Georges Manolescu

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Georges Manolescu (born May 19, 1871 in Ploieşti ; † January 2, 1908 ) was a Romanian hotel thief , marriage fraud and impostor .

Life

In 1884 the (then 13-year-old) son of a sub-prefect deserted from the Romanian army and traveled to Vienna and Paris . There he was convicted of hotel theft, but pardoned in 1889. He first traveled to Romania, then to America, and returned to Europe in January 1897. In Nice he was again convicted of theft, after his release from prison he went to Genoa , where he married the German Countess Angelika Wilding von Königsbrück (* May 2, 1870 - February 14, 1945) as Prince Lahovary ( Friedländer always writes Lahowari) (Die Marriage divorced in 1904). The family (a little daughter joined them in 1899) moved to Lindau on Lake Constance. He left his family and went to Lucerne , where he was arrested and convicted again.

At Christmas 1900, a highly successful foray through Berlin hotels began. He was arrested in Genoa on January 15, 1901.

The trial against him before the third criminal chamber of the Berlin I Regional Court gained tremendous public interest and he himself achieved great popularity. It quickly became apparent that the thief from a Romanian village was known and loved in better society as "Prince Lahovary". His accomplice, Prince Nicotin recte Ignaz Skamperl, was also held responsible.

Various medical experts unanimously gave their opinion during the trial that the accused was mentally ill and therefore does not belong in prison but in a nursing home. He was actually acquitted, but transferred to the municipal insane asylum in Dalldorf .

There Manolescu successfully earned his living with his memoir, entitled Ein Fürst der Diebe , which was published in 1905 by Paul Langenscheidt. (For not having to write down some adventures, however, he is said to have received significantly more money from the former participants than for the memoirs themselves.)

The sequel to the Manolescu memoir was called Failed. From the soul of a criminal .

Others

His life story was filmed for the cinema in 1920 ( Manolescu's memoirs by Richard Oswald ), 1929 ( Manolescu - the king of impostors by Viktor Tourjansky ) and 1932/33 ( Manolescu, the prince of thieves by Willi Wolff ). There was also a television adaptation of Hans Quest in 1972 under the title Manolescu - The almost true biography of a crook .

For the second volume of the memoirs, Paul Langenscheidt tried unsuccessfully in 1907 to win Karl May , who for his part had previously been imprisoned for fraud.

His memoirs (especially the second part) served Thomas Mann as the inspiration for his novel Confessions of the impostor Felix Krull .

Ernst Lubitsch used Georges Manolescu as a model for his jewel thief and impostor "Gaston Monescu" in the comedy Trouble in Paradise (1932).

In the series of radio plays, Professor van Dusen , the character of Georges Manolescu appears in Voices from the Beyond (as the alleged Count Páloczi) and Who would like to die in Monte Carlo (as the alleged Marchese de la Rocca). In the latter he is recognized as the impostor Manolescu and found dead in his hermetically sealed hotel room the next day.

literature

  • Hugo Friedländer : Manolesco, the king of thieves in court . In: Interesting criminal trials of cultural and historical importance . 1910-1914, Volume IX, pp. 1-8. ( Full text on Wikisource )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ www.zeno.org , Hugo Friedländer: Interesting criminal trials. Manolesco, the king of thieves in court
  2. ↑ Langenscheidt, whom I didn't know at all, sent me the volume Manolescu, which he edited. He asked me if I would like to write a second volume for him. I was amazed at this more than strange imposition and sent him back his book. Sudhoff, Steinmetz: Karl-May-Chronik IV , p. 160.
personal data
SURNAME Manolescu, Georges
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Romanian hotel thief, marriage fraud and impostor
DATE OF BIRTH May 19, 1871
PLACE OF BIRTH Ploieşti
DATE OF DEATH January 2, 1908