Hermann Löns Hermann Löns ( 1866 – 1914 ) was a German journalist and writer . He is most famous as " The Poet of the Heath " for his novels and poems celebrating the people and landscape of the North German moors , particularly the Lüneburg Heath in Lower Saxony . Löns is well known in Germany for his famous folksongs . He was also a hunter , natural historian and conservationist . Life and work . Löns was born in Kulm in West Prussia on 29 August 1866 and went to school and university in Münster and Greifswald . Interested in the biology of mollusc s , he studied medicine and natural science . However , he did not finish his studies , but started to work as a journalist instead during the 1890s , when he began writing poems . In the 1910s he changed to short stories and novels . Inspired by pre - and post - Christian folklore and history , his most famous novel is " Der Wehrwolf " ( The Warwolf - 1910 , the word being a play on ' Werwolf ' , the German word for Werewolf ) , an alternately heart - warming and heart - rending chronicle of a North German farming community suffering tragedies and ultimate triumph during the harrowing period of the Thirty Years ' War ( 1618 - 1648 ) . His literary work has been categorised under the völkisch movement , but his character was also one of intense individualism . At the age of 48 he volunteered for service in the German Army in the First World War . He served with the 73rd Fusilier Regiment and was killed in action on 26 September 1914 whilst on patrol at Loivre near Reims in France just three weeks after enlisting . Reception in Nazi - Germany . As in some of his writings Löns had shown nationalistic ideas , he was later considered by the Nazi s as one of ' their ' writers ( despite the fact that Löns ' lifestyle didn ' t match the Nazi ideals ) . Some parts of his works fit well within the ' Blood and soil ' ethos of National Socialism , with National Socialist ideologues such as Walther Darre and Alfred Rosenberg lauding the peasantry and small rural communities as the true lifeblood of the German nation . On 5 January 1933 a French farmer found the boots of a German soldier in one of his fields . With the help of the local sexton , he uncovered a skeleton and identification tag . The sexton buried the body in an individual grave in a German graveyard near Loivre . It took almost 18 months for the tag to reach Berlin via the German embassy in France . This tag has been lost during an Allied bombing raid on Berlin , an extant photograph does not allow a definite conclusion on whether the tag said " F . R . " ( " Füselier - Regiment " ) or " I . R . " ( " Infanterie - Regiment " ) . However , on 8 May 1934 the Völkische Beobachter announced that the grave of Löns had been discovered . In October 1934 , at the behest of Adolf Hitler , Löns ' body was exhumed and brought to Germany . There was no medical examination to try and verify that these were indeed the remains of the writer . The exhumed Löns was supposed to be buried in the Lüneburg Heath , given his links with the area . However , the exact location of his new grave posed problems . The initial plan to bury him at the Sieben Steinhäuser was abandoned since the military at the time had ( still secret ) plans to establish the military training area Bergen at the site . An alternative site near Wilseder Berg was rejected due to concerns about the environmental impact of large numbers of visitors to the grave . Finding a suitable place became an issue for the top echelons of the regime , including Hermann Göring , Rudolf Heß , Joseph Goebbels , Werner von Blomberg and even Adolf Hitler . To deal with what was increasingly becoming an embarrassing situation , members of the SA snatched the remains from the graveyard chapel in Fallingbostel where they were awaiting reburial . They buried them near the roadside of what was then " Reichsstrasse 3 " ( today B3 ) south of Barrl , near the area known today as Reinsehlen Camp on 30 November 1934 . However , on 2 August 1935 , the anniversary of the start of Word War I , the Reichswehr exhumed the remains and transferred them to the " Tietlinger Wacholderhain " near Walsrode , where an earlier ( 1929 ) memorial had been erected , for a ceremonial reburial . Memorials . There are 113 memorials in total to Löns in Germany plus eight in Austria and 19 in other countries . In addition , 247 streets and roads in Germany have been named after him . Finally , twelve schools bear his name .