ANOTHER M’S IDENTITY

Evening Star, Issue 20055, 21 December 1928, Page 1

ANOTHER M’S IDENTITY

AVOIDING GQSSGRIPTION LIVED IN DAILY DREAD. Twenty-five years ugo Lari Knedlor, to avoid llio conscription laws, changed identities with Franz Schcvcnhos, a friend who was emigrating to America. He took over his papers and personality. For twonty-livo years ho maintained, his secret—a period which included marriage, four years’ front-line service in the German army during the war, and filtecn years’ employment as lorornan in Dio factory. It is only by a combination of circumstances that the secret is at last divulged (says the Berlin correspondent of the Loudon ‘ Dailv Chronicle >. A few months ago an inquiry reached Die Berlin authorities, from the Munich police as io whether a certain “ Schcvcnhos '* living in Berlin could possibly be identified with a Sohcvenhos who bad been sentenced to death in Munich in 1919. This—tho real— Schavenhos had returned io Germany Irom America after tiic war end participated in the Red rebellion in that city. Found guilty after the collapse of (ho brief Red regime of complicity in tho shooting of six Munich citizens, ho was sentenced io death. The sentence was duly carried out; but it came to the startled cars of the .Munich authorities that there was living in Berlin a “ Schcvcnhos ” the details of whoso birth, parentage, and so on corresponded exactly with those of the Solicvonhoa executed m Munich. The Berlin "Schcvcnhos” was arrested and charged with 1 falsification of his identity. Ho told tho court a moving story of Uie moral Bufferings ho had endured as » result of his twenty-five years’ masquerade. During a quarter of a century be was self-isolated from ills parents and all his relatives and old friends. Ho had married under his false name, and had taken employment under it, and had lived in almost daily dread of (ho return of the nian whose identity he had borrowed and his subsequent exposure.