Martin Ekenberg

Martin Birger Natanael Ekenberg alias Justus Felix (born March 12, 1870 in Töreboda ; died February 7, 1910 in London ) was a Swedish inventor. He became famous for the fact that he designed and sent the world's first documented letter bomb in 1904 . Ekenberg was arrested in London after a series of bombings in Sweden between 1904 and 1909.

Life

Ekenberg was born in Töreboda in southwest Sweden in 1870 as the son of a gypsy woman and a shopkeeper. He studied chemistry and mechanical engineering at Stockholm University and received his doctorate from Albertus University in Königsberg with a thesis on the fat content of cow's milk . In 1900, his "Investigations and experiments to determine the possibility of mechanical fish cleaning" were awarded the Polhems Prize.

In addition to the letter bomb, he also invented a machine that could condense milk or coffee . He also invented a process for refining herring oil into machine oil. Further inventions were the Ekenberg dry milk and a floating fish factory for direct catch processing at sea.

On August 19, 1904, the first letter bomb exploded in Stockholm and hit the director of the Swedish centrifugal company, Karl Fredrik Lundin. The attack burned his face and almost blinded him, and a fire broke out in the building. This was the world's first documented use of a letter bomb. Russian anarchists and nihilists were quickly accused by the media, but after a few days, Karl Fredrik Lundin's company received a letter of confession from an anonymous former employee. Further letters that arrived later apparently tried to direct suspicion to G. Wahlenius, the company's former managing director. The police were quick to rule him out as a suspect; however, the letters suggested that the attacker was someone Lundin's acquaintance with.

Ekenberg's motive behind the attack was revenge after Lundin stopped developing an apparatus for determining the fat content of milk, which had been developed by Ekenberg. In his attacks, Ekenberg tried to use the victim's awareness and the mood to direct suspicion to another person or organization.

In the next attack, the so-called perfume bottle for Valentine's Day , a letter bomb exploded on May 4, 1905 at the post office in Stockholm. The bomb was originally directed to the lawyer Alfred Valentin, who did not accept the shipment because he did not want to pay the missing postage. Two people were seriously injured in the explosion at the post office. The letter of confession came from Berlin and contained strong anti-Semitic elements. The alleged author of the letter of confession was the German waiter Franz Szapek, who allegedly belonged to an anti-Semitic association. However, since he could neither write nor was able to build a bomb, one could quickly exclude him as a perpetrator. Graphological research indicated an author who spoke Swedish as his mother tongue, but who had spent a long time in English-speaking countries.

The next attack took place in 1909 when the director of the Swedish Export Association, John Hammar, received a package on October 9th. Inside the box was half the front of a number of the anarchist magazine Brand and a black cardboard cylinder. When Hammar removed the lid of the cardboard cylinder, an explosion was triggered that tore off the thumb and forefinger on his right hand. A few weeks earlier, Ekenberg had sent letters to the two newspapers Aftonbladet and Social-Democrats , in which he posed as Justus Felix, chairman of the Social Democratic Court. In the letter he wrote, among other things: “We keep believing in the subjugating effect of a bomb. It is rapidly reforming a precarious capitalist society. "

A few days after the attack on the director of the export association, the Dagen newspaper received a new letter from the Social Democratic Court containing the indictment and the verdict against John Hammar. This letter was handwritten and signed by Gustav Malmborg. Brand magazine had published several articles signed with this name. Stockholm police questioned the newspaper's editor, Hinke Bergegren, but found no evidence against him.

On the same day that the attack on Hammar took place, the manager Johan Sjöholm received a package in Gothenburg . Sjöholm's son Adrian had opened the package in the absence of his father, which according to the delivery note contained a fountain pen borrowed from a friend. The bomb did not explode because the trigger mechanism was broken, but the son wanted to turn the contents over to the police. However, the bomb was previously lost.

The case was cleared up by Ekenberg's handwriting. Already on the evening after the death of John Hammar, the engineer Alf Larsson believed he recognized a similarity between one of the letters to Aftonbladet and one from his old business partner Ekenberg. Ingredients for explosives, detonators and aluminum tubing were found in Ekenberg's English home and laboratory in Clapham, London. There was also a small print shop that used the same fonts used in the Social Democratic Court letters. Ekenberg was arrested and died in his prison cell in February 1910. The autopsy revealed a natural cause of death; But there is also speculation that Ekenberg committed suicide using poison.

The Swedish investigator Gustaf Lidberg published his experiences with the case in a book in 1919.

References

• Terrorismens historia - Björn Kumm, ISBN 91-89442-93-8
• Swedish Chemical Journal 1899: Article by Martin Ekenberg
• The Inventor's Revenge , Neue Zürcher Zeitung , January 2005.