Spandau Citadel, built in 1594, the 1848 St. Marien am Behnitz Catholic church designed by August Soller, and Spandau arsenal, Germany's arms development center until 1919, now a museum. That arsenal's Spandau machine gun inspired the slang "Spandau Ballet" to describe dying soldiers on barbed wire during the First World War, and later was applied to the appearance of Nazi war criminals hanged at Spandau Prison. The notorious prison, built in 1876, held Nazi war criminals after World War II until 1987, when it was demolished after the death of the last surviving prisoner, Rudolf Hess. In 1979, the English New
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