“GOLDMAKER OF HILDEN”

Taranaki Daily News, 22 December 1930, Page 9

“GOLDMAKER OF HILDEN”

FALSE- PRETENCES CHARGE ; MONEYLENDERS CONVINCED COULD DESTROY THE ATOM GOLD TO PAY NATION’S DEBT By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright. / ■ Dusseldorf, Dec. 19. Heinrich Kurschildgen, otherwise known as the “Golclmaker of Hilden,” who is using a shed for a laboratory, asserted his ability to make enough gold from sand to defray the entire German repatriations. He convinced a Cologne professor and chemist that he had devised, a machine which could destroy the atom and thereby produce gold. He has been charged with obtaining £12,000 by means of false pretences. A lawyer subscribed £lOOO and an industrialist £2500, and other smaller sums were advanced to -finance the invention.

An Anglo-American negotiated while Kurschildgen proceeded to London and lived in a good hotel at their expense. A Swiss merchant maintained him in Switzerland at a salary of £lOOO a year.

An English member of the syndicate wired him from-Paris saying that an advantageous contract had been concluded for a large scale manufacture of gold. He then ..took an aeroplane for Hilden, where he found that Kurschildgen had been arrested.

A later message says Kurschildgen was found guilty of fraud on 15 counts and sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment.