Adolf Seefeldt

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Adolf Seefeldt , also Seefeld (born March 6, 1870 in Potsdam , † May 23, 1936 in Schwerin, executed by guillotine ) was a German serial killer .

Life

Born in Potsdam as the seventh and last child of his parents and trained as a locksmith , Adolf Seefeldt was later trained by a watchmaker to repair grandfather clocks and pocket watches, came to Lübeck in 1890 and married Katarina Seefeldt there, who divorced him in 1910. The son of this marriage was sent to an insane asylum at the age of 19 for crimes of morality .

Perpetrator

The traveler and watchmaker Adolf Seefeldt, also known as "Sandman" or - because of his profession - "Uncle Tick Tack" and "Uncle Adi", abused boys and killed at least twelve boys during the Third Reich . With one exception, he chose pine trees as the crime scene . One thing they had in common was the clothing of the victims, who all wore sailor suits . Since all the children were found to be "sleeping peacefully" and showed no signs of external violence, the police were puzzled about the circumstances of their death. It is therefore possible that Seefeldt committed other murders that were believed to be natural deaths.

Contemporary experts speculated that Seefeldt used self-made poison or chloroform or suffocated his victims. According to Hans Pfeiffer , well-known author of popular science books on authentic criminal cases, these theories can be refuted with little effort. Pfeiffer, on the other hand, suspects that Adolf Seefeldt put his victims into a hypnotic sleep, then presumably sexually satisfied himself orally with them and finally left them sleeping in the forest, neglecting to wake them from hypnosis. The children later died of hypothermia , which Seefeldt accepted or intended.

Seefeldt is said to have been abused by two men himself at the age of 12. He was imprisoned for the sexual harassment of a boy for the first time at the age of 25. Psychiatrists attributed imbecility, which is why he spent most of his life in asylums and prisons.

Victim

In addition to small children, victims were the twelve-year-old boy Kurt Gnirk († April 16, 1933), Wolfgang Metzdorf († October 8, 1933), Ernst Tesdorf († November 2, 1933); (known as Kiensammler with the surrounding area), Alfred Prätorius († November 12, 1933), Hans Korn († January 16, 1934), Günter Tie [s] ke from Oranienburg († October 2, 1934), the eleven year old Erwin Wischnewski from Brandenburg († October 8, 1934), the four-year-old Artur Dill († October 16, 1934, found in Neuruppin ), the five-year-old Edgar Dittrich called "Eipel" († October 16, 1934, found in Neuruppin), the ten-year-old Hans-Joachim Neumann († February 16, 1935, found on June 20, 1935), ten-year-old Heinz Zimmermann († February 23, 1935) and eleven-year-old Gustav Thomas († March 22, 1935). The investigative authorities assumed that the actual number of victims was far higher and that the series of murders could have claimed up to 100 deaths.

Gustav Thomas

Forensic doctor Wilhelm Hallermann summed up in the murder of eleven-year-old Gustav Thomas († March 22, 1935, found on March 23, 1935 in a pine forest near Wittenberge ) that microscopic examinations indicated that the bloodshot bruises indicated strangulation.

In the murder trial against Adolf Seefeldt, forensic doctor Victor Müller-Hess came to the conclusion that all murder victims had not been poisoned, but strangled or strangled.

Legal proceedings

The Schwerin jury chaired by the district court director Karl Friedrich Sarkander and the associate district judges Wilms und Weise consisted of butcher Ernst Hahn from Crivitz , senior secretary Wilhelm Schneeweis in Schwerin, local group leader Friedrich Jahnke from Parchim , mayor Ernst Dubbe from Leussow , engineer Otto Arpke from Lübenheen as well as city councilor and district leader Buhr from Ludwigslust and negotiated the criminal case from January 21, 1936. After the pleadings of February 21, it pronounced the sentence on February 22, 1936 for murder in twelve cases. The sentence of death Adolf Seefeldt should, according to the Low German observers from February 29, 1936 Revision have inserted. Neither a revision document nor a revision procedure are historically documented; the judgment was enforced on May 23, 1936 in Schwerin, after the pardon had become final and the pardon was rejected.

Prosecutors, defense counsel and experts

Accuser

The prosecutor was the Chief Public Prosecutor Wilhelm Beusch , whom the Auxiliary Bishop Bernhard Schräder remembered in connection with Vicar Leo Wiemker (1909–1976) as a vocal public prosecutor in 1939.

In the presence of the later war criminal and Reich Governor of Mecklenburg Friedrich Hildebrandt , he railed against the defendant to justify the eradication of such behavior.

defender

Adolf Seefeldt's criminal defense attorney was Rudolf Neudeck .

Experts involved in the process

execution

The day before, the executioner Carl Gröpler had visited the delinquent and "recognized the expected difficulty of the execution". The next morning, Seefeldt was willingly let himself be brought from life to death with a falling sword machine .

documentation

The files after Seefeldt's conviction are poor. In addition to the newspaper reports on his execution, there are only two memorial records of conversations that were held in Seefeldt's cell in Schwerin in April 1936. The case of serial killer Adolf Seefeldt was discussed in 1937 by J. Fischer and Johannes Lange in the monthly magazine for criminal biology and criminal law reform 28.

tragedy

In the course of the investigation into Seefeldt's child murders, a falsely suspected traveling salesman took his own life by hanging in the Ludwigslust district court prison.

literature

  • Matthias Blazek: Executioner in Prussia and in the German Empire 1866–1945 . ibidem-Verlag, Stuttgart 2010. ISBN 978-3-8382-0107-8
  • P. Böttger: Dogs in the service of the criminal police with special consideration of the Seefeldt murder case . Leipzig 1937
  • Kerstin Brückweh: lust for murder - serial murders, violence and emotions in the 20th century . Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2006. ISBN 978-3-593-38202-9 Excerpts online - digitized
  • Erich Ebermayer: “Uncle Ticktack. The boy murderer Adolf Seefeldt ”. In: Robert A. Stemmle [Ed.]: Sexualverbrechen (Der Neue Pitaval; Vol. 13). Munich [u. a.] 1967, pp. 11-38
  • Jens Haberland: "Adolf Seefeldt - an unsolved mystery". In: ders .: Serial killers in Europe in the 20th century . Berlin 1997. ISBN 3-930057-38-7 , pp. 125-129
  • Hans Peiffer : "The Sandman - Adolf Seefeldt (1933-1935)". In: Wolfgang Schüler [Hrsg.]: Serial killers in Germany . Leipzig 2005. ISBN 3-86189-729-6 . Pp. 16–36 ( online (pp. 146 ff.)) , Accessed on May 30, 2014
  • Ulrich Zander: The hunt for the "Sandman". The trial of the serial killer Adolf Seefeld began 80 years ago in Schwerin. Wandering watchmaker killed twelve boys. In: Schweriner Volkszeitung / Mecklenburg-Magazin (January 29, 2016), p. 24.
  • Frank-Rainer Schurich, Michael Stricker: The serial killer Adolf Seefeld and modern criminology. Publishing house Dr. Köster , Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-89574-875-2
  • Frank-Rainer Schurich, Michael Stricker: The beast from the forest. Historical criminal case. Publishing house Dr. Köster, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-89574-887-5

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Landesarchiv Berlin: Central file for murder and teaching material collection A Pr.Br.Rep. 030-03 pp. 271 to 274 ( Memento from October 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 1.7 MB), accessed on August 27, 2013
  2. ↑ Der Spiegel : THE GAME IS OVER - ARTHUR NEBE The splendor and misery of the German criminal police. Der Spiegel 48/1949 of November 24, 1949 , accessed on August 30, 2013
  3. ↑ Short biography , accessed on August 29, 2013
  4. ^ Resistance to the Nazi regime in the Mecklenburg and Western Pomerania regions (p. 39 and portrait photo p. 47) , accessed on October 7, 2015
  5. ^ Wüstling - Werwolf - Teufel: Media images of serial killers in the German mass press 1918–1945 Dissertation by Anne-Kathrin Kompisch, Hamburg 2008, p. 188 (PDF; 1.5 MB), accessed on August 29, 2013
  6. ↑ p. 210 (PDF; 1.5 MB), accessed on August 29, 2013
  7. ^ Blazek, Executioner, p. 87.
  8. ↑ Brückweh, bloodlust, S. 276th
personal data
SURNAME Seefeldt, Adolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Seefeld, Adolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German murderer
DATE OF BIRTH March 6, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH Potsdam
DATE OF DEATH May 23, 1936
Place of death Schwerin through the guillotine