Karl Brunke (girl killer)

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The Salzburg Watch Over the Double Murder (1926)

Karl Brunke (born July 27, 1887 in Braunschweig ; † August 1, 1906 there ) was a German girl murderer and the central figure in a crime in 1905 that went down in criminal history because of its psychological involvement. Brunke shot two young women at their request. The case played an important role in the criminal psychology literature of the early 20th century. The writer Thomas Brasch took it up in his 2001 text, the girl murderer Brunke .

Life

Little biographical information is known from Brunke. He was born in Braunschweig in 1887, his father was a locksmith. After high school, which he dropped out of senior secondary school, he began an apprenticeship on July 4, 1904 at the Braunschweig bank Spanjer-Herford. An application to the Imperial Navy had previously been rejected because of its "weak nature". Karl Brunke read philosophical works such as Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason , played the piano and wrote plays which he sent to several theaters, but which were never performed.

The sisters

In the spring of 1905 he responded to a newspaper advertisement by the Braunschweig merchant Haars, who was looking for a piano teacher for his two daughters Alma and Martha Haars. Brunke was not interested in piano lessons, but accepted the offer because he hoped to get in contact with women, as he later testified in the criminal trial. He did not receive any fee for the hours. In the court proceedings, Brunke stated that he had been sexually abused by an adult in his childhood, had numerous sexual encounters with girls of the same age as a teenager and had financed his "dissolute life" with small embezzlements and thefts. However, as he soon realized, the merchant's daughters were "completely innocent, decent girls", "with whom indecent intercourse was excluded."

Martha Haars had a fiancé in Russia, who informed her in a letter that his father would not consent to a marriage. In desperation, she turned to Karl Brunke to get her an overdose of morphine . When that didn't work, she asked him to shoot her. At the same time, Brunke informed his younger sister Alma of his own desperation that he would be rejected everywhere and not recognized as a writer. Alma then offered that all three should kill themselves, she was one of the victims. Martha gave Karl Brunke 40 marks to buy a pistol.

Sequence of events

The middle of October 1905 was to be the last evening of the three. They went out together, saw a performance in the vaudeville theater, drank wine and were so in good spirits that they called off the project and agreed to meet on October 17, 1905, in order to really part with life. The two young women changed clothes in their parents' house, put on white silk blouses and black skirts, wrote farewell letters and enclosed the letter from their Russian lover. Brunke sent his mother, with whom he lived together, to the theater. Then Martha and Alma Haars came to his apartment at Monumentstrasse 1 in Braunschweig. They insisted that Karl fire some trial shots and make the bed to avoid any suspicion of a sex crime. The women took off their blouses and sat on two armchairs opposite Karl Brunke. First he shot the American revolver at close range in Martha's heart; she died instantly. Alma put her sister on the bed, kissed her goodbye, pointed to the place in her own heart and asked Brunke to shoot. Brunke shot twice, and Alma also died immediately.

Karl Brunke was so horrified by the crime and all the blood that he left the house and wandered around the city all night. The next morning he turned himself in to the police.

Criminal trial

The criminal process began on March 21, 1906 at the first criminal chamber of the Braunschweig Regional Court . The responsibility of the accused played a central role. Unusual for the time, several psychiatric reports were drawn up that agreed that he was “degenerate and inferior”, but neither “mentally ill nor mentally ill”. His intelligence is "completely sufficient, but the emotional life is defective". Martha Haars assessed the criminal psychologist Helene Friederike Stelzner as "pathological", Alma had succumbed to the older sister's suggestion .

“The matter is completely different with Brunke. He is a rather uninteresting type of the male hysteric : vain, mendacious, cowardly, complacent and without will. His lack of will drives him to vices which must appear repulsive to his aesthetic sensibilities; it is further represented by its strong suggestibility. The induced insanity is ultimately nothing more than a suggestive effect, the strength of which must be greater, the less the suggested idea has the character of the natural and probable, and the less the person to be suggested has judgment and will. "

Brunke was sentenced to eight years in prison for theft in 20 cases and for homicide. He hanged himself in his cell on August 1, 1906.

literature

The death of the three young people in 1905 shaped the scientific crime literature of the early 20th century. The case is described in these books, among others:

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Thomas Brasch: girl murderer Brunke. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1999, ISBN 978-3-518-39695-7 .
  2. ^ From the trial files, Friedländer 1911
  3. ↑ From the psychological report, Friedländer 1911
  4. ↑ Helene Friederike Stelzner: Expert opinion. In: Wulffen: Kriminalpsychologie . 1926, p. 64 ff.
personal data
SURNAME Brunke, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German girl murderer
DATE OF BIRTH July 27, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Braunschweig
DATE OF DEATH August 1, 1906
Place of death Braunschweig