Anna Mehle
Anna Mehle (* 1862 ; † July 14, 1928 in Grünstadt ) was a single business owner in Grünstadt, Rheinpfalz , who was the victim of an unsolved robbery .
person
Anna Mehle was the daughter of the Grünstadt citizen Wilhelm Mehle (1834–1909) and his wife Helene Mehle nee. Heichemer (1835-1909). The father died just two days after the mother, on the day of her funeral. Her grave was still in the Grünstadt cemetery in 2018. The “Grünstadter Zeitung” of February 20, 1909, commented on the extraordinary double death of the parents with the words: “A respected local family was brought into painful mourning when death stopped in it in a way that was probably in the annals of the local city may have been rarely recorded. " As unmarried daughter lived with her parents Anna flours together and remained lifelong unmarried even after their death. It operated in 1928 alone, a grocery store on the ground floor of the property Schillerplatz 7, green city. Her three brothers Heinrich, Emil and Ludwig lived in Göttingen ; Emil Mehle owned a company for office ring binders there, Ludwig Mehle worked as a painter. She was considered friendly and popular.
The criminal case
On the evening of July 14, 1928, neighbors wanted to enter the shop at 4.30 p.m. and found it - contrary to usual practice - locked. The shop owner had been seen there two hours earlier. At around 6 p.m. they tried again and found that the courtyard gate to the south-east was unlocked. The neighbor's wife saw a person lying on the ground in the courtyard, the head area covered with sacks. She called a distant relative of the shopkeeper and entered the property with her. The person lying on the floor was the dead Anna Mehle. When her head was uncovered, one could see a gaping forehead wound with copious blood leakage, according to a later section report 11 cm long and 5 cm wide, with a broken skull. The immediately alerted police cordoned off the crime scene and guarded it around the clock.
The next morning (Sunday, July 15), a commission from the Frankenthal Regional Court appeared to record the crime scene, consisting of an investigating judge , the public prosecutor , several criminal investigators , and Professor Georg Popp (1861-1943) from Frankfurt , who was appointed by telegram , and a criminalist. In the courtyard they discovered an ax with the blunt back of which the woman had been killed, and a so-called manslaughter , which the murderer had apparently lost. The sequence of events was reconstructed: The perpetrator or perpetrators had probably entered the shop normally through the shop door and locked it behind them. When Miss Mehle realized the attack, she presumably fled through a side door into the adjoining courtyard. According to the autopsy, she was strangled and then killed. On the day of the act she had received a sum of 375 marks from the postman in order to be able to pay for the repainting of her house. These had disappeared and the first suspicions developed in the direction of those who knew. On the same day (July 15), two Tüncher were arrested, father and son from Bad Dürkheim . They had done painting work for Ms. Mehle on behalf of a company in Grünstadt and knew about the money.
The victim was buried on July 17, 1928, with great sympathy, in the Grünstadt cemetery. The obituary stated: "... suddenly snatched away by a nefarious hand". The city administration was represented at the funeral by Mayor Bordollo.
The suspects were questioned intensively and their home in Bad Dürkheim was searched by Professor Popp and his helpers. However, no solid evidence could be found against them. Both emphatically denied the act. The suspicion also referred to a paint mill in Fraulein Mehle's yard, which the older of the two suspects had wanted to buy from her, but was not prepared to pay the price of 20 marks. When the body was found, she was overturned on her leg. After a while the son was released, the father remained in custody as the main suspect. Ultimately, the suspicion could not be substantiated by facts and the man vehemently denied it.
Nevertheless, the indictment followed. On December 4th of the year the jury trial began at the Frankenthal regional court , chaired by the regional court counselor Joseph Guggemos, a very respected lawyer who had to resign as a criminal judge at the end of 1933 because he was the Catholic. Pastor Karl Hilarius Wagner from Kaiserslautern acquitted of the charge of a violation of the treachery law . Numerous interrogations of witnesses took place without being able to resolve the matter in a satisfactory manner. The defendant's son, who was also arrested earlier but has since been released, refused to testify. A turnaround was brought about by the information provided by a woman from Eisenberg (Palatinate) who stated that in August, during a conversation about the murder case, she had heard from an unknown man that the whitewashers arrested were innocent. He knew that a distant relative of Ms. Mehle murdered her because of the money he needed for his upcoming marriage. In fact, a relative of the victim could be identified who had a bride in Eisenberg. However, he was now divorced through suicide. The bride and her mother denied that the dead man had anything to do with the murder, but it could not be ruled out either. The accused painter from Bad Dürkheim was acquitted on December 8, 1928 for lack of evidence, the crime could never be solved.
memory
The grave of the victim has been preserved in the Grünstadt cemetery to this day. The shop, Schillerplatz 7, also still exists and externally corresponds to the appearance of 1928, with two small shop windows typical of the time. On the 90th anniversary of the victim's death, a report appeared in the local press in 2018. The ancient city club Green brought in the same year on a billboard on the grave.
literature
- Walter Lampert: Moving Years: Grünstadt 1918–1948 , Sommer Verlag, Grünstadt, 1985, p. 51
- Grünstadter Zeitung , born in 1928, various articles between July and December of the year (archived at the city administration of Grünstadt)
- Joachim Specht: The murderer was never found - 90 years ago the businesswoman Anna Mehle was murdered , in: Die Rheinpfalz , Unterhaardter Rundschau, on July 17, 2018
Individual evidence
- ↑ Grünstadter Zeitung of July 16, 1928
- ↑ Grünstadter Zeitung of July 18, 1928
- ^ Gerhard Nestler: Frankenthal under the Hakenkreuz , Stadtverwaltung Frankenthal, 2004, p. 185, ISBN 3-934845-20-7
- ↑ Grünstadter Zeitung of December 10, 1928
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Flours, Anna |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Single shopkeeper in Grünstadt, victim of an unsolved robbery, 1928 |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1862 |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 14, 1928 |
| Place of death | Grünstadt |