On 11 November 1941, the Partisans captured Major Renner, the area commander in Leskovac, who was taking part in an anti-Partisan sweep around Lebane. Mistaking him for König, who by some accounts had given Renner a cigarette case engraved with his name, the Partisans executed Renner as a war criminal. For almost fifty years, it was widely believed that König, and not Renner, had been killed by the Partisans. In 1952, a plaque was erected at the place where König was purported to have been killed, and a song was written about the incident. In the 1980s, it was conclusively proven that the German officer executed by the Partisans in November 1941 was not König. A new plaque was thus dedicated in 1990.