The year is 1927. Four young people in a flat in Berlin Steglitz. Only two will live to see the day of 28 June. In the early hours of the morning, 19-year-old Günther Scheller shoots his sister's boyfriend and then himself. The plan was different, but it never comes to that. What reads like a crime novel actually took place on the day in question. The case became famous as the Steglitz student tragedy.
High school students Günther Scheller and Paul Krantz come from two opposing worlds, one wealthy, the other an illegitimate child from a working-class background who made it to the school where they both meet with the help of a scholarship. Paul writes rapturous and melancholy poems reminiscent of the age of Romanticism. There, he expresses thoughts of a violent death:
"... on the ground lies the corpse of my friend Robert Krause,
Red blood slowly seeps from the wound to the grey earth.
Next to him sits the man who murdered him, staring.
The cigarette glows, trembling in the murderer's hand..."
Günther is impressed by Paul's writing and the two become friends. When his parents are on a business trip in Denmark, he invites Paul to spend the weekend with him and his sister Hilde, nicknamed Männe, at the Schellers' holiday home in Mahlow. Paul is in love with Günther's sister and gladly agrees. But his wishes and hopes of winning her over are not fulfilled. Hilde wants to enjoy her life, not commit herself yet.
The end of the weekend culminates in a catastrophe. Hilde had returned early to her parents' flat in Steglitz with Hans Stephan, a 19-year-old apprentice chef with whom she had a love affair, to spend the night together. Günther, presumably unhappily in love with Hans, and Paul, unhappily in love with Hilde, devise a plan to take revenge on those they have been so disappointed by. Their feelings boil up, heightened by overexcitement, lack of sleep and alcohol. Things are serious because Paul has a gun. It comes from an acquaintance he met at an event of the Young German Order1, Paul was supposed to keep it for him.* They write farewell letters explaining their intention:
"Dear Universe! A single piece of the organism perishes. Do not be angry about it. You will hardly feel the loss of a cell. Time rolls on. What does such a little life mean? A brief glow in the world, then dust and ashes. We will draw the last consequences. At this moment Hans Stephan and Männe will die by our hand. Both of us, Günther and I, will depart from life smiling." [...] "Fritz, I will shoot Hilde first, then Günther, while Günther will shoot Hans Stephan first. That is the complete truth. Don't laugh. Remember that my step is the last consequence of one killed by life. Günther agrees completely and greets you as I do for the last time."
In the letter, formulated somewhat convolutedly, Günther is to shoot Hans, then Paul Günther, then Hilde and finally himself. They call it a "suicide by fours." But when the called doctor arrives shortly after the deed, he finds only Hans and Günther dead. Paul has not kept his part of the bargain and is arrested shortly afterwards. The 18-year-old spends eight months in pre-trial detention. The charge is initially murder and incitement to murder. The trial that follows becomes one of the biggest media spectacles of the Weimar Republic. Journalists from Japan and the USA travel to report on it.
During the witness interviews, prosecution as well as defense search for reasons for the crime. Unrequited love, jealousy, loneliness, weariness, depression? A generational problem, or is the blame to be found in the circumstances of life? The case undoubtedly triggered a debate about the moral decline of youth. The young people were accused of a dissolute way of life and too early sexual activity, as well as being dulled by war and unstable political conditions. The Berliner Stadtanzeiger and the Berliner Morgenpost wrote at the time:
It is "one of the bitterest after-effects of the war that sharpshooting is regarded as a very manly and chivalrous manner, but that foreign life is little respected".
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[Perhaps] "the trial would reveal what sins the parents and the school have committed in this case, or whether they are generally sad phenomena of an age for which it would be futile to seek culprits."
Paul Krantz is finally acquitted of the charges of murder and incitement to murder. He is only convicted of illegal possession of weapons, a five-month suspended sentence, which is, however, already paid off with his pre-trial detention.
To escape the media hype after the trial, Paul Krantz moved to Frankfurt am Main, changed his name to Ernst Erich Noth and began studying German and social studies. In 1931 he wrote the autobiographical novel "Die Mietskaserne" (The Tenement Barracks), in which he described his childhood and youth in Berlin's working-class milieu, which were marked by poverty and domestic violence. The suicide of a pupil also appears in it, although there are no direct references to the Steglitz student tragedy. Declared un-German and harmful, his first book was burned by the Nazis in 1933. Noth emigrated to France and later to the USA, where he headed the German-language service of NBC and held lectureships at universities after the war. In his memoirs "Erinnerungen eines Deutschen" (Memoirs of a German), written in 1970, he once again comments on the act that had made him famous at the age of 18, whereby he places the blame on himself and not on society:
"As far as the events of this night of calamity are concerned, the fact remains that for one anxious, demonic hour I consented to the insane plan of a 'suicide by fours'. The fact that I did not, or never fully, believe in the possibility of its realisation, and that in the end I tried as desperately as unsuccessfully to drive it back, does not alter the mental outrage that was born out of the wild confusions of that perverse night."
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"To lay all the blame for this catastrophe solely on the environment and contemporary conditions, such as school, parental home and degeneration of society, as has been done or attempted in much of the press and public opinion, would be an all too cheap alibi".
The story was made into a movie in 1929 and 1960, each time under the title "Geschminkte Jugend" (Painted Youth). In 2004, there has been another film about it, this time with the title "Was nützt die Liebe in Gedanken" (Love in thoughts). You will soon find the film review on this blog.
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* However, he did not join this organisation out of political conviction, but because some of his classmates (including Günther Scheller) were members. For many, the marches disguised as 'hikes' offered a welcome contrast to life in cramped conditions and hardship in Berlin's tenement buildings.
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