Spandau Prison journalist and DJ Robert Elms, saw the name 'Spandau Ballet' scrawled on the wall of a nightclub lavatory during a visit to Berlin. This gallows humour graffiti refers to standard drop method hangings at Spandau Prison when the condemned would twitch and jump at the end of a rope. The prison featured in the 1985 film "Wild Geese II", about a fictional group of mercenaries who are assigned to kidnap Rudolf Hess (played by Laurence Olivier), and in the book "Spandau Phoenix" by Greg Iles, which is a fictional account of Hess and Spandau Prison. Notes Bibliography Spandau Prison Spandau
Rudolf Hess in 1947, where he served a life sentence. Repeated attempts by family members and prominent politicians to win his early release were blocked by the Soviet Union. While still in custody in Spandau, he died by suicide in 1987 at the age of 93. After his death, the prison was demolished to prevent it from becoming a neo-Nazi shrine. Hess, the oldest of three children, was born on 26 April 1894 in Alexandria, Egypt, into the ethnic German family of Fritz Hess, a prosperous merchant from Bavaria, and Clara Hess ("née" Münch). His brother, Alfred, was born in 1897 and