EX-KAISER’S SON

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXII, Issue 11494, 23 November 1931, Page 5

EX-KAISER’S SON

CLUBBED BY POLICE. TOO ZEALOUS A HITLERITE. AFFRAY IN E.AST PRUSSIA. Prince August Wilhelm of Hohenzollern, the former Kaiser’s fourth son, who is a devoted member of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist (Fascist) party, was clubbed by police recently at tile railway station, in Koenigsberg, East Prussia, after a Fascist meeting. Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Reichstag Deputy and Berlin Fascist leader, was clubbed also. The forty-four-year-old prince and Dr. Goebbels are close friends. While Press reports .of the incident vary according to the political tendencies of the newspapers, fft seems certain that the police, in attempting to disperse about 800 Fascists who bad assembled at the station to bid farewell to the prince and Dr. Goebbels on their departure for Berlin, used their clubs freely, injuring several persons. THE PRINCE’S STORY. “Der Angriff,” Hitler’s Berlin organ, asserts that August Wilhelm and Dr. Goebbels were “knocked down” by police, their heads and. faces being injured. The prince’s own story of the affair is given in an interview printed bv the “Xncbtausgabe.” The prince said that he and the Hitlerite leadei had reached the station accompanied by a dozen friends and had been met’ on the platform by some 25 others—“an assembly no bigger than might be seen at the departure of a well-known sport-sman” —when about 30 policemen arrived to “comb out” the platform. “1 was hit across rhe shoulder,” declared August Wilhelm. “My hat was knocked off and the next' blow struck tlie left half of my head and my oar. Dr. Goebbels, too, received a blow over the head, and a woman who interfered likewise was hurt.”

ben the prince showed his ticket to explain tbar lie was a passenger and not. an onlooker, he says, he ’received another blow. “I was only just able to evade that blqw, which struck my arm,” August AVillielm savs, calling the behaviour of the police shameful and unjustified iu view of the “perfectly quiet and peaceful” demeanour of (in, party on tile platform. TOO PERSUASIVE.

According to the police report 800 Fascists at. the station received the officers with loud shouts of “Down with you!” and other abusive language. When, in compliance, with the request of the station authorities. the police began clearing the platform, tip. crowd resisted, obliging the officers to use their clubs. Three policemen were reported to have been ill-treated.

Tlie Fascist meeting at Koenisberg had originally been prohibited under the ban placed by the Prussian authorities on all meetings likely to turn out “discordantly,” but later was allowed by the chief of police on condition that Dr. Goebbels—a man of thirty-three, who is reputed to be a more persuasive orator and a more radical Fascist, than his chieftain, Hitler—be not present. In his stead the former Kaiser’s fourth son was tlie first speaker.,