Controlled Emotions

Ever since he was captured by the British 28 years ago, Nazi Germany's onetime Deputy Fuehrer Rudolf Hess has steadfastly refused to see his wife and son. It was beneath the dignity of a high official, he explained, to permit his family to see him in prison. Now 75 and suffering from a duodenal ulcer, Hess was transferred in November from Berlin's Spandau prison to a British military hospital. There, in a room with guards but no bars, Hess last week finally was reunited with his wife Use, who runs a tiny inn in the Bavarian Alps, and his son, Wolf-Rudiger, 32, a Hamburg engineer. The visit, limited by prison regulations to 30 minutes, took place on Christmas Eve and was characterized by what one official called "fairly well-controlled emotions."

Hess, whose only other visitor has been his lawyer, was imprisoned by the Allies after he parachuted into a Scottish cow pasture in May 1941 on what he claimed was a mission to end the war. Later sentenced to life imprisonment at Nuernberg for "preparing aggressive war," he entered Spandau in 1947, and for the past three years has been its only inmate. The Western powers have long wanted to release him on humanitarian grounds. The Soviets have refused, largely because the four-power prison authority is one of Moscow's last official footholds in West Berlin.

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