AMAZING GERMAN CRIME

Taranaki Daily News, 11 February 1928, Page 13

AMAZING GERMAN CRIME

SCHOOL’ BOYS’ DEATH PACT PUZZLE FOR PSYCHOLOGISTS CALM MURDER AND SUICIDE By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright. Received Feb. 10, 9.15 p.m. A. and N.Z. Berlin, Feb. ft The case of Kranz, a schoolboy who is charged with murdering his boy friend, recalling the Leopold Loebe case in Chicago, has caused a sensation in Berlin. It will form a standard document for the historian in social life since the war in Germany, particularly as regards the consequences of the precocity of .a youth playing on passions which he was unable to control.

Leading sociologists, doctors, authors, lawyers and professors were present at the trial, analysing the physiology of the drama. Kranz, who is 18 years of age, was a scholarship winner. His chief reading wince he was arrested has been Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Dostoievsky.

Kranz was visiting the house of a schoolboy friend named Scheller on the night of the tragedy, others present being a third schoolboy named Stephan, and Scheller’s sister Hildegard, aged 10. The girl’s parents being absent, the boys eat up all night drinking liqueurs and talking of love. The discussion finally turned on death, and Scheller proposed that all four should die. He wrote a letter “to the universe,” beginning: “Dear Universe, a single portion of your organism perishes; don’t worry, Time will roll on.” The letter ended with the intimation that Stephan and Hildegard would be killed and that the others would commit suicide. With a smile, Kranz states, Scheller shot Stephan and committed suicide, and lie was about to commit suicide himself when the girl snatched the revolver. Some of. the evidence suggested that Stephan, bing found in Hildegard’s bedroom, precipitated the tragedy. There was also evidence that some of the boys belonged to a juvenile club the statutes of which strictly enjoined that all members who were deceived by men or women friends must avenge themselves upon their rivals.