 In 1955, at the peak of an anti-communist campaign, he was killed in a traffic accident when his car ran into a parked American tank.According to contemporary West German press, he was "entangled in the heavy traffic of American vehicles that were involved in war games" and the papers found in his car "were analyzed" by German and American police and intelligence services.Between 1955 and 1958, "the collective memory of Buchenwald's communist prisoners" was forged into the official history of East Germany.