OPERA SINGER'S FATE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14223, 20 November 1909, Page 2 (Supplement)

OPERA SINGER'S FATE.

A BERLIN LOVE DRAMA.

The trial has begun , at Berlin, before the Gustrow Criminal Court of Fraulein Auguste Zobel; who is charged with the murder of a promising young opera singer, Fraulein Frieda Bartholdt, who was engaged at the Bostock Municipal Theatre.

The deceased was engaged to a Berlin, commercial traveller, called Waldemar Koch, who, it is alleged, owing to defalcations in his business, had been compelled to leave Germany and flee to Paris, whither he was accompanied by the prisoner. On learning that Koch still corresponded with his fiancee, Fraulein Zobel, actuated, it is asserted, by motives of jealousy, persuaded her lover to return to Germany, where she effected his arrest, intending to get Fraulein Bartholdt to break off her engagement on the news of Koch's imprisonment. Fraulein Zobel proceeded from Berlin to Rostock with this intention, and called on her rival about five o'clock in the afternoon of March 25 last. A friend of the deceased was present when Fraulein Zobel arrived, and she left the room to get the visitor a cup of coffee. Thereupon Fraulein Zobel handed her rival a letter, which she bade her; read.

; As the artist opened the letter the prisoner fired at 'her with a revolver, hidden in her muff. The bullet penetrated the left eye, and the singer ■ tank dead to the floor. Fraulein Zobel was able to escape as far as the railway station, but was arrested as she was entering the Berlin express. She l denied that she intended to murder Fraulein Bartholdt, declaring her intention to have been to shoot her in the throat, and ruin her voice, in order to prevent her ever going on the stage again. Nevertheless, the prisoner' pleaded guilty to the charge of murder.