Georg Popp

Georg Popp (1932)

Georg Popp (born July 31, 1861 in Frankfurt am Main ; † February 15, 1943 in Urberach ) was a German chemist and university professor in Frankfurt.

Popp was one of the founders of microscopic and scientific criminalistics and thus of " modern forensic medicine " at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main .

He formulated Popp's principle : "The differences in the floors from place to place provide valuable information to prove the connection between a suspect and a crime scene."

Life

Popp on the memorial plaque of his Marburg Corps (2007) for Nazi victims

Georg Popp, son of the Frankfurt merchant Friedrich Popp, attended the Wöhlerschule founded by the Frankfurt Polytechnic Society in 1870 and thus came into contact with the chemical sciences at an early age. He completed an apprenticeship as a commercial and food chemist in Marburg, studied in Leipzig and Zurich and founded a laboratory in Wiesbaden in 1888. In the same year he received his doctorate at the Faculty of Chemistry and Mineralogy in Leipzig. He was a member of the Corps Hasso-Nassovia (1882) and Saxonia Leipzig (1884).

When he was approached by the South German criminal police and asked to investigate substances suspected of being toxic, he became passionate about forensic chemistry and toxicology . On his own initiative, he founded a new laboratory in Frankfurt in 1889, in which he mainly dealt with toxicological and microscopic chemical examinations (e.g. of dust, earth, hair, textiles, blades of grass and pollen) for criminal purposes, the Institute for Forensic Chemistry and Microscopy .

The Lichtenstein case

They were bloody fingerprints that made criminal history in 1904. At that time they could not, of course, be used to convict a perpetrator, the dactyloscopy , introduced into the English criminal system in 1901, was too new. On the contrary: At first, the prints put the Frankfurt criminal police on the wrong track.

On February 26, 1904, the 53-year-old piano dealer Hermann Richard Lichtenstein was found dead in a corner of his warehouse in a residential building in Frankfurt am Main, Zeil 69. A red cord was drawn around the neck, and the head had four severe wounds that appear to have been caused by a sharp-edged iron instrument. The blood had splashed up to a distance of 10 meters. Fingerprints were left on the collar of the victim's blood. Popp, who was summoned, examined the tracks - and took them for the prints of a woman. Inspector Bußjäger, who was assigned to the robbery-murder case, did not allow himself to be confused in his opinion by the renowned 43-year-old expert for long: In order to overwhelm the big, powerful piano dealer, it would certainly take several men. The suspicion was directed towards the former butcher and now furniture carrier and piano transporter Bruno Groß, born in Saxony in 1876, who went to and from the Lichtenstein house for work. And now he was gone. His acquaintance with a coachman and groom named Fritz Stafforst, born in Goslar in 1879, was on record. Both had brought counterfeit money to the people in Leipzig. After a short manhunt, both were arrested and ultimately sentenced to death. Popp initially gave a lecture on dactyloscopy , pointing out that it was not yet possible to precisely secure fingerprints at the crime scene.

The Disch case

For the transfer of the worker Karl Laubach, who attacked the seamstress Eva Disch near Wildthal on October 7, 1904, Popps carried microphotographs of the perpetrator's fingernail, showing a red silk thread from the victim's scarf, as well as the mineralogical comparison of the dirt smeared on Laubach's trousers the earth at the crime scene.

The Kroll case

During the investigation into the "love murder at the Böttingerhof " in 1905, Popp found two handkerchiefs next to the young victim (Caroline Kroll), one of which belonged to the murdered woman and the other to her murderer, the tenant son Jakob Binkele. Popps microscopic examinations of the nasal mucus could help to clear up the case, since in Binkeles cloth, among other things, pieces of straw and spores, which corresponded to his agricultural activity, were present.

The Filbert case

In 1908, Popp gained a national reputation after being appointed an expert in the murder of Margarethe Filbert in Falkenstein (Palatinate) . A man known as a poacher was suspect. The accused's wife testified that she had dutifully cleaned her husband's clothes and shoes the day before the crime. Three layers of earth were found in the heel area of ​​the shoes. The top layer, and thus the oldest, contained goose droppings, which were probably applied in the courtyard of the residential property. The second layer contained fragments of red sandstone . The bottom layer, and thus the youngest layer, contained particles of bricks , coal dust , cement and a number of other minerals . In comparison, this composition corresponded to the samples taken at the site of a castle where the murder weapon and the clothes of the dead were hidden. The accused testified that he was only in his fields on the day of the crime. The fields were underlaid with porphyry with milk quartz . Popp found no such material on the shoes, even though it was wet that day. In this case, Popp had developed the essential elements of the forensic investigations of soil samples by comparing types of two samples of the accused's shoes with soil samples from the crime scene.

Establishment of the first chemical police laboratory

The idea of adding scientific laboratories to the criminal police itself and thus turning toxicologists into criminalists arose before the turn of the century, but was only realized in 1911 when the first chemical police laboratory was founded in Dresden. In the years up to the First World War, the field of forensic chemistry was largely left to so-called forensic chemists, scientists with a passion for the matter such as Paul Jeserich in Berlin or Georg Popp in Frankfurt, who worked in their own, often makeshift laboratories and worked in all areas of forensic science Science interested.

The Hopf case

In the spring of 1913 a series of poisoning cases rocked the Main metropolis of Frankfurt. The perpetrator, Karl Hopf , was a famous sword artist and the people of Frankfurt could hardly believe that their favorite of the public should be a poisoner. Karl Hopf, who always lived on a large scale, was strongly suspected of having poisoned his parents as well as his illegitimate son and his first wife with arsenic in order to gain possession of the inheritance and the life insurance sum prematurely . He tried this in the same way with his second and third wife. His second wife, however, became suspicious and stayed away from Hopf. When he tried again with his third wife, the family doctor delivered the seriously ill woman to the Frankfurt deaconess hospital. The doctors there called the police. When Hopf visited his wife again, he was arrested while leaving the hospital. With a poison ampoule, which he always carried with him, he tried to kill himself, which the officers were able to prevent at the last moment. After incriminating evidence had been secured, the main hearing was opened before the Frankfurt jury court in autumn 1913 . In order to be able to prove the poisonous murders to Karl Hopf, great difficulties were encountered at that time. Until then, there was still no reliable method for detecting arsenic in the human body. All the important court chemists of the time appeared as experts in this hearing. At times the courtroom resembled a scientific colloquium . With a great deal of effort, Hopf finally succeeded in convicting the poisoning of his first wife. Popp made the difference. Karl Hopf was sentenced to death by the jury and executed in the Frankfurt-Preungesheim prison.

Forensic medicine at the university

The "modern forensic medicine" began at the University of Frankfurt am Main with the amalgamation of the facilities scattered in clinics and medical institutes and the establishment of the chair at the newly founded Frankfurt Foundation University in 1914. Forensic chemistry and toxicology were previously carried out by Georg Popp, who forensic psychiatry by Julius Raecke, insurance medicine by Hans Liniger and legal and professional studies by August de Bary.

The Siefert case

In 1921, railway worker Leonhard Siefert was convicted of murdering two mayors in one of the first circumstantial trials in German judicial history based on fingerprints , blood tests and traces of plant remains from the crime scene, and was executed with a guillotine in Bruchsal. The trial made legal history: Popp had taken samples of resin , snail slime , hazelnut shells , moss , leaves from various tree species and other organic debris at the crime scene and was able to assign them to the traces on Siefert's clothing.

Others

In 1924 Popp was appointed honorary professor for forensic chemistry as one of the first German court chemists . In 1928 he was entrusted with the investigation into the murder of Anna Mehle in Grünstadt and Bad Dürkheim .

In 1929 Georg Popp founded the Vienna-based “Académie Internationale de Criminalistique” (International Academy for Criminalistics) in Lausanne with the Swiss criminalist Marc Bischoff, the French Edmond Locard , the Dutch CJ van Ledden Hulsebosch and the Austrian Siegfried Türkel .

The Frankfurters called him “the hunter” - in two senses, because his greatest hobby was hunting . He died at the age of 82 in a hunting lodge near Urberach .

Georg Popp was an avowed opponent of Nazi ideology, his daughter-in-law was Jewish. His former Corps Hasso-Nassovia listed him on a memorial plaque as a victim of National Socialism.

"Popp's principle"

“The differences in the floors from place to place provide valuable clues to prove the link between a suspect and a crime scene. The soil is a complex mixture with a multitude of mineralogical, chemical, biological and physical properties. Since minerals are an important part of the soil, a mineralogical examination of the soil is essential in forensic identification. Material traces are mineralogical, biological or chemical residues of an object, for example in the form of abrasions and rubs. For an investigation it is important to choose the appropriate combination of methods that take into account the context of the soil samples. It covers a broad spectrum on the analysis of soil components and the closely related materials such as plant fragments, pollen and spores, and diatoms. The soil formation process includes base materials, temperature, water condition, vegetation, time of day and the chemical processes of dissolution, oxidation, reduction, and even human activity. The history of the development of a soil and the results of such complex soil formation processes are strongly reflected in soil color. The systematic observation of the earth in terms of colors is particularly useful for the investigation. "

literature

• Popp: The observation and interpretation of traces of blood in criminal research . In: Journal of Public Chemistry 1904, 10, pp. 355-363.
• FW Sieber: Georg Popp on his 70th birthday, at the same time a contribution to the development of forensic chemistry and scientific forensics . Stuttgart 1971.
• Jürgen Thorwald : The hour of the detectives. Becomes and worlds of criminology. Droemer Knaur, Zurich and Munich 1966, p. 295–312 and illustration p. 288 f., 320 f. and 352 f.

Web links

• Website with a short biography and photos of the grave

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} formed-ffm.de  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved September 28, 2009.  
2. ↑ UH Puranen: A new method for collecting criminologically significant dust . ArchKrim 115, 1955, p. 96
3. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1930, 101 , 438; 96 , 569.
4. ↑ nikola-hahn.com ( Memento of the original from May 13, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved September 28, 2009.  
5. ↑ frankfurt.frblog.de ( Memento of the original from August 24, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved September 26, 2009.  
6. ↑ Jürgen Thorwald (1966), pp. 300–321.
7. ↑ Jürgen Thorwald (1966).
8. ^ Forensicgeology.net accessed September 26, 2009.
9. ↑ polizei.hessen.de accessed on January 3, 2011.
10. ↑ kmffm.de  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved September 29, 2009.  
11. ↑ EP Junge: Assessing the Unique Characteristics of Close-Proximity Soil Samples: Just How Useful is Soil Evidence? In: Journal of Forensic Sciences , 41, 1996 pp. 27-34.
12. ↑ Grünstadter Zeitung from July 16, 1928 (archived at the Grünstadt city administration).
13. ↑ encyclopedia.com. Retrieved September 15, 2009.
14. ^ EJ Wagner: The science with Sherlock Holmes , John Wiley & Sons, 2008, ISBN 3527503781 , p. 161; (Digital view)
15. ^ Popp: Identification of soil samples and criminal soil research . In: Journal for Public Chemistry 1907, p. 473 ff.