Erich von Halacz

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Erich Cedrick of Halacz (* 29. November 1929 in Dusseldorf ) is a German explosives - bombers , who became known as "Tango youth" in the German criminal history. In 1952 he was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Verden district court for two murders and pardoned in 1974 .

Life

Erich von Halacz is the son of Elisabeth Wenclewicz, née von Halacz, who came from the Hungarian family von Halacz, who emerged in the 11th century. In the 1920s she secretly married the dentist Kurt Wenclewicz in Schwedt / Oder . The child Erich emerged from the marriage. Since the dentist successfully challenged paternity in court, the actual father of the child is not known. The mother gave Erich to foster parents in Drakenburg near Nienburg, where she had already given her daughter, who was born in 1926, to. His foster father was a demolition and shaft master in a gravel pit. In his youth Erich had his mother's family name, Wenclewicz, but from his 21st birthday he called himself Cederik Erich von Halacz. Towards the end of the Second World War, Halacz, who had lived with his foster family in Wittenberg since the mid-1930s, fled from the Red Army in 1945 and returned to Drakenburg. He broke off an apprenticeship as a technical draftsman and tried in vain to work as a journalist . He called on Bremer Nachrichten several times , offered articles that were rejected, and unsuccessfully tried to get a job as an editorial volunteer . In his early youth, Halacz was known to the police through thefts and forgery of documents in Nienburg, as well as through the detonation of an explosive device in the center of Nienburg on New Year's Eve .

Halacz, who had been unemployed since 1948, maintained an elegant lifestyle in spite of this. He showed enthusiasm for the USA and tried unsuccessfully to found a German-American culture club in Nienburg. He also gave lectures on the USA in the Freundeskreis, which earned him the nickname "USA Professor". At night he painted Nienburg sidewalks with the request "Visit the USA!"

Explosives attacks

On November 29, 1951, the 22nd birthday of Erich von Halacz, there were two completed and one attempted bomb attack with parcel bombs delivered by post , as a result of which two people were killed and ten people were injured, some seriously. The acts caused a sensation across Europe. Halacz had posted the parcels the day before at post offices in Bremen and Verden.

The first explosive device detonated at eight thirty in the morning in the post office in Eystrup . The 18-year-old clerk Margret Grüneklee picked up the mail for the Göbber jam factory , to whose owner the package of explosives was addressed. The package exploded in the post office, killing the young woman. Eight other people suffered broken bones, concussions, torn eardrums and cuts.

The second explosive device exploded four and a half hours later in the editorial office of the Bremer Nachrichten newspaper in the Schünemann house in Bremen, killing the editor-in-chief Adolf Wolfard . His secretary and the newspaper's columnist were seriously injured.

The third explosive device, addressed to the feed manufacturer Anton Höing in Verden, failed.

After the great public sensation that the case caused, the German Party (DP), ruling with the CDU and FDP , launched an unsuccessful campaign in the Bundestag to reinstate the death penalty .

Explosives

The three parcel bombs sent by Halacz were each packed in elongated, round mailing tubes, which gave the impression of a gift package with a bottle. It was noted on the consignments that they could only be opened personally by the recipient. The construction of the explosive devices did not cause any problems for von Halacz, as he had knowledge of the handling of explosives through his foster father's occupation as an explosive master . The bombs contained the explosive Donarit , which he had obtained through a ruse from a demolition master. The ignition was carried out electrically with the help of a battery by contact closure when opening the package. While two explosives detonated, the third failed. At first it was assumed that it did not explode because the recipient did not open the package wide enough. In fact, the battery was empty.

Investigation and conviction

After the attacks, the Bremen police and the Lower Saxony police formed the special commission S (S for explosives ), headquartered in Bremen, to which around 60 officers belonged. It was the first transnational special commission of the post-war period . Representatives from the state criminal police offices in Bremen and Lower Saxony were in charge . At times it was directed by the criminalist Walter Zirpins . It quickly became clear from witnesses that a well-dressed young man "with a dark brown hat and camel hair coat" had posted two parcels at Post Office 5 in Bremen and one at Post Office Verden in the late afternoon of November 28, 1951. A post office worker recalled arranging several long distance calls for this young man on the same day. It later emerged that Halacz had called the jam factory and the feed factory and made sure that the company bosses would be in the house the next day.

In one of the largest manhunt operations by the German police in the 1950s, a comprehensive manhunt was initiated with the involvement of the Federal Criminal Police Office, which was founded in 1951, and the Federal Border Police, which was also established in 1951, and since December 5, 1951, the perpetrator has been searched for in other European countries. Based on the testimony of witnesses, the special commission had a leaflet printed in which the perpetrator was described as elegant and polite; he has "a light swaying gait" like a "tango youth". A reward of 10,000 DM was offered for tips that led to the perpetrator being caught.

According to eyewitnesses, a phantom picture of the perpetrator was created on behalf of the Bremer Nachrichten , which Halacz's actual appearance came very close to. At that time, however, phantom images were not yet part of the police investigation methods. Nevertheless, the phantom image appeared in several newspapers and magazines.

As a result of numerous false indications, suspects who were innocent were arrested in many German cities . In some cases, innocent people have accused themselves of the crime and have been detained and released.

The editor-in-chief of the newspaper Die Harke in Nienburg finally recognized a young man in the picture who had applied for a job with him. This tip led to the arrest of Erich von Halacz on December 7, 1951. Halacz denied the crime and his girlfriend gave him an alibi for the time of the crime, so that Halacz was released for a few days.

In the meantime, a businessman from Nienburg got in touch, in whose shop Halacz had been writing documents on a typewriter. A typescript examination revealed a match with the address label on the unexploded explosives package. Halacz was arrested again on December 10, 1951 and charges were brought.

Halacz's friend corrected her statement and admitted that she had not been with Halacz on the day of the incident. After several hours of questioning , Halacz made a confession . As a motive, he stated that he wanted to blackmail the relatives of the victims, whom he thought were wealthy, by threatening further attacks with 5,000 DM each in order to open a record shop in Nienburg. During a psychiatric assessment in the psychiatric clinic in Göttingen by the psychiatrist Gottfried Ewald , Halacz was certified as having a personality disorder , among other things because of a tendency to imposture .

On April 25, 1952, Halacz was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Verden regional court ; an appeal on the grounds of insolvency was rejected as unfounded. He was in the prisons in Hameln , Celle and Hanover .

pardon

From 1969 onwards Halacz received several prison leave , which he spent in Nienburg with his foster mother. In January 1974, Halacz had a benign brain tumor surgically removed. The Lower Saxony Ministry of Justice then announced that Halacz had certainly not yet suffered from the tumor at the time of the crime.

On September 29, 1974 Halacz was pardoned by Lower Saxony's Prime Minister Alfred Kubel and released from prison. He then changed his name, trained as an office clerk and married a wealthy widow with whom he lived in Hanover.

literature

  • Helfried Spitra (ed.): The great criminal cases. Mail from the tango youth . Campus Verlag, 2004, ISBN 978-3-593-37438-3 .
  • Tobias Detering: Soko S - The hunt for the bomb bomber from Bremen and Eystrup. Accompanying publication to the exhibition of the same name by the Lower Saxony Police Museum , Nienburg 2015.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Post from Tangojüngling on www.daserste.de
  2. ↑ There's a curse on the name , In: Der Spiegel issue 51/1951 of December 19, 1951
  3. ↑ Mirko founder, 1952: No reintroduction of the death penalty in Germany , on www.historeo.de
  4. ↑ Including error , In: Der Spiegel , edition 44/1964
  5. ↑ What happened? in: Der Spiegel issue 49/1951 of December 5, 1951
  6. ↑ "A hitherto unique event" in Kreiszeitung.de of March 27, 2015
  7. ^ Walter Zirpins : We found Halacz in Der Spiegel issue 51/1951 from December 19, 1951
  8. ↑ Pick up the guy in Der Spiegel issue 51/1951 from December 19, 1951
  9. ↑ The Halacz Trial , In: Die Zeit , May 1, 1952
personal data
SURNAME Halacz, Erich von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Halacz, Erich Cedrick von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German explosives bomber
DATE OF BIRTH November 29, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Dusseldorf