Carl Großmann

Carl Großmann
Großmann mug shot
Born	Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Großmann (1863-12-13)13 December 1863 Alt Ruppin, Province of Brandenburg, Kingdom of Prussia
Died	5 July 1922(1922-07-05) (aged 58) Berlin, Weimar Republic
Cause of death	Suicide by hanging
Other names	Beast of Silesian Train Station The Berlin Butcher Blue Beard of Berlin
Conviction(s)	Assault Child molestation
Criminal penalty	15 years imprisonment
Details
Victims	26–100+
Span of crimes	1890–1921
Country	Germany
State(s)	Berlin
Date apprehended	21 August 1921

Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Großmann (13 December 1863 – 5 July 1922), better known as Carl Großmann, was a German serial killer and rapist who murdered at least twenty women in the Berlin quarter of Friedrichshain between 1918 and 1921. He killed himself while awaiting the end of his trial without giving a full confession, leaving the extent of his crimes and motives largely unknown.

Early life

Großmann was born in Alt Ruppin (now part of Neuruppin) as one of eight children to rag picker Karl Friedrich Großmann and Marie Dorothea Sophie Prößel. His father was an alcoholic and locally regarded as an ill-tempered brute, who beat his wife and children in drunken rages using a fire poker. Großmann was often singled out in the abuse, as his father "hated how alike they were", and forced his son under threat of death to lie to teachers about the bruises, claiming that they were the result of accidents while playing. He assisted his father in selling used fabric and tended to the family's goats kept in nearby Treskow. Neighbours often observed the young boy playfully smashing heads with one particular billy goat and covering his face and chest in salt to have the goats lick him, leading to Großmann being nicknamed "Zickenkarl" ("Nanny Goat Karl") for his overt fondness for the animals.

According to his half-brother Franz, Großmann was mocked by his peers for his ugly appearance, and began voicing violent thoughts and sadistic sexual tastes since his youth. In one instance, when Großmann was six years old, he and his half-brother assisted in the slaughter of a pig at the local abattoir. The brothers were supposed to catch any run-off blood in a bowl, but when butcher Koppelin cut the pig's jugular vein, Großmann pushed his brother aside, opened his mouth, and gulped up as much blood as he could from the gushing stream. Franz Großmann described how his brother was "seizing as if he were having an epileptic fit" before an adult worker shoved the boy away. Großmann reportedly told his brother later in life that he could only achieve arousal at the sight of blood. Childhood friend Fritz Schirrmeister recalled a time when Großmann showed him an injured rabbit that had its paw bitten off by a fox, announced that he would cook it and appeared greatly pleased while stabbing the rabbit to death with a pocket knife.

Großmann left school in the third grade. In 1876, he took an apprenticeship as a slaughterhouse worker at the meat shop of Ferdinand Kliefoth, who took the troublemaking youth in despite his unpopular reputation for his skill as a slaughterer. Großmann told his brother that he only took the position to get close to Klieforth's wife Dorothea and that he often had wet dreams about forcing himself her. In 1879, Großmann was dismissed after he was caught attempting to rape Dorothea and beaten by Klieforth as a result. He returned to selling cloth with his father, occasionally working as a laborer at a fabric factory. After being thrown out of the house for stealing money from his father, Großmann moved to Berlin in 1890, working for numerous butcher shops and slaughterhouses until 1895.

Crimes

Vagrancy and sex offenses

After failing to find steady employment, Großmann became a vagrant traversing southern Germany, primarily Bavaria, during the late 1890s, making a living through begging, peddling, and theft. His criminal record during this time included assault, trespassing, petty burglary, bestiality, and sex crimes against young girls, for which was frequently jailed. His first charge was for the rape of a four-year-old girl. The longest of these sentences was served in Nuremberg, after Großmann was convicted of molesting a twelve-year-old girl and sodomising a goat.

After being released on 1 April 1899, Großmann molested a ten-year-old girl and raped a four-year-old girl. A court in Bayreuth sentenced him to 15 years imprisonment for the rapes on 4 October 1899; the four-year-old died of injuries inflicted during the attack shortly after the judgement. During his sentence, Großmann continued his violent behaviour and got into unprovoked fights with fellow inmates, leading to 55 citations.

Serial killings

Upon his release in 1913, Großmann again moved to Berlin, renting a one-room third-floor apartment at Lange Straße, in the area around Berlin Ostbahnhof, known at the time for its high rates of crime, unemployment, and prostitution. Following the start of World War I, Großmann was not drafted due to his age. Großmann sold meat on the black market and managed a sausage stand outside the train station.

Beginning at least 1918, Großmann used his location near Ostbahnhof to approach women, often jobseekers from the countryside newly arrived by train, and lure a victim to his home by offering them work as a domestic housekeeper. Some surviving victims said that they interpreted this as a code for solicitation while others genuinely believed they would be given employment. At the apartment, Großmann would physically overpower the woman and rape her, though other times, he would let the victim do housekeeping for several days or weeks before drugging and sexually assaulting her. Some of the women were let go after agreeing to not report Großmann while others were killed at Großmann's discretion. He would dump his victims' remains in Luisenstadt Canal and the adjoining Engelbecken basin. After any encounter, Großmann reported the women, whether dead or alive, to police, claiming they had run away after stealing from him to either explain their disappearance or disparage potential accusations made by surviving victims. On occasion, Großmann also targeted local women, ranging from female labourers, stay-at-home mothers, and sex workers, all invariably from poor financial backgrounds.

Großmann's activities went largely unnoticed due to the political climate of the time, due to which Berlin Police was largely occupied with quelling armed protests. He had been occasionally investigated, such as on 24 March 1920, after a 15-year-old girl was found in his flat after screaming was heard. The girl said that Großmann had invited her into his room and digitally pentrated her while she slept. Großmann claimed that he had tried to undress her for a bath. The matter was not pursued further since the girl was a homeless runaway and did not press charges. Two victims who reported Großmann for rape, Emma Baumann and Frieda T., were disregarded by police because of Großmann's theft accusations and because they were known prostitutes.

Since May 1921, pieces of missing women were found in the canal near Andreas Square and off the Luisenstadt Canal, sometimes on a daily basis. Only one, 33-year-old sex worker Frieda Schubert, could be certainly identified. The body parts belonged to at least 23 women, but the sheer amount led some investigators to suspect that Großmann murdered up to 100 women and girls. Dismembered human remains had washed up since March 1920, but estimation is skewed due to the presence of the corpses of Reichswehr officers thrown into the Spree during the Kapp Putsch, due to which body parts were not further examined. It was rumored and widely reported by contemporary newspapers that the meat Großmann sold contained the remains of his victims, as he threw some of their bones and other inedible parts into the river.

Arrest

On 21 August 1921, Robert Iglitzki, the next-door neighbour of Großmann, alerted police at the 50th precinct, after he heard screams and banging noises, followed by silence at around 21:30. The police burst into the apartment, finding the body of a nude female on the bed. She was identified as 34-year-old Marie Nitsche, an occasional sex worker who had been released from Moabit jail the same day. Großmann was taken into custody and charged with murder.

Neighbours reported that he seemed to have had a steady supply of female companions, mostly destitute-looking young women, over the previous few years. Many went into the apartment, but few emerged from it. How many lives Großmann took is not known. Only the body of his final victim was found, along with bloodstains in the apartment that indicated at least three other persons had been butchered in the few weeks leading up to his arrest.

Großmann admitted to killing four women. Some have suggested as many as 50 women entered Großmann's apartment and ended up being murdered and dismembered.

Großmann was not convicted of murder, because he hanged himself in his prison cell before the end of the main trial.

See also

• Friedrich Schumann
• Fritz Haarmann
• Karl Denke
• List of German serial killers

Bibliography

• Matthias Blazek (2009), Carl Großmann und Friedrich Schumann – Zwei Serienmörder in den zwanziger Jahren, Ibidem-Verlag, Stuttgart, ISBN 978-3-8382-0027-9.
• Horst Bosetzky (2004), Die Bestie vom Schlesischen Bahnhof, Jaron-Verlag, Berlin, ISBN 3-89773-078-2.
• Peter Haining (2005), Cannibal Killers: Murderers Who Kill and Eat Their Victims, chapter: "The Bread And Butter Brides", Magpie Books, UK, ISBN 978-1-84529-792-3.
• Masters, R.E.L.; Lea, Eduard; Edwardes, Allen, (1963), Perverse Crimes in History: Evolving Concepts of Sadism, Lust-Murder, and Necrophilia from Ancient to Modern Times, New York: Julian Press.
• Maria Tatar (1995), Lustmord: Sexual Murder in Weimar Germany, Princeton, NJ (English), ISBN 0-691-01590-2.