Rampage in Bremen

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During the rampage in Bremen on June 20, 1913, five girls between the ages of seven and eight were killed at the Sankt-Marien-Schule in Bremen-Walle and 18 other children and five adults were injured, some of them life-threatening. The perpetrator was Heinz Jacob Friedrich Ernst Schmidt, an apparently mentally confused 30-year-old teacher who was not employed and who came from Sülze in Mecklenburg-Schwerin (or, according to his forged papers, from Sülze in Hanover ).

Schmidt seems to have been driven by a delusional hatred of the Jesuits , whom he blamed for his personal misfortune and the evil of the world . He deposited several letters in which he also blamed them for the following events.

Schmidt entered the school around noon, armed with a large number of firearms. The sources speak of six to ten loaded revolvers or Browning pistols , which he apparently "shot empty" during the rampage and then switched to the next weapon. In total, he fired about 80 shots and carried several hundred rounds of additional ammunition. Several weeks before the crime, the Bremen police had received a tip from an arms dealer because of unusually high ammunition purchases, which, however, was not followed up.

After entering the school, Schmidt first shot a teacher, then broke into a classroom in which around 65 girls between the ages of seven and eight were being taught and opened fire. He met 15 of them, two were instantly dead, namely Maria Anna Rychlik and Elsa Maria Herrmann. Another girl, Sophie Gornisiewicz, died when she fell down a flight of stairs and broke her neck . Two other girls, Anna Kubica and four weeks after the rampage, Elfriede Höger, later died from their gunshot wounds.

When Schmidt, who had followed some fleeing girls, tried to break into another room, it had already been barricaded by the teachers. He then turned around and shot boys playing through a window facing the schoolyard, injuring five of them and a roofer nearby. He was attacked in quick succession by the school caretaker, a teacher and the school gatekeeper, all three of whom he also shot and injured in some cases lightly and in some cases life-threateningly.

Schmidt was ultimately overwhelmed by passers-by who heard the gunshots. A police officer protected him from the angry crowd. Schmidt was later taken to a mental hospital in Ellen , where he finally died in 1932.

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ ( The mass murder in the girls 'school .. In:  Reichspost , June 21, 1913, p. 22 (online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / Maintenance / rpt) (A terrible act of an insane teacher in a girls' school in Bremen. In:  Neue Freie Presse , June 21, 1913 , P. 9 (online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / Maintenance / nfp) ( Kills 3, wounds 17 in a classroom , The New York Times, June 21, 1913)
  2. ↑ The murder of a madman in a Bremen girls' school. In:  Neue Freie Presse , June 24, 1913, p. 9 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / nfp
  3. ↑ Bremen teacher shoots five girls , picture (June 19, 2013)

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