Germany fired its ambassador to Switzerland Thursday after he publicly criticized Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer over a policy to stop printing staff obituaries for former Nazis.
A foreign ministry spokeswoman confirmed that Frank Elbe, a member of the conservative opposition Christian Democrats, would be sent into retirement with immediate effect.
Fischer came under fire last month from a number of his own diplomats for banning posthumous tributes to the small number of staff who used to be Nazi party members from appearing in the ministry's in-house magazine.
A letter to Fischer by Elbe was leaked to the mass market Bild newspaper late last month in which he strongly criticized the handling of the controversy.
"The management of the current crisis is pitiful," Elbe wrote. "Recently, bureaucratic slovenliness and a lack of political sensitivity have provoked outrage."
Fischer, who is also Germany's vice-chancellor, said in an interview published this week that he backed the creation of an independent panel to shed light on his ministry's Nazi past, saying the country's credibility as a democracy was on the line.
The controversy comes as Fischer faces a parliamentary inquiry over his role in an illegal immigration scandal, which has already led to the resignation of one of his deputy ministers.