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Post by wolfman666 on Apr 4, 2017 9:33:40 GMT -5
amy its just another excuse for hauptmans criminal activity
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Joe
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Apr 4, 2017 10:47:19 GMT -5
Post by Joe on Apr 4, 2017 10:47:19 GMT -5
It's more than an excuse. It's mis-information and this ongoing notion he was forced to turn to crime to survive, is nonsense. Hauptmann did not come home to a post-war destitute situation in Germany that's being generalized here. Those times came later within the effects of hyper-inflation and progressed almost exponentially until 1923, the year he jumped ship for America. In the spring of 1919, at a time when he was not starving and had a comfortable roof over his head at his mother's house in Kamenz, he and Petzold turned to repeated house burglary and the armed robbery. Fortunately for him though, he was then locked up at Bautzen Prison for about four years (1919 to 1923) and didn't have to experience the increasingly miserable conditions that the general population had to endure during that time. He obviously didn't learn much while in prison, as he immediately turned to crime again upon his release. According to a police official in Berlin who was contacted following his arrest, he had the worst possible reputation in Kamenz and was known as a dangerous criminal. www.google.ca/search?q=hyperinflation+in+germany+after+wwi&espv=2&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjy3Nejk4vTAhVM4oMKHVyYAT0Q_AUIBigB&biw=1366&bih=638#imgrc=p6lmXovw9Ky_qM:
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Apr 4, 2017 11:04:44 GMT -5
Post by Wayne on Apr 4, 2017 11:04:44 GMT -5
Hi Joe,
Interesting...You said "According to a police official in Berlin who was contacted following his arrest, he had the worst possible reputation in Kamenz and was known as a dangerous criminal."
Could you please share this document? Thanks.
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Joe
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Apr 4, 2017 11:25:07 GMT -5
Post by Joe on Apr 4, 2017 11:25:07 GMT -5
Hi Wayne, I'm out of town with no access to my files but recall this comes from a police investigation initiated by the NYPD while Hauptmann was still incarcerated in NY. I believe the investigator was (Detective?) Arthur Johnson. Hope this helps.
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Post by hurtelable on Apr 4, 2017 15:51:01 GMT -5
I wouldn't take that assessment at face value, not because Hauptmann was a great guy, but because the source, a police official in Berlin c. 1934, would be a dyed-in-the-wool NAZI. There's a chance that there would be some political reason for the Nazis to disparage Hauptmann after his arrest in the US.
One possibility might be that the Burgermeister whose home he burglarized, whose name was Schirach, might have been or become part of the Nazi movement, or had a relative of the same name who became a high-ranking Nazi. Turns out that von Schirach was the surname of the head honcho of Hitler Youth Organization during the Nazi era.
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Apr 4, 2017 16:54:49 GMT -5
Post by kate1 on Apr 4, 2017 16:54:49 GMT -5
Hauptmann joked about having "millions" back in Germany when asked about his finances.
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Post by Michael on Apr 4, 2017 18:40:03 GMT -5
Hi Wayne, I'm out of town with no access to my files but recall this comes from a police investigation initiated by the NYPD while Hauptmann was still incarcerated in NY. I believe the investigator was (Detective?) Arthur Johnson. Hope this helps. This comes from J. Edgar Hoover in a letter to Schwarkopf on 12-4-34. Hoover had written to the Berlin Division of Police who got in touch with the Saxon National Criminal Police in Dresden. They wrote the following in reply: "Immediately after having served his time (in 1923) he again committed acts of burglary in Kamenz. He absconded during the course of his trial in the lower court of Kamenz and has since disappeared from Germany. In any event, he had the worst possible reputation in Kamenz and was known to be a dangerous criminal. He is a German citizen." Here is something from Anna's autobiography (September 1935): "Richard Hauptmann, at the tender age of seventeen, was thrown into the hell of the World War. Like millions of other young men, he was to witness the terrific destructive forces devised by man for destroying other human beings. Richard came out of the war with many shattered ideals. Like thousands of others, he found it hard to find again a place of himself in society and in the workaday world. He found that with Peace there was little or no work for returning soldiers. he had given his all to the Fatherland... but his homeland, in the chaos of post was readjustments, could not offer its sons either work or sustenance.
Much has been written about the so-called "criminal record of Hauptmann in Germany." None of the newspapers seriously considered the character of the "crimes" he was supposed to have committed. That would not be interesting reading.... nor a popular thing to do at that time, when press and radio broadcasts found it more interesting to paint Richard Hauptmann as an arch criminal capable of committing the most serious types of crime." It's more than an excuse. It's mis-information and this ongoing notion he was forced to turn to crime to survive, is nonsense. Hauptmann did not come home to a post-war destitute situation in Germany that's being generalized here. Those times came later within the effects of hyper-inflation and progressed almost exponentially until 1923, the year he jumped ship for America. In the spring of 1919, at a time when he was not starving and had a comfortable roof over his head at his mother's house in Kamenz, he and Petzold turned to repeated house burglary and the armed robbery. The "mis-information" came from Wilentz. Hauptmann did not point a gun at anyone and the women did not have children in those baby carriages. The women were using the carriages as wagons for their supplies. When anyone points a gun at you there is a threat of violence so that might constitute the label of being "dangerous," but Petzold welded it, and Hauptmann claimed it was unloaded. Next, you are very wrong in your assessment that no one was starving in Germany during 1919. People were starving. Women and children would rummage and eat garbage in the streets. Some people with employment actually wanted to be paid in food. The War ended on November 11, 1918. The Treaty of Versailles wasn't signed until June 28, 1919, and the Naval Blockade didn't end until July 12, 1919. Between this period of time over 100,000 people in Germany died of starvation, and many more as a result of disease brought on by malnutrition. Hauptmann's trial for being an Accomplice in the Robbery case was held on June 17, 1919. "...most historians still maintain that the 'hunger blockade' contributed hugely to the outcome of the First World War. By 1915, German imports had fallen by 55% from pre-war levels. Aside from causing shortages in important raw materials such as coal and various non-ferrous metals, the blockade cut off fertilizer supplies that were vital to German agriculture. Staple foodstuffs such as grain, potatoes, meat and dairy products became so scarce by the winter of 1916 that many people subsisted on a diet of ersatz products that ranged from so-called 'war bread' (Kriegsbrot) to powdered milk. The shortages caused looting and food riots, not only in Germany, but also in the Habsburg cities of Vienna and Budapest, where wartime privations were felt equally acutely. The German government made strenuous attempts to alleviate the worst effects of the blockade. The Hindenburg programme, introduced in December 1916, was designed to raise productivity by ordering the compulsory employment of all men between the ages of 17 and 60. A complicated system of rationing, first introduced in January 1915, aimed to ensure that at least minimum nutritional needs were met. In larger cities, 'war kitchens' provided cheap meals en masse to impoverished local citizens. Such schemes, however, enjoyed only limited success. The average daily diet of 1,000 calories was insufficient even for small children. Disorders related to malnutrition - scurvy, tuberculosis and dysentery - were common by 1917. Official statistics attributed nearly 763,000 wartime deaths in Germany to starvation caused by the Allied blockade. This figure excluded the further 150,000 German victims of the 1918 influenza pandemic, which inevitably caused disproportionate suffering among those already weakened by malnutrition and related diseases.
Although the blockade made an important contribution to the Allied victory, many of its devastating side effects cast a long shadow over post-war German society." In early March 1919, General Herbert Plumer, commander of the British Army of Occupation, informed Prime Minister Lloyd George that his men were begging to be sent home; they could no longer stand the sight of "hordes of skinny and bloated children pawing over the offal" from the British camps. Finally, the Americans and British overpowered French objections, and at the end of March, the first food shipments began arriving in Hamburg. But it was only in July, after the formal German signature to the Treaty of Versailles, that the Germans were permitted to import raw materials and export manufactured goods. (source:The Politics of Hunger: The Allied Blockade of Germany, 1915-1919 by Charles Paul Vincent, Ohio University Press, 1985)
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Joe
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Apr 6, 2017 10:26:39 GMT -5
Post by Joe on Apr 6, 2017 10:26:39 GMT -5
Thanks for the information about Hauptmann's "reference," Michael. I knew that Hoover was involved somehow and was trying to reconcile how the NYPD would also have been in that mix. Independently, if I'm not mistaken, Arthur Johnson was also able to come away with a similar description of Hauptmann's generally-accepted local reputation.
Why would Hauptmann continue to rob houses after he had enough money from the Mayor of Bernbruch break and enter, to live comfortably in the spring of 1919? And if you have money but you're hungry and you rob women wheeling baby carriages full of food at gunpoint, why do you steal their food coupons and not their food? The fact he got sentenced to four years in prison, should be enough to conclude these were not "everyday occurrences" and they can't simply be excused through a generalization of conditions within the rest of post-WWI Germany. And given Anna Hauptmann's unyielding support for here husband until her death, her heart-rending diary account is not unexpected. By this point, she had long decided she would throw her support completely behind her husband no matter how misplaced and ingenuous it would have seemed to most people at the time.
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Mar 14, 2022 16:35:58 GMT -5
Post by bernardt on Mar 14, 2022 16:35:58 GMT -5
I am behind on the threads so hopefully everyone will bear with me if you've asked something and I haven't gotten back to you yet. My question to you Amy is where you heard of him? I believe you are referring to the man Hauptmann said was with Fisch when he first met him at Hunter's Island in the "beginning of March." He had blond hair with "sideboards", 2 years younger then Hauptmann, smaller and stout build, had a little mark from a vaccination on his chin, and spoke German with an Austrian accent. He claimed to have seen him again with Fisch 3 weeks later. The man described in this post is referred to as "Fritz." The man did exist obviously and appears to have partnered with Isidor Fisch in laundering money. Lloyd Gardner in 'The Case that Never Dies" states that Fisch had many Viennese friends. Henry Gewurz was one of them. Henry was a member of the Vienna Jewish Social Club located in the Bronx on 163rd. St. Fritz was said to have spoke German with an Austrian accent. Henry Gewurz also says that Fisch was seen in the company of a tall blond man--who may have been Fritz. Henry's brother. Eugene Gewurz, Henry's brother, was said to be acquainted with Fisch. Eugene is buried in Mt. Hebron Cemetery, and according to the record Eugene was a member of the Chrzanower Young Men, a group Fisch joined in 1927. Eugene died in 1971. His wife Claire is buried beside him. Eugene had several siblings besides Henry, including Jack with whom he visited his father in Vienna in 1930. Hauptmann said that Fritz had "sideboards"--probably the cheek curls characteristic of Hasidic Jews. It is quite possible that Fritz was a fellow member of one of Isidor's groups though Henry Gewurz does not seem to recognize or identify him.
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Mar 14, 2022 17:09:43 GMT -5
Post by bernardt on Mar 14, 2022 17:09:43 GMT -5
Further clarification: I am suggesting that 'Fritz" (Isidor's partner in laundering hot money) was an observant Jew who emigrated from Vienna and belonged or was closely associated with one of the organizations of which Fisch was a member. He is consistently described as blond, but in some descriptiosn he is called "tall" and in others he is descrbed as "stout" and about 5' 6" tall. The contradictions confuse the picture. There may have been two men, not just one. Since Henry Gewurz does not seem to know Fritz's identify, he may have been a member of an organization to which Henry did not belong.
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Mar 14, 2022 17:32:27 GMT -5
Post by bernardt on Mar 14, 2022 17:32:27 GMT -5
Gustav Mencke stated that Isidor Fisch came to his deli in New Rochele in the early months of 1932 with friends for lunch. He was introduced to Fisch by name and made a pun on his name. He said that Fisch's friend was tall with thinning hair. This could have been Fritz . Mencke thought it was butler Olly Whatley, but Whatley was not blond; he had dark hair and was described on his visa as having dark hair.
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Post by bernardt on Mar 14, 2022 20:40:55 GMT -5
Mancke also stated that Fisch spoke mostly German when he ate at the deli. Isidor knew how to speak English with no problem, so if he spoke German, then the people he was with spoke and understood German. Betty Gow, Violet Sharp, and Olly Whately were not German and probably did not know the language. Gustav Mancke must have misidentified the group, including Olly Whatley.
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