Franz Kunstler, who died on 27 May, 2008, aged 107, was the last veteran of the First World War who fought for the Central Powers and Germany's oldest man.

He was a gunner in the 1st Artillery Regiment of the Austro-Hungarian army and served on the Italian Front at the tail end of the war.

He was just 17 when he became a soldier and continued to serve the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the communist uprisings in the years immediately after the war.

He was discharged in 1921 but later returned to military service when he was a courier during the Second World War.

Hr Kunstler was born on 24 June, 1900, in Sóstó in Hungary. However, he was of German ancestry and - in spite of his military service - he was among the 240,000 ethnic Germans expelled from Hungary in 1946 under Soviet rule.

He lived the rest of his life as a German citizen and became the country's oldest man in February 2008. By this time he was also the Central Powers' last surviving veteran following the death of German Erich Kästner on New Year's Day 2008.

He died during surgery on 27 May in Bad Mergentheim, South Germany.

"I was a handsome man and had many women," he had said about the most important things in life in a magazine . "But more important is to have a good wife, with whom one can share one's life."