The murder of Helmut Daube

Helmut Adolf Daube was a 19-year-old high school graduate who was murdered in Gladbeck on Friday, March 23, 1928 . The fact has not been resolved to this day.

did

Helmut Daube came from a family of teachers and was the only son of the rector of the Gladbeck Luther School. On March 23, 1928, at two o'clock in the morning drunk, he left a fraternity recruitment meeting with several young people at the Hotel zur Post in Buer . After the acquaintances gradually branched off, he only went home with his schoolmate Karl Hussmann (* 1908).

Around 3:30 a.m., someone cut his neck with a knife not far from his parents' house at 11 Schultenstrasse. The trousers were then pulled down on his corpse and his genitals were cut out with the surrounding skin. They were never found.

His father, Rector Adolf Daube, and his mother were awakened by two cries for help. The father found his son's bed untouched, the mother said that her son had called, but the father reassured her and imagined his son was in good company. Rector Deese, who lives in the same house, was also woken up by shouts for help, saw from a bedroom window how a large kneeling figure rose, crossed the street and hurried away on the unlit side. He thought he was a drunk from the pub across the street.

Before the shift change in the coal mine, the gatekeeper Fritz Bauer and his son passed the house of the school principal Daube on the morning of March 23rd at 4:30 pm on their way to work. At the corner of Gonheide and Schultenstrasse, he noticed a person lying on the ground, wanted to get the supposedly drunk to get up and noticed what had happened. His son fetched the doctor who lived at Schultenstrasse 9, Dr. Lutter, who confirmed death about five minutes later. Bauer woke up the parents and after initial doubts they recognized the murder victim as their son. After 50 minutes the police appeared at the scene, later the homicide squad, which took photos. A sniffer dog was unsuccessful, and the search for genitals around the crime scene was unsuccessful.

Investigations

Karl Hussmann was later brought to the crime scene. He said that it might be his fault for not having accompanied his "friend" home. Blood was seen on his shoes and later on his coat, which he said was from a cat. A briefcase with an empty knife case was found in his study. He said he had lost the knife that went with it on a “thief hunt” a few days earlier. Hussmann was arrested, but later released at the behest of the public prosecutor's office.

Although the Lattes test had already been developed twelve years earlier to determine the blood group of dried blood traces , the criminal police only had the blood traces identified as human blood in the examinations led by Detective Inspector Emil Klingelhöller with the assistance of Detective Assistant Aschenbach.

The sensational murder was immediately the talk of the town and one day later it hit national and international headlines. In anti-Semitic newspapers such as the regional NSDAP newspaper Westdeutscher Beobachter or the nationwide Stürmer it was claimed that it was a ritual murder committed by Jews . The police report mentioned that the neck cut had been done "skillfully", which led to a drop in sales for the local butchers. Since suicides by means of neck cuts occurred more often, this possibility was also investigated.

On Monday, March 26th, 1928, Helmut Daube was buried with "huge participation" in the roundabout of the Gladbeck central cemetery in crypt No. 26 D. The police now openly spoke of a sex crime. The next day, Hussmann was arrested again. One day later the police searched the garden of Hussmann's foster father - Rector Kleiböhmer - for the knife, but did not find anything.

On March 28, the district doctor Marks, who was responsible for the case, suggested contacting Victor Müller-Heß , professor at the Forensic Medicine Institute in Bonn. Hussmann's clothes and shoes were then sent to Bonn, where Müller-Hess first discovered that the blood on Hussmann's shoes (like the murdered person) had blood group A. The blood group of smaller blood traces, which could still be found on Hussmann's coat and pants, could not be determined due to the small size.

On Saturday, March 31, 1928, the foster father gave his gardener a sketch made by Hussmann, on which the possible location of the knife lost in the “thief hunt” was marked. The gardener cut out the lawn at the appropriate point and found it. In the meantime, the Essen public prosecutor Rosenbaum telegraphed specialists from the Berlin homicide squad, which had last happened 20 years earlier. In April 1928 the Berlin detective commissioners Ludwig Werneburg and Rudolf Lissigkeit arrived in the Ruhr area. The questioning by Ludwig Werneburg focused on the boy's curriculum vitae and the “moral qualities” because a book by the controversial sex researcher Magnus Hirschfeld was found on his bookshelf . The interrogation did not lead to any new information. Chemical examinations showed that the knife found could not have been the weapon of the murder and, due to the strong rust stains, must have been in the ground long before the night of the murder. Hair found on the body did not come from Hussmann, but possibly from the blanket that was used to cover the stave.

On April 3rd, Hussmann was transferred to Essen and on April 13th the police chief had to give a press conference after several national and international newspapers accused the police of failure.

process

The trial against Hussmann took place from October 16 to 30, 1928. Who Daube's murderer was has not been clarified with certainty. Karl Hussmann, defended by Dr. Ruschen, was acquitted despite serious suspicion for lack of evidence.

Rolf from the bush

Rolf vom Busch (1905–1971), who had been convicted of the similar murder of the prostitute Kurt Schönig , later confessed to the murder . He may not have been tried for the murder of Helmut Daube because he was convicted of treason in 1936 in another trial that was classified as secret and concerned the then Führer and Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler .

Today's interest in the then sensational case comes from references to Hitler and his surroundings, because the trial files have been preserved and still exist. Other references in this direction were destroyed, and witnesses were silenced, as in the Röhm Putsch .

It is still unclear whether the confession of Rolf von Busch, who was known as a notorious dreamer and “schizoid psychopath, who apparently has an innate tendency to be untruthful, combined with a strong need for recognition”, remains open. Shortly before, he accused Albert Alexander Mummy of the murder of Helmut Daube.

literature

• Theodor Lessing: The students and their teachers Prager Tagblatt 53rd vol .: No. 260 (November 1, 1928), pp. 3–4 ( Wikisource , last accessed on October 12, 2013).
• Sabine Kettler, Eva-Maria Stuckel, Franz Wegener: Who Killed Helmut Daube? The bestial sex murder of the student Helmut Daube in the Ruhr area in 1928. Kulturförderverein Ruhrgebiet, Gladbeck 2001, ISBN 3-931300-03-X .
• Eva Bischoff, Daniel Siemens, Class, Youth, and Sexuality in the Construction of the Lustmörder: The 1928 Murder Trial of Karl Hussmann , in: Richard Wetzell (ed.), Crime and Criminal Justice in Modern Germany , New York: Berghahn 2014, Pp. 207-225.
• Jürgen Thorwald : The hour of the detectives. Becomes and worlds of criminology. Droemer Knaur, Zurich and Munich 1966, pp. 79–98.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Death register registry office Gladbeck No. 158/1928 ( digitized version )
2. ↑ Jürgen Thorwald: The hour of the detectives. Becomes and worlds of criminology. Droemer Knaur, Zurich and Munich 1966, pp. 79–98.
3. ↑ Jürgen Thorwald (1966), p. 80 f.
4. ↑ Jürgen Thorwald (1966), p. 80 f.
5. ↑ Jürgen Thorwald (1966), p. 80 f.