Robert Steinhaeuser, the teenage student who committed Germany's worst post-war massacre, was a member of a gun club and clinically shot many of his 16 victims in the head, police said April 27, 2002.

"Herr Heise, that's enough for today," replied 19-year-old Robert Steinhaeuser respectfully, putting down the pistol with which he had been about to shoot his former teacher.

Heise, balding and 60, has emerged as the hero of Germany's worst postwar massacre for the way he seized the initiative from the young gunman, shaking him out of his frenzied trance and preventing yet more deaths at Erfurt's Gutenberg high school.

Tears filled Heise's eyes and he clutched a handkerchief during an interview at his home in this eastern German town.

Yet his account of the 20-minute bloodbath that has plunged the country into mourning was chillingly matter-of-fact.

"I opened the door from the art classroom and saw a masked man in a black Ninja warrior-style outfit. He held a pistol up to my chest. Suddenly he pulled off his mask. His hair was plastered to his head with sweat.

"I recognised him. I said, `Robert, was that you shooting?' He nodded slowly. I plucked at my pullover and said: `Go ahead and shoot me, but look me in the eyes!' He said: `Herr Heise, that's enough for today,' and put down his pistol."

"I said, `let's talk about it.' He said `Yes, Herr Heise.' I opened the door, I said `Please', beckoning him politely to go in, then pushed him into the room.

"I must have done it pretty powerfully because he stumbled and then I slammed the door shut and locked it. I ran back down to the head office."

Heise ran to the school's head office. "It was locked. I rang the bell. The headmistress opened it when I said it was me. The deputy headmistress, was sitting dead at her desk. Her glasses were still on. There was a dark pool on the desk, it might have been blood."

Heise, dressed in black and sporting a carefully trimmed white beard and moustache, said his training had helped him to master the situation.

By the time he confronted Steinhaeuser, Heise was well aware that he was facing a killer because he had seen a dead colleague, and had even seen the masked figure only minutes earlier shouting: "Damn shit, I've got to reload."

"My instinctive calm must have calmed his feelings," Heise said.

Police said the teacher's bravery had prevented an even higher death toll.

(Agencies)