LEADING LADY SHOT DEAD

Feilding Star, Volume I, Issue 134, 5 December 1906, Page 4

LEADING LADY SHOT DEAD

KILLED BY JEALOUS LOVER WHO COMMITS SUICIDE. Fraulien Rita AVolter, the leading lady at the Berlin Comic Opera House, was shot dead in Berlin by her lover, Herr Augustus Hesse, a young man of considerable private means. Fraulein Wolter, who was the daughter of a wealthy manufacturer of Augsburg, South Germany, obtained her parents' consent to follow a theatrical career with great difficulty. Finally, with their reluctant permission, she went to Berlin to study for the stage, and last j-oai succeeded in obtaining a position at the Comic Opera House, I where she soon became leading lady. During the period of study she became acquainted with Herr Hesse, and they became engaged. Their relations, however, cooled after Fraulein Wolter achieved success on the stage. Herr Hesse worried her continuously with jeolous outbreaks, which rendered her life miserable. At the same time the leading tenor of the Comic Opera House, a talent(>d young Spaniard, Senor Raventos, foil in love with Fraulein Wolter. He pressed her to marry him, and Frauloin Wolter, who had become tired of Herr Hesse, was very much in love with Senor Raventos, and desired to marry him, but feared her former lover's revenge. For months she wavered between the two, but showed more favour to her Spanish colleague. Herr Hesse, o:i perceiving how things were going, one Jay broke into Fraulein Welter's flat, seized her by the throat ,and nearly strangled her. That decided her, and she resolved to become Senor Raventos' wife. Herr Hesse forced an entrance into her flat late in the evening, and, after a long conversation, in which hi failed to persuado her to abandon Senor Raventor and to marry him he produced a revolver and shot her dead. Then he shot himself. A few days previously Herr Hesse telegraphed to Raventos, calling him a coward and ; ait or, and challenging him to a duel, and Senor Raventos, who was ill in bed, replied that he was willing to fight at any time.