Murder case of Friedrich Ferdinand Mattonet
The murder case of Friedrich Ferdinand Mattonet was heard before the Trier District Court from July 3 to 10, 1909 and from October 10 to November 12, 1910 . The 29-year-old Josef Breuer was accused of having shot his homosexual lover Friedrich Ferdinand Mattonet on October 14, 1908 . Mattonet had been blackmailed for years by Breuer for his homosexuality before his death . The case caused a sensation during the German Empire because of the special circumstances of the act.
The parties
Friedrich Ferdinand Mattonet (born November 1, 1851 in Liège ) was a German businessman and mill owner . He was wealthy, lived in St. Vith , which at that time belonged to Germany, was married for the second time and had three sons from his first marriage. His homosexuality is said to have been widely known; however, his family later stated that they knew nothing about it. Mattonet had business and private contacts to Aachen , where he was called "Croesus from the Eifel", and to Cologne . The doctor and sex researcher Magnus Hirschfeld , who appeared as an expert in the later trial, said: "Mattonet enjoyed the greatest possible love and admiration because of his louder character."
Breuer worked at the Rothe Erde ironworks in Aachen at the turn of the century and did his military service from 1900 to 1902. In 1907 he moved to Berlin , where he and a friend lived a luxurious lifestyle without it being clear where his income came from. He is also said to have had a wife who lived with two children in poor conditions in Liège. Breuer himself described himself as a “ cyclist ” and claimed to be a friend of world champion Thaddäus Robl , but as a stalker he only contested insignificant races.
In 1898/1899 Mattonet met Josef Breuer and became friends with him; Breuer was 19 at the time, Mattonet 47 years old. Mattonet is said to have had a preference for men "of a certain cheek". According to the later investigations by the police, Breuer was known in Berlin as “an extremely brutal, boorish, prone to acts of violence, who through his ostentatious manner, through his presumptuous, cheeky demeanor, through senseless gusto [sic!] The antipathy of the people [... ] has drawn ”. How far the physical contact between the two went is not known. Breuer later asserted that the friendship with Mattonet was "platonic" and that Mattonet merely held his hand or put his arm around his shoulders.
But blackmail was obviously involved: Mattonet is said to have paid Breuer a sum of between 100,000 and 500,000 marks so that he would not make Mattonet's homosexual inclinations public; Homosexual acts were also punishable under Section 175 . According to witnesses, it was known that Breuer regularly drove to a friend in the Rhineland and returned with large sums of money. In letters, Breuer addressed Mattonet as “Dear Ferdi” and ended with “your loving you” or “your loving you faithfully”. Breuer always asked for money and justified this with “emergencies”, most recently with the fact that he was being blackmailed himself. Hirschfeld called this form of masked threat of compromising revelations " chantage ", and the blackmailers themselves "chanteurs".
The fact
On October 14, 1908, Breuer and Mattonet met, as they had several times before, in Gerolstein . That Mattonet did not want to meet further monetary demands can be seen from the addition of his telegram to Breuer: "Travel pointless". The two men were walking together and passed a postman. He suddenly heard a shot, and Breuer shouted: “Ferdinand, you're not going to die.” In his book Die Homosexualität des Mann und des Weibes Hirschfeld describes the course of events as follows: Breuer's claim that he handled the handling would speak for negligent homicide of the Browning pistol, as well as the testimony of a witness that the defendant bent over the body and cried: 'Fredi [sic!], you are not dead?' "
Josef Breuer was then arrested for murder.
The process
On July 5, 1909, the first trial against Josef Breuer took place before the Trier Regional Court . 120 witnesses and experts were invited, the public was excluded. During the police interrogations, Breuer had admitted to blackmailing Mattonet; two men were mentioned in the process who were probably also victims of Breuer's blackmail. Breuer did not comment on the course of events itself; it could never be determined whether it was murder or suicide. The expert Hirschfeld considered suicide as well as murder, act of affect or negligent homicide to be possible. It was also not possible to clarify who owned the weapon, which has been proven to have been bought from Kettner in Cologne.
Die Welt am Sonntag wrote:
“It was already known before the trial of the 'racing driver' Breuer that there are people with an unusual meanness of conviction. Rudeness and baseness, blackmail and same-sex prostitution, senseless extravagance and frivolous unscrupulousness that does not shy away from the occasional murder - everything has already been there. [...] may the dreary cult be put to an end, which the general public drives with racing drivers, jockey, athletes and similar heroes. [...] The fact that one person is three noses ahead of the other on the bike should now and never become a measure of any appreciation. "
Josef Breuer was sentenced to death for murder and to the permanent loss of his civil rights. The judgment was upheld in a second trial a year later. However, when the execution of the death penalty threatened, numerous prominent citizens interceded on behalf of Breuer and sought a pardon, since in view of the death penalty Breuer's guilt had not been established beyond doubt; Among them were Counselor Erich Sello , the doctor Magnus Hirschfeld, the detective Hans von Tresckow and the writer Hanns Heinz Ewers . In June 1911, Kaiser Wilhelm II converted the death sentence into a life sentence. In 1918, at the instigation of his lawyer Johannes Werthauer , Breuer fell under a general amnesty from the Weimar Republic and was released from prison the following year. In 1930 he tried unsuccessfully to reopen the case. Nothing is known about his further life.
Franz Ferdinand Mattonet's family sold their property in St. Vith and moved to Aachen. She lost her fortune during the period of inflation . Because of his services to the city, St. Vith agreed in 1926 to take care of Mattonet's grave in the local cemetery.
The backgrounds
In 1914, the doctor and sex researcher Magnus Hirschfeld counted around 20 murders in the past five years that were related to extortion for homosexuality. According to his findings, five gay men had been killed in connection with blackmail cases in Berlin alone within a few years.
Hirschfeld assessed the threat posed by blackmailers to homosexuals higher than that of Section 175 itself. Some victims were blackmailed by several people, others for a lifetime, and sometimes the children continued to pay after the death of the actual blackmail victim in order to protect the family's reputation . The extortionists expected several years' imprisonment, which were actually imposed, but: “To take legal action against his extortionate was connected with the consequence for the victim of being reported under Section 175. In addition to a conviction, this could mean the end of society. "
In 1909, Die Welt am Sonntag commented on the background to the trial:
“Few will deny that there is something disgusting about homosexual activity. In spite of this, it must now be emphasized again that the repeal of the criminal paragraph [§ 175] is urgently necessary; for the crimes which cling to it are far more shameful and infamous than any unnatural sexual act can be. As long as the repeal has not taken place, however, it is up to the public to make it easier for the victims of blackmail to report them by treating them with indulgence and about those who report a blackmailer and in this way have to reveal their own disposition , does not impose sexual ostracism. Anyone who has fallen into the hands of such individuals has had to endure such hardships that one can and should forgive him a great deal. So one can confidently declare him rehabilitated by the fact of the advertisement, which contributes to the liberation of society from inferior elements. "
literature
- Friedrich Ferdinand Mattonet. In: Erwin In het Panhuis: Different from the others. Gays and lesbians in Cologne and the surrounding area 1895–1918. Edited by Center for Gay History . Hermann-Josef Emons-Verlag Cologne 2006, ISBN 978-3-89705-481-3 , pp. 151-164. ( PDF pp. 88–93)
- The Breuer case. In: Erich Sello: The errors of the criminal justice system and their causes ... Easily edit. Reprint of the Berlin 1911 edition. Hoffmann, Schifferstadt, 2011, ISBN 3-929349-40-X , pp. 454–468. (Different page numbers in the original 1911 edition.)
Individual evidence
- ↑ aubreby.pagesperso-orange.fr
- ↑ Ulrich Hergemöller (Ed.), Nicolai Clarus: Man for Man. Biographical lexicon of love for friends and male-male sexuality in the German-speaking area, Volume 1 ; Berlin: LIT, 2010; ISBN 978-3-643-10693-3 ; P. 1504
- ↑ a b c E. In het Panhuis: Different from the others ; P. 151 f. ( PDF p. 88)
- ↑ a b c d e E. In het Panhuis: Anders als die Andern ; P. 154 ff. ( PDF p. 88–89)
- ↑ a b Magnus Hirschfeld: The homosexuality of man and woman . (= Handbook of the entire sexology in individual representations, 3) Berlin: Marcus, 1914; DNB 580944662 ; P. 889
- ↑ a b c E. In het Panhuis: Different from the others ; P. 159 ff. ( PDF p. 90–92)
- ↑ a b World on Sunday. Weekly for politics, society, art and sport. July 19, 1909. Hildebrandt Verlag, Berlin
- ↑ Innsbrucker Nachrichten , August 13, 1919, p. 4.
- ↑ a b c E. In het Panhuis: Different from the others ; P. 163 f. ( PDF p. 93)