Girl With Suicide Habit

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 1 July 1939, Page 16

Girl With Suicide Habit

pAROLiriE Hanna Kerzinger, a young dancer, of Villach. in Carinthia, Austria, recently hurled herself to death from a mountain peak near her village. She was found dead by a tourist party. The unfortunate girl had attempted to kill herself 15 times previously, but was always saved in time. Her sixteenth attempt was successful. She was 16 and unhappily in love with a boy when she first tried to kill herself. Caroline jumped into a pond. But she was astounded when her feet touched bottom. But apparently the death instinct was stronger in Caroline than in most normal people. Once, when her father and mother scolded her for bringing home a poor school report, Caroline threw herself in front of a street car. The conductor put on the brakes at the last moment, so that she suffeied no harm beyond a few bruises and a dislocated wrist. Caroline’s next attempt at suicide was at the age of 18, after graduating from high school. She wanted to punish her parents because they would not allow her to become a dancer. She flung herself down from the second floor of the house where they lived. She broke a leg, a shoulder-blade, and injured her pelvis, but was quite healthy and fit again after a few months in hospital. The incorrigible suicide candidate's parents now consented to her being a dancer. Caroline went to Vienna to train for her profession. She knew no one in the big city, and she was so homesick and lonely that after two months she felt fed up with life, and flung herself from a bridge into the Danube Canal, which flows through Vienna. The policeman on duty saw a woman falling from the high bridge into the water. He jumped after her and dragged her to the shore. She was unconscious, but came round soon. After this Caroline boarded with a family so she would not feel so lonely. The landlady’s husband was attracted and made advances to her. They were discovered by the wife, who ordered the girl from the house immediately. Caroline began to pack her things, slipped out quietly to the bathroom, and cut her veins with the razor which she found there. Wrist Cut. When the landlady came to see whether she was ready to go. she found her lying on the bathroom floor, blood flowing from her wrist. An ambulance I was summoned; once more the girl was saved. Next came a love affair. The man left her. She hanged herself with the curtain rope, but was disecvered in time and saved. Then Caroline failed to pass the final examination at the dancing school; she shot herself with a revolver, but the bullet that was aimed at her heart stuck l>etween the ribs, and after a few weeks in hospital she was well again. She passed her examination, but failed to get a job immediately, she dissolved two boxes of aspirin in water and swallowed them. The charwoman found her in the morning, lying on her bed in a stupor resembbng deatn. A period of two years followed, during which Caroline was fairly hanpy. and made no suicide attempt. Then she was taken ill and confined to bed during several months, not being allowed

Fifteen Attempts On Her Lite

to dance for six months after her recovery. She had no money, and was too proud to ask financial help from her parents. The old despondency settled on her again. One day Caroline opencxi :n ga>tap in her kitchen, but it was discovered in time by her next-door neighbour, who came to see what caused the strong smell of gas which penetrated into her flat. One night she accidentally took too much of her sleeping drug. Her neighbours. anxious about Caroline's health ever since her last suicide attempt, heard sounds of choking and gurgling through the thin plaster wall, and ran to see what .was the matter. Caroline was again taken to the hospital, and her life was saved once more. After a year she received news of her mother’s death. She went home to Villach for the funeral, but was received rather coldly by her father. On the way back to Vienna she flung herself out of the train, but fell on a wire connecting two watch-houses. The train watchman found her lying unconscious on the ground. Caroline suffered grave internal injuries, but was restored to health again within two months. Gambled at Races She had jobs and at the end o* two years she had quite a neat bank account. All she wanted now was to have sufficient money to stop dancing and return to her father. She decided to gamble on horses, but lost her money in a short time. She went * to the motor-cycle races, held at the Trabrennplatz in Vienna, and planted herself at the sharpest, most dangerous curve of the course. When she saw the motor cycles approaching with enormous speed, she detached herself from the crowd and was about to fling herself in front of a bike A man who noticed her intention, gripped her in the last fraction of the last second, when the bicycles were hardly a few inches away bearing down upon her at lightning speed. So began a love affair v/hich brought disappointment to Caroline. After » time he grew tired of her and stayed away on the plea of various but all too transparent excuses. Caroline could not give him up. The idea of death was ever present in her mind, a solution to every problem. She decided to die. together with her unfaithful lover. Two further attempts at suicide were unsuccessful. Caroline’s last suicide attempt, which she made a year before she at last achieved death, was the most curious of all. She sat alone in a car of the Big Wheel in the Prater, Vienna’s amusement park. The huge wheel, turning slowly, carries the little cars attached to it to a prodigious height, about 300 feet, from which opens a grand view upon the city. When the car was at the highest point Caroline broke the window and jumped out of it. But her dress got caught in a screw, the wheel was stopped immediately. she was rescued, and accompanied by the none-toc-flattering remarks of the workmen operating the Big Wheel, she was sent home and fined for the broken window. The unfortunate dancer, who hart vainly tried to kill herself, at last niel her end by hurling herself down from the hrink of a precipice.