PEACE PRIZE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 68, 22 March 1938, Page 5

PEACE PRIZE.

BIG LOSS. £6500 FRAUD ALLEGED. EX-LAWYER IS CHARGED. (Special.—By Air Mail.) BERLIN, March 2. Herr Karl von Ossietzky, 48-ycar-old German pacifist, and winner of the 19-15 Xol>el Pence Prize, released 15 months ago from a Nazi concentration camp, sat in a Berlin court and heard how neartv all of his £8500 prize money had been spent—by other people. His hands trembling, his skin yellow from his long illness, Ossietzky looked across the court at stout, pink-faced Dr. Kurt Wannow, 51-year-old ex-lawyer, ex-officer, ex-playboy, on trial on charges of "breach of trust" and with having misappropriated £6500 of the prize money when acting as Ossietzky's lawver.

The German pacifist, whose hatred of Prussian niilitarisnl brought him four years in German prisons and concentration camps for "treason," showed no emotion as the ex-officer admitted having lent £3500 to titian-haired, 19-year-old Fraulein Lotte Lenz.

Referring to this loan, Dr. Wannow said: "I did not mean to do anything bad. I thought it would be a safe investment and bear good interest." But it was revealed that Dr. Wannow. with part of the money entrusted to him, had set up house with Fraulein Lenz in a luxury flat in the fashionable Budapeeterstrasse in Berlin.

"Lawyer's" Trick. Ossietzky, who looked s 0 weak and ill that the judge repeatedly offered him a chair, told the Court how Dr. Wannow had got the prize money.

He said: "I met him through my wife when I was in hospital at the end of 1936 (after his release from concentration camp).

"My first idea was to send my wife to Oslo to receive the prize money. Then I decided that it would be better to have a lawyer to bring it over to Germany. "Dr. Wannow passed himself off as one, and I gave him a full power of attorney. He obtained the money, but all that I have seen eince was £1000, which went in hospital expenses. I gave him no instructions to invest a penny."' The public prosecutor claimed that the remaining prize money, with the exception of £1300 recovered from Dr. Wannow, had been spent by the ''bogus" lawyer, either on himself or giving it away in "unreliable loans." Because of the strain on Ossietzky the judge then adjourned the tritil, and *aid that Kraulein Lenz would be called ; -»s a witness later.