Heinz Axmann

Lieutenant Colonel Heinz Axmann is an antagonist in the anime, visual novel and light novel Scharzesmarken and the light novel Bernhard im Schatten. He is the commander of the TSF (Tactical Surface Fighter) Guard Force of the corrupt Stasi (Ministry of State Security) of East Germany. He takes pleasure in applying psychological and physical torture to everyone he can, both subordinates and captive enemies. His cruelty and sadism were legendary even by Stasi standards.

Bernhard im Schatten
Axmann was an ambitious captain of the Stasi and coordinated the development of the Stasi TSF corps. He had a rivalry with Jürgen Bernhard, having forced his sister Irsidina to execute him as a test of loyalty to East Germany.

Scharzesmarken
Besides his control over Stasi TSF operations, he persecuted spies and dissidents. Axmann enjoyed breaking people and bending them to the Stasi's needs. He had a particular talent for finding a person's weakness and exploiting it; he would often impress broken individuals into the Stasi as informants, sex slaves or foot-soldiers. A particular example of this was Lise Hohenstein, who he captured together with her family as they attempted to flee East Germany. Under Axmann's control, Lise was brutally tortured, gangraped, served as his personal sex slave and acted as a Swallow (a spy prostitute), besides being forced to execute twenty fugitives, one of whom was an infant. Lise was only saved of that horror by Beatrix Brehme, another victim of Axmann.

Axmann was finally killed in 1983 during a fight with Irisdina Bernhard, in which she was also fatally wounded.