DUSSELDORF MANIAC

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 50, Issue 81, 16 January 1930, Page 8

DUSSELDORF MANIAC

PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS.

GPU! SCENES TN DANCE HALLS. Developments in the course of the. search for the maniacal criminal ot Dusseldorf are of the deepest interest, not only to students of criminology, from police inspectors to newspaper readers, but to psychologists the wot Id over. The man is held responsible for 19 murderous attacks on women and children and for nine deaths, said the Berlin correspondent of the Obseiver,” writing on November 24. The voung woman, a typiste, energetic, good-looking and clever, who wrote to the police offering herself as a decoy, provided 1 she were given a suit of mail to wear beneath her frock, and suggesting ns headgear a steel he Ime masked with roses, of the ordinary mill-oil shape, is surely unique, typical, however, of the case it its mass effect on the local children and versifiers. , , . The children are playing at digging for bodies instead of their ordinary ipade games in the sands with which German playgrounds are provided. A leluge of poems, in ballad form, has descended on the local papers- and the police. Children played at digging trenches and transporting the wounded when war was the topic of conversation in Germany, and more than one Gong of Hate was composed, but never before in connection with a crime has there been such an epidemic of letters to relatives of the victims. It began after the communication ol the murderer to the local Communist jnper was- published, describing tho not where a body would he discovered. The overwhelming amount of work hese Doems and letters have caused j ie police has been an added complication to their labours. Signs of Religious Feeling. The communications from the nuifterer have brought the pseudo-science ,f graphology prominently to the fore igani. It was already honoured in Jermanv, and there are many big business houses which do not engage anyodv without first submitting his oi .er* application to a hand-writing ex>ert. Tile “Vossiche Zeitung” asked the / U rich graphologist, Dr. Pulver, loi m opinion of the person who wrote the lirections which led to the discovery i the body of the 20-year-old Mario .lalin, wliohad been missing for three nonths. . , , , Dr. Pulver, explaining that too much -.-as lost by reproduction for him to Tive a detailed analysis, was able nevertheless to pronounce the opinion hat the writer, who used block oi batin'letters, was in the'habit of writ, ng German or Gothic script only, .as ic" made a mistake in one “d” ; that mother, “ds,” badly formed, showed i-reat dissimulation ; that the repetiion of the words “wood” and “mealow,” each written three times arc vpical of madness. Besides great learness of thought he found that cer.. ain signs of religions feeling were shown. But various thick down-strokes ind underlinings showed violence in the ixtreme, and he finally- concluded that he whole was a typical example ot ivsterical desire for the limelight. In Dusseldorf, other experts, including the Berlin criminologist, Dr. ■Sehweikart, are testing the various leters and noems as they- come in, tc ee if they come from the same writer hough no analysis of character accompanies these scientific reports. But zraphologists of lesser reputation are u-offting by the boom. No writer of detective stories has >ver imagined n more dreadful scene ban that which takes place in the less degant Dusseldorf bars and dancing balls, one after another, night after light. The music suddenly ceases. r liree men bearing a wooden box arrive md after it is unpacked with a flourish •f music a wooden puppet is displayed, Iressed"- in the* clothes worn by the uurdered girl, Ida Renter, who was 'omul terribly battered in a field on the ast September Sunday she ever went lancing. So far nobody present has •eenlled seeing any man with a girl bus attired. Masses Shown Up.

The whole cheerful system of the lunday •afternoon' and evening of the nasses in Germany has been shown up n pitiful light in the course of these .roceedings. Ida Reuter, it is stated n the police records, was a girl of gay uid cheerful nature and good reput a* :j,on. She apparently tried one -place >f amusement alter another on liei Sundays out and frequented no par:icular one. It is what all German girls do, vatching during the week for those teer houses and cafes which advertise ■Sunday dancing from 4 o’clock in the ifternoon. They are quite prepared to • my for their own drinks, and. generally provide themselves with a thick packet •of bread and sausage. They have no liter,tion of returning home until after nidnight whether dance partners are ilentiful or not. . It is from among hese hard-working and deserving oung women and from children playng in the streets that the murderer’s victims are drawn. It is not too much to say that this -mefftialde publicity has proved a sad lardship to Dusseldorf, that city in lie west to which the wealthy sc-lf-nade man of the Ruhr and Rhine, desrailing of his own town, retires to ;pend his days amid luxurious suroundings. where the atmosphere, less atholic than Cologne, attracts all the irtistic temperaments of the province. But like all towns in the rich west rf Germany there is a chain of industrial villages—some larger than any nedinm-sized town elsewhere—on the nitskirts, whose inhabitants in many -ases form the sole support of the less elegant places of amusement. The vil’ages expand and draw nearer until they become suburbs. It is her.e, and lot in the privileged haunts of an extremely wealthy population, that the '•limes have occurred.