The Cologne school massacre was a mass murder that occurred at the Catholic elementary school () located in the suburb of Volkhoven in Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, West Germany, on 11 June 1964. The perpetrator, Walter Seifert, also known as "" ("Firedevil of Volkhoven"), attacked the people at the school with a home-made flamethrower and a spear, killing eight pupils and two teachers, and wounding twenty-two others. When police arrived at the scene, Seifert fled from the school compound and poisoned himself. He was taken to a hospital, where he died the same evening. Perpetrator Willi Walter Seifert (19 June 1921 – 11 June 1964) was born in Bickendorf, a district of Cologne, in what was then Weimar Germany. He was the son of a glass-grinder and had one brother. From 1927 to 1935 Seifert attended the Volksschule in Ehrenfeld and afterwards started an apprenticeship as metal worker at a machine factory, which he successfully finished in 1939. In 1941, during the Second World War, he was drafted into the Luftwaffe and attended the Waffentechnische Schule der Luftwaffe (Weaponry Technology School of the Airforce) for a year. By the end of the war Seifert was a sergeant in an anti-aircraft battery and afterwards was a prisoner of war for several months. At war's end Seifert worked for a Cologne car factory, before joining the Schutzpolizei on 14 November 1945. On 23 August 1946 he was treated for a bronchial catarrh, and an examination by a specialist on 5 September diagnosed tuberculosis in the right lung, resulting in Seifert being deemed unfit for service and dismissed from the police on 30 September. From then on Seifert attempted to enforce his claims for subsistence, feeling he was being treated unfairly and cheated of his war pension by the government. In 1953 Seifert's tuberculosis was found to be inactive and he was declared to have a reduced earning capacity of 30%, though any causality between his illness and his imprisonment during the war was denied. Seifert contested this, accused the doctors of creating false medical reports and complained in long letters to various authorities about his problems. In August 1954 Seifert was examined by a public health officer, who was of the opinion that he was not in need of a regimen but suggested that he could be sent to a sanatorium for observation. The doctor also noted in his report that Seifert was