LUXURY TO POVERTY

Hawera Star, Volume L, 11 September 1930, Page 7

LUXURY TO POVERTY

EX-MILLIONAIRE PENNILESS

OHIDEEN AS REGULARS

A mail who at one time fed 400 starving children recently found himself starving in Berlin and his own children begging on the Berlin streets. This is the tragic story of Herr Will Miethe. revealed after" he had tried to commit suicide, despairing-of obtaining help for his children by any other means.

Before the inflation period Herr Miethe was a millionaire who had invested his fortune in house property m Cologne and other cities. One of these houses was occupied by the Com-mander-iii-Chief of the British troops on the Rhine, but Herr Miethe would not touch the money due to him for it, and presented it to the State. Shortly after Herr Miethe moved to ins palace at Lobeda, near Thuringia. where lie fitted out the place as a 1 home for the poverty-stricken children in the district. Eor more than seven years 400 children lived on his estate near \\ ittenberg. Herr Miethe then sold all his houses, with the exception of his palace, and placed the money in shares. The inflation. came, and he was reduced to comparative poverty, the whole of the shares not being north the ribbon that bound them. In 1922 lie was forced to sell Ins palace for £25,000. With this money he- intened to buy a home on the Rhine. The financial authorities in Germany, however, thought he intended to Hee the country with this money and confiscated it.

This disaster and family difficulties brought Herr Miethe so' low that he suffered a paralytic stroke, became temporarily insane, and was taken to a mental hospital. At the beginning of this year he was set free and was found work for a few hours a day in a canary shop. The pay was insufficient to keep him and liis three children.

The unfortunate mail attempted to commit suicide by gas, and was found unconscious and taken to hospital, where he recovered, Charitable institutions have taken tare of his children.