Equality Rights Group has expressed its sadness at the news of the death of Peter Schirmer.

A statement from the ERG follows below: 

Peter's passing has touched us. Though he will be known to many in his facet as a long-term permanent visitor and resident to Gibraltar; as well as a local freelance journalist,’ ERG Chair, Felix Alvarez explained, ‘I was fortunate, however, to know him as a poet and dedicated author of a very special encyclopedia on South Africa that he generously invested time, effort and much love to. And of which he was rightly very proud.

It was Peter’s genuinely kind wisdom and humanity that left a mark, though; and his poem ‘A Final Song', which through the random chance of surname alphabetical order in the “Anthology of Contemporary Gibraltar Poets” published by Equality Rights Group last year, so aptly closed the collection, spoke to his longing for the open spaces of his native South Africa with so much love and longing, ‘to dance across the veld', and thus complete his journeying.

Our thoughts are with his family; and our gratitude is without words.