Former Stuttgart mayor who earned international respect for his tolerance

Manfred Rommel, a former mayor of Stuttgart who has died aged 84, was the son of the second World War field marshal dubbed the "Desert Fox".

Rommel, a member of Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, served as mayor for 22 years in the city of his birth. He came to prominence in the 1970s and 1980s as a municipal politician who earned international respect for his tolerance and liberal policies, standing up for the fair treatment of immigrant workers who helped rebuild Germany's motor industry in the postwar years.

“Our country has lost a passionate democrat and an immensely popular figure, who made an outstanding contribution to his city of birth and to the political culture of this country,” said Norbert Lammert, president of the German Bundestag, or lower house of parliament.

Rommel was deeply traumatised by the death of his father, Erwin Rommel, by suicide in 1944, minutes after the German military commander had revealed in a last conversation with his son that Adolf Hitler had forced him to take a cyanide pill or face dishonour and retaliation on his family.

Hitler suspected Rommel of being involved in a plot to kill the German dictator, a charge Rommel denied.

A popular mayor, Manfred Rommel made bold and sometimes controversial decisions, drawing criticism for his insistence on allowing German Red Army Faction terrorists Gudrun Ensslin, Andreas Baader and Jan-Carl Raspe to be buried together in Stuttgart after their collective suicide in Stammheim prison.

“I am of the opinion that all wrath, justified as it may be, must end with death and that there are no first- and second-class graveyards and that all graveyards are the same,” he said at the time.

He is survived by his wife, Liselotte, and their daughter, Catherine.