PATRICIDE CONVICTED TO TWO YEARS’ IMPRISONMENT
After a trial lasting almost four months, former Criminal Assistant Herbert Anwaldt — whom the people call the bastard-avenger — has been convicted to two years’ imprisonment and, on his release, to compulsory psychiatric care for the murder of his father, Baron Olivier von der Malten. The court, when presenting its grounds for such a conviction, pointed to the burning harm caused to his child — raised in an orphanage — by the well- known aristocrat and liberal philanthropist. This discordance between the Baron’s words and his actions, his glaringly heinous injustice, appeared — to the court — to partially justify the crime committed under severe provocation by Anwaldt, who suffers a nervous disorder …
FAREWELL TO HEAD OF CRIMINAL DEPARTMENT OF BRESLAU POLICE, EBERHARD MOCK. MERITORIOUS POLICEMAN TAKES ANOTHER STATE POSITION
Today, to the sound of marches played by the garrison orchestra, Breslau’s Police Praesidium bid a ceremonious farewell to Director Eberhard Mock, who is to take over a different government post. Mock, plainly moved, said goodbye to the institution with which he had been associated since youth. We have unofficially learned that he is not leaving the city which owes him so much …
AVENGER RELEASED FROM PRISON TODAY
Today a large crowd of Breslau’s citizens waited outside the prison on Kletschkau Strasse for Herbert Anwaldt, perpetrator of the memorable vengeance bestowed on Freemason Olivier von der Malten, his unlawful father. Some of those present at this greeting held banners with anti-Masonic slogans. It is praiseworthy that the people of our city react so actively to the blatant injustice dealt by some crypto-Masonic judge in convicting this righteous man to two full years of imprisonment.
Anwaldt was released at twelve o’clock and was immediately driven away in an awaiting car to — as we learned — a certain clinic where, in accordance with the court’s verdict, compulsory hospitalization awaits him. This verdict must be changed! The liquidator of Freemasons deserves a medal, not a stint in a psychiatric hospital. His action was proof of a great presence of mind. Jews and Freemasons! Don’t make a madman of this honest German!
XVII
BRESLAU, FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12TH, 1934
TEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING
The monstrous, modernistic office block on the corner of Ring and Blucherplatz, where the administration of many municipal offices and a bank were housed, was equipped with an unusual lift. It was made up of numerous small single cubicles, one above the other, strung as if on a rope. This pulley was constantly on the move so that people entered and left the small, open cubicles in flight. If someone was lost in thought and did not get out on time, they would pass through the attic or basement in perfect safety. Complete darkness would suddenly fall, and the cubicle, shuddering and grating, would move — with the help of massive chains — horizontally, after which it found itself appropriately vertical again. As soon as the reinforced concrete monster had been built, this lift was the cause of much excitement, especially among the children who overpopulated the surrounding dirty streets and dilapidated yards. Caretakers had their work cut out for them and little rascals had their heads full of ideas as to how to outwit them.
That day, caretaker Hans Barwick was particularly vigilant because, since morning, several scamps had been trying to make the exciting journey through the floors, attic and basement. He observed each entering client carefully and a moment earlier a man, his hat pulled over his brow and wearing a leather coat, had arrived. Barwick had wanted to check his identification but rapidly had changed his mind: dealing with such an individual foretold inevitable problems. A few minutes later, he was passed by a policeman whom he knew, Max Forstner. Barwick had first met him the previous year when giving a statement concerning a case which involved an unsuccessful bank robbery and since then had greeted Forstner with great deference. He did this every Friday, since on that day this official regularly visited the bank for reasons unknown to Barwick.
Forstner entered the lift, losing the obsequious porter from view. The lift moved at a leisurely pace. It passed the first floor and found itself between flights. Forstner disliked these moments. He was pleased when the level of the lift floor was at one with the level of a landing; he would then jump out sprightly, smiling like a man of the world. When the lift neared the second floor, Forstner was initially surprised, then furious. On the threshold to the floor stood a man in a leather coat who obviously had no intention of moving aside in order to allow the policeman to leave.
“Get out of my way,” Forstner shouted and threw himself at the obstacle. His momentum, however, was incomparably lesser and weaker than the strength with which the pushy nuisance barged into the lift. He crowded Forstner into the depth of the cubicle and pressed him hard against the wall. The lift was reaching the third floor. Forstner tried to draw his gun. At that moment, he felt a painful prick in his neck. The lift was approaching the ninth floor. Sensual impressions such as the hammering of machinery and the rocking of the cubicle no longer reached Forstner. The lift crossed the attic in utter darkness and found itself on the ninth floor again. The man in the leather coat then got out and went down by way of the stairs.
Hans Barwick suddenly heard the wailing of the mechanism and the high squeak of chains. The racket was so piercing that only one, gloomy thought came to his mind: “Dammit, someone’s got their leg crushed again.” He stopped the lift and conquered the stairs, flight by flight, but it was not until the very top that he realized his suspicions had been somewhat optimistic. Between the ceiling of the lift and the threshold of the ninth floor shuddered the unnaturally contorted body of Max Forstner.
DRESDEN, MONDAY, JULY 17TH, 1950
HALF-PAST SIX IN THE EVENING
The square next to the Japanese Palace, not far from Karl-Marx-Platz swarmed with people, dogs and prams of yelling children. Those who had managed to find a bench in the shade could speak of great happiness. To the happy ones belonged the Director of the Psychiatric Hospital, Ernst Bennert, and an elderly man immersed in his newspaper. They sat at opposite ends of a bench. The elderly man did not show the least surprise when Bennert started to talk to himself in a half-whisper, but when a young woman with a little boy toddling beside her approached and politely asked whether she could sit down, the men looked at each other and, in unison, refused. She left, muttering something about old men, and Bennert immediately resumed his monologue. The elderly man listened through to the end, revealed his scar-ridden face from behind the newspaper and quietly thanked the doctor.
Extract from the secret report of a U.S.A. intelligence agent in Dresden M-234 May 7th, 1945
… during the bombing of Dresden, among others died … former Chief of the Criminal Department of Breslau Police, later Deputy Chief of the Abwehr Department of Internal Affairs, Eberhard Mock. He was under the care of agent GS-142 from whose reports it appears that between 1936 and 1945 Mock came to Dresden every two months and visited his relative, Herbert Anwaldt, in various hospitals. According to information obtained by agent GS-142, from 1936 Anwaldt stayed at the psychiatric hospital on Marien-Allee. When the hospital was closed down by the S.S. in February, 1940, Anwaldt did not suffer the fate of other patients shot somewhere in the forests near the
