REICHSTAG FIRE

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 257, 27 September 1933, Page 8

REICHSTAG FIRE

3.15 P.M. EDITION

THE REAL A 7 AN DER LUBBE. JOURNALIST’S STORY. (United Press Association —By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) Received September 27. 12.25 p.m. LONDON, Sept. 26. The Daily Express’s Leipzig correspondent received special permission to visit Va.n der Lubbe, one of the accused in the Reichstag fire trial, in his cell. “In Court A'an der Lubbe holds his hands as though chained,” he writes, “but I saw him exercising in the yard, where he strode along swinging his arms like any healthy man. Later I saw a doctor strip him. His skin was white and firm, with no signs of disease. His cell is comfortable and roomy, with a table littered with illustrated magazines, but he prefers to sit listless and silent, with bent head. He seems to have sworn himself to obstructive semi-silence. “My impression grows that Y r an der Lubbe is a sort of Caliban, sullen and brutish, with streaks of idealism glimmering through the dark recesses of his primitive, tortured mind.” Caliban was a savage and deformed slave of Prospero in Shakespeare’s “Tempest.” The term is used for a man of similar degraded and savage character.