Otto Witte (showman)

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Otto Witte (born October 16, 1872 in Dortmund or Diesdorf , † August 13, 1958 in Hamburg ) was a German fairground artist and impostor .

biography

According to his own account, Otto Witte came to the showmen at the age of eight , learned magic and fortune telling and traveled with the Althoff Circus through half of Europe . He was captured by robbers in the Balkans , fled to Africa and ended up in Turkey in 1912 . There he was recruited by the secret service and on its behalf stole the deployment plans of the Bulgarian army for the First Balkan War that had just begun .

In his own portrayal as the “former King of Albania” (five days “King of Albania”) at his long-term residence in Berlin's Kattegatstrasse and Wollankstrasse (until 1938 Pankow , today Gesundbrunnen ), he became a well-known original .

"King of Albania"

Grave monument of the Witte family in the Ohlsdorf cemetery

Since the 1920s he has been appearing with a show booth at fairs and telling the onlookers that he had made a lightning career as a secret agent in Turkey . A few months after Albania's independence from the Ottoman Empire was proclaimed on November 28, 1912 in Vlora, he went to the country, whose political structures were just as uncertain as its borders. He found his resemblance to an alleged nephew of the sultan, Prince Halim ed-Din (also Halim Eddin (e) , Witte himself wrote “Halim Etti”), who is said to have been invited by Albanian Muslims to be king of the new state to become. Witte claims to have traveled to Durrës in Albania with a friend, the sword eater Max Schlepsig , and presented himself to the Ottoman troops as Prince Halim ed-Din; he was proclaimed king by them on February 15, 1913. He established a government, appointed commanders, enjoyed a harem and planned a war against Serbia or Montenegro until his deception was discovered. He and Schlepsig (taking a considerable part of the royal treasures with them) had left Albania on February 19, 1913.

However, all of the representations seem to be entirely fictional. In February 1913 central Albania was under Serbian occupation. Nor are there any contemporary sources to support Witte's story. Despite Witte's occasional attempts to modify details of his story and, for example, to redate it to August 1913, it does not stand up to scrutiny.

Witte also claimed that he founded a political party after the First World War and stood as a candidate in the first round of elections for Reich President in 1925. He received 25,000 to 230,000 votes, but withdrew his application in favor of Paul von Hindenburg . This, too, cannot be reconciled with the dates of this choice. Witte's party, if it existed at all, was at best a regulars' table.

Until his death he insisted on being addressed as the "former King of Albania". Apparently, in the sense of a pseudologia phantastica, he was no longer able to distinguish between fiction and reality. The Berlin police also granted him this title in the sense of an artist name in his passport. The inscription “Ehe. King v. Albania ”can also be found on Witte's tombstone in the family grave at the Ohlsdorf cemetery in Hamburg.

Witte published his story twice as a book, most likely being assisted by ghostwriters.

Although Witte's unbelievable story was pointed out early on, after his death it had a very strong aftereffect in the press and in various books about historical fraudsters and originals. In literary terms, the topic became a theater farce by Alfred Lux , a musical ( Five Days King ) and novels by Harry Turtledove ( Every Inch a King ), Andreas Izquierdo ( King of Albania ) and Andrew Nicoll ( If you're reading this I'm already dead ).

Descendants

Another member of the Witte showman family, grandson Norbert Witte , was later put on record due to the entanglements in the Spreepark Berlin hype and served a seven-year prison sentence for drug smuggling until May 2008. Witte's great-grandson, Marcel Witte, was sentenced in October 2006 by a Peruvian court to a 20-year prison sentence for drug smuggling, which he served initially in Peru and since 2016 in Moabit.

literature

  • Otto Witte: King of Albania for five days. Hamburg 1932
  • Otto Witte: King of Albania for five days. Berlin-Pankow 1939
  • Michael Schmidt-Neke : Pseudologia phantastica and Orientalism: Albania as an imaginary stage for Spiridion Gopčević, Karl May and Otto Witte , In: Yearbook of the Karl May Society (2006), pp. 151–183
  • Volker Spiess (Ed.): Berliner Biographisches Lexikon. Haude & Spernersche Verlagbuchhandlung, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-7759-0468-9
  • Friedrich Wencker-Wildberg : Uncrowned kings. Adventure of world history. Bertelsmann Lesering, Gütersloh 1959
  • Andreas Izquierdo : King of Albania. (Roman), Rotbuch-Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 3-86789-015-3
  • Alfred Lux: Otto the Great. ( Play ), Gotthardt, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-930876-11-6

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ knerger.de: Otto Witte's grave
  2. ↑ Michael Schmidt-Neke, Otto Witte, Albaniens wannabe king , Albanische Hefte 3/2006, pp. 19-25, PDF; Abstract of the article in the yearbook of the Karl May Society
  3. ↑ Opera on Gil. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on February 8, 2010 ; Retrieved March 28, 2010 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.operamgil.de
  4. ↑ 20 years imprisonment. Der Tagesspiegel, June 13, 2012, accessed on February 1, 2013 .
personal data
SURNAME Witte, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German fairground artist and impostor
DATE OF BIRTH October 16, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH Dortmund or Diesdorf near Magdeburg
DATE OF DEATH August 13, 1958
Place of death Hamburg