 Will the great Pumpkin arrives with a car, but as it´s Halloween today, we have a special car for you, in which Ernst Gennat, „Der Buddah vom Alexanderplatz“ arrived at dozens of crime scenes. Ernst Gennat was a policeman in Berlin during the early 20s century. Born in 1880, he started his police career in 1904. He left the university without a graduation. During this time, the police had no special homicide division and the reconnoitering rate was extremely low. On June, 1st in 1925 on the basis of Gennat´s efforts, the first homicide squad, called „Zentrale Mordinspektion“ was created and it ran up to an enormous success. In 1931 for example, 108 of 114 crimes were solved. Before Gennat, who is often called „the first profiler“, entered the scene, the procedure of the police work was often quite bizarre. Policemen were called to a crime scene and before the higher graded colleagues arrived, they often started tidying the scene as you can expect from a Prussian police officer of visiting a messy scene. And by that, many details were ruined. So Gennat reorganized much of the structure of how to investigate a homicide. After he convicted the serial killer Carl Großmann he recognized, that the killer murdered before in other cities and he would have been able to arrest him much earlier, if he knew about that. His idea was to build up a database, which was realized as his big „Zentralkartei für Mordsachen“. For modern investigation work, in 1926 he ordered a car with special equipment. This car, a Benz 16/50, featuring a small bureau with a typewriter, folding table and chairs and a big trunk, containing spotlights, torches, rubber gloves and much more, which made the car a mobile laboratory for the securing of evidence. This Benz was the last Benz before the union with Daimler. It featured an inline-six with the capacity of 4160 cm³ and an output of 50 HP. Gennat called this car his „Mordauto“ and the public was very interested in the car, as it was displayed in Berlin, at a special show, at which much modern police equipment was presented. Some sources tell us, that the chassis of the „Mordauto“ was strengthened, just because of Gennat´s figure. But even if his weight tended towards 140...150kg, this must be a tale. No tale is the way, Gennat treated his „guests“: He was very polite and patient. Nobody had to touch them and Gennat threatened his staff, that he will fire anybody who only touches one of his suspects. Coffee and cake were served and it was more like a coffee party, than a questioning. And many „dodgers“ afterwards reported, that they told Gennat „much more, that they wanted to tell“, as he was such a nice and personable man. The cake was served by Gennat´s secretary Gertud Steiner, nicknamed „Bockwurst-Trudchen“. The office in which those coffee partys took place was kind of a Halloween room. Pictures of homicide victims on the walls, a bloody axe and as a spooky and bizarre highlight, a conserved womans head, found in the Spree was draped on Gennat´s desk, that he used as a cigarette disposer. Gennat and his work became very famous during the 20s, and so Scotland Yard, Charlie Chaplin, Heinrich Mann and Edgar Wallace visited him in Berlin. He convicted the famous killers Fritz Haarmann (the Butcher of Hanover) and later Peter Kürten (The Vampire of Düsseldorf ), but during the 30s, as the Nazis took control over the police, his work got more an more dissatisfying. For propaganda reasons, the Nazis don´t like homicides to be published and his work got enriched by more and more bureaucracy. But he continued his work despite keeping a distance to the Nazi Party. Based on his success, he was even promoted to department director in 1934 and vice director of the Berlin police in 1935. Gennat died on cancer in 1939, but he was still able to view the movies „M“ and „Dr. Mabuse“ by Fritz Lang, who created his commissioner Lohmann as a hommage to Gennat. Text and Photos: Hubertus Hansmann |
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An ogreish car for a scary Halloween
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