A GERM DEEMING

New Zealand Times, Volume LXIX, Issue 3777, 27 June 1899, Page 3

A GERM DEEMING

ACCUSED OF SIXTEEN MURDERS. BERLIN, April 27. A murder trial began to-day at Breslau which resembles rather the sensational developments of the worst kind of shilling shocker than a page from real life. A shoemaker named Hermann, bornin 1834, at Rengersdorf, in Silesia, who has already spent two years and eight months in prison for theft, begging and felonious assault, stands accused of having 'murdered his first and second wife twelve of his fourteen children, his mistress, and another woman since 1864. The story of these crimes is remarkable. In 1885 Hermann’s second wife Anna suddenly disappeared. Rumours that the prisoner had killed her and buried her in some unknown place were at qnco rife, although Hermann told the neighbours that she had probably committed suicide or gone to America with a paramour of hers. . _ Last January, however, during some structural alterations in the collar of the house in the Fuerstenstrasse, Breslau, formerly owned by Hermann's second wife, the workmen discovered that a spot on the floor sounded hollow on being struck. The police were informed of this and had the brick pavement torn up. Then a human skeleton was discovered lying on its back with its legs doubled up; on the finger bone was a marriage ring. THE SKULL WAS COMPLETELY FRACTURED. A medical examination proved the identity of the remains with the vanished Frau Herman. Now several novel and shocking details have leaked out. Soon" after marrying his first wife, by whom he bad fourteen children, Hermann treated her very badly, often boating her most brutally. He was an amateur photographer, and was known to habitually possess strong poisons, such as cyanide of potassium. Once when asked bow it happened that twelve of his children died soon after their birth, ho is alleged to have answered : —' • “I cannot keen so many children. There are enough on earth. Three drops of cyanide suffice for one child.” Hermann was divorced from his first wife in 1876, and she died shortly afterwards. A little while before this event the prisoner had seduced a work girl and robbed her of her small earnings. She had a child by him, and within a short period mother and child died ,under suspicious circumstances. In 1867 Herfnann bought a house from a widow, Frau TCabuse, on the stipulation that she should have the' right of inhabiting one room during her lifetime. Hermann was known to owe her throe hundred, marks, yet when THE WIDOW DIED MYSTERIOUSLY. soon after the sale of the house, the prisoner was able to show a receipt for the money, which ho alleged was given to him by the dead woman. In 1884 he married a widow, Anna Grulin. the proprietress of a house in the Fuerstenstrasse, and thereafter ceased to do any w r ork, preferring to live on his wife’s gains from letting rooms to lodgers, which money he spent in living most extravogently and consorting with unfortunates of the worst kind. Once ho robbed bis wife of all her jewellery. In 1885, as before mentioned, she suddenly disappeared, and Hermann then entered into a criminal intercourse with one of the two daughters of his late wife’s first marriage. For this be had to go to prison for one year. On his release ho took a small room in the cellar of the house in the Fuerstenstrasse, where he lived for about a year in close proximity to the spot where bis second wife’s' corpse was' interred. In 1891 the accused actually succeeded in getting divorced from his second wife on the ground that she had injuriously deserted him. Then he married a third time, and kept a boot shop in Breslau until he was arrested last January. During the first day of the trial" the prisoner denied everything. , The trial has so far elicited nothing new. At the Assise . Qonrt in Berlin, on Monday, May sth/ the proceedings in the sensational murder case at Breslau

cast a - terrible light on the prisoners former life, on his relations with the woman he is said to have murdered, and on other victims. His brutal treatment of his wife was testified to by numerous witnesses. Ono female witnes swore that she had heard that the prisoner kept poison in his cellar, three drops of which were sufficient to kill a man, but neither this evidence nor the testimony of other women as to his having poisoned his children was of any positive value.— A wonderful impression was made by the evidence of one witnes who had seen the prisoner carrying brides and mortar into the collar. The prisoner’s explanation of this was at that time the drains were being builtin the house, but the Crown could prove that the drains had been finished years before. A sensation was also caused in Court by tho evidence of a witness named Holmholz. After the disappearance of prisoner’s wife Hclmhola asked him why ho made no inquiries as to his wife’s whereabouts. Prisoner replied in a mocking tone, “She won’t return.”

On Tuesday, May 6th, the shoemaker Frans Hermann was found “Guilty” of manslaughter, and sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment and 10 years’ loss of civil rights.