowledge of the censorship and stated that the correspondence was not genuine. While Speer pledged not to take legal action against Schmidt for using the disputed papers (after obtaining his doctorate, Schmidt published his thesis as a book, Albert Speer: The End of a Myth), he made no such promise regarding Wolters. Speer published a formal revocation of a power of attorney he had given Wolters while in Spandau and disputed on legal grounds Wolters' right to the Chronik and other papers. The dispute was only ended by Speer's sudden death in London in September 1981.

Wolters died in January 1983 after a long illness. According to his son Fritz, his final word was "Albert". He had donated many of his papers to the Archives in 1982; after Wolters died, Riesser, as his literary executor, donated the remainder.