At the onset of the Second World War he decided to fulfill his military obligation and joined the anti-aircraft artillery of the Luftwaffe.
In 1942, after a Christmas party, he was spotted kissing another man[2] and was charged under section 175-1 of the Third Reich's criminal code.
He was sentenced to a disciplinary minesweeping unit where being overworked, underfed, and mistreated by fellow convicts he developed malaria.
His web site also brought him into contact with an old lover from Paris in the 1940s, and a distant relative (see: Flinsch Peak).
The Body in Question,[3] a biography by Ross Higgins which includes 110 pages of Flinsch's artwork, was published in 2008 by Arsenal Pulp Press.