Anyone for Swedish murder and fin-de-siècle gloom?

Hjalmar Söderberg (source: Wikipedia)

If you are looking for some good old fin-de-siècle gloom and you happen to be in the vicinity of London, England, you really should take the opportunity to see Dr Glas, starring Swedish actor Krister Henriksson (of Wallander-renown).

Dr Glas is based on a novel, first published in 1905, by Swedish writer Hjalmar Söderberg,  considered to be one of the finest novelists this nation ever produced. It is, admittedly, not a cheerful story. On the other hand, it has murder, adultery, depression and lots and lots of good old misery. Nobody get a HEA, because that was not what Söderberg was about. He was, after all, the man who wrote the legendary phrase: "I believe in the lust of the flesh and the incurable loneliness of the soul" (from the play Gertrud), quoted by generations of Swedish teenagers suffering their first disappointment in love.

If you can't make it to the Wyndham's Theatre, I heartily recommend digging out Doctor Glas as a novel or Söderberg's other novel The Serious Game as they are both excellent and translated to English.

Life around 1900

Just had to share this lovely enhanced video with footage from around 1900 – it really brings the past frighteningly close when you can meet the eyes of strangers from a gap of more than 100 years.

Just lovely!

Forgotten Divas: Teresa Carreño

Teresa Carreño, ca. 1903 (picture from Wikipedia)

Born in  Venezuela in 1853, Teresa Carrneño was an internationally acclaimed singer, pianist, composer and conductor. She debuted very early - only 10 years old, she performed for Abraham Lincoln - and moved to Europe in 1866, where she toured as an opera singer and pianist. She composed, among other things, over 40 works for piano, but her greatest hit was a piece called Tendeur. Mme. Carreño also lived a rather interesting personal life, being married no less than 4 times and having altogether 5 surviving children.

By lucky chance, she recorded some music in 1905 so we can actually here her play today. Among pieces she recorded is the Chopin Ballade No. 1 in G minor Op. 23.

 

In December 1902, she appeared in London and played, among other things, this very same Chopin ballade. The Times was reasonably impressed:

"Mme. Teresa Carreño has long held a place of undisputed supremacy among virtuousi of her sex, and the program of her recital, given on Monday afternoon in Bechstein-hall, is surely a sign that she is no laying stress upon the interpretative side of her art rather than on its merely technical side. With the exception of a formidable "étude de concert" by E. MacDowell, with which it concluded, there was not a note which pianists of ordinary calibre could not execute with certainty, and there must have been at least half-a-dozen people in the audiende whose repertory includes all that Mme. Carreño played. The sonatas were the "appassionata" of Beethoven, and Schumann's in G minor, op. 22, labelles in the programme "Sorasch (sic) wie möglich," as if that were the title of the whole sonata, instead of the direction for the first movement. The Chopin selection included two preludes, in D flat and B flat respectively, the nocturne in C sharp minor, the fine and rarely-hear polonaise in E flat minor, the ballade in G minor, and, for an encore, the éurde in A flat. Tchaikovsky's pretty "Chant sans Paroles" in F, and Rubinstein's barcarolle in G, completed the proamme, and Henselt's "Si oiseau j'étais" was given afterwards as an encore. The player was at her best in Chopin and later composers, but parts of the Schumann sonata were finely interpreted; her style has gained very remarkably in breadth and her splendid tone and the absolute certainty of her execution remain what they were."

Source Citation: 

"Concerts." Times [London, England] 10 Dec. 1902: 4. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 9 Dec. 2012.

Teresa Carreño died in 1917 in New York and today, the second largest theatre in South America, the Teresa Carreño Cultural Complex in Careras in Venezuela, carries her name, as does, oddly enough, a crater on Venus.

Images of India: A Bombay Wedding

The following passages is found in Modern India, a book containing a series of letters written for The Chicago Record-Herald during the winter of 1903-04 and recounts the American journalist's experiences at a wedding in Bombay:

"The home of the bridegroom's family is an immense wooden house in the native quarter, and when we reached it we had to pass through a crowd of coolies that filled the street. The gate and outside walls were gayly decorated with bunting and Japanese lanterns, all ready to be lighted as soon as the sun went down. A native orchestra was playing doleful music in one of the courts, and a brass band of twenty pieces in military uniforms from the barracks was waiting its turn. A hallway which leads to a large drawing-room in the rear of the house was spread with scarlet matting, the walls were hung with gay prints, and Japanese lanterns were suspended from the ceiling at intervals of three or four feet. The first room was filled with women and children eating ices and sweetmeats. Men guests were not allowed to join them. It was then half past four, and we were told that they had been enjoying themselves in that innocent way since noon, and would remain until late in the evening, for it was the only share they could have in the wedding ceremonies. Hindu women and men cannot mingle even on such occasions.

The men folks were in the large drawing-room, seated in rows of chairs facing each other, with an aisle four or five feet wide in the center. There were all sorts and conditions of men, for the groom has a wide acquaintance and intimate friends among Mohammedans, Jains, Parsees, Roman Catholics, Protestants and all the many other religious in Bombay, and he invited them to his marriage. Several foreign ladies were given seats in the place of honor at the head of the room around a large gilt chair or throne which stood in the center with a wreath of flowers carelessly thrown over the back. There were two American missionaries and their wives, a Jesuit priest and several English women.

Soon after we were seated there was a stir on the outside and the groom appeared arrayed in the whitest of white linen robes, a turban of white and gold silk, an exquisite cashmere shawl over his shoulders, and a string of diamonds around his neck that were worth a rajah's ransom. His hands were adorned with several handsome rings, including one great emerald set in diamonds, so big that you could see it across the room. Around his neck was a garland of marigolds that fell to his waist, and he carried a big bridal bouquet in his hand. 

/.../ 

The Parsees wore black or white with closely buttoned frocks and caps that look like fly-traps; the Mohammedans wore flowing robes of white, and the Hindus silks of the liveliest patterns and the most vivid colors. No ballroom belle ever was enveloped by brighter tinted fabrics than the silks, satins, brocades and velvets that were worn by the dignified Hindu gentlemen at this wedding, and their jewels were such as our richest women wear. 

/.../

They brought us trays of native refreshments, while the nautch girls danced, handed each guest a nosegay and placed a pair of cocoanuts at his feet, which had some deep significance--I could not quite understand what. The groom did not appear to be enjoying himself. He looked very unhappy. He evidently did not like to sit up in a gilded chair so that everybody could stare and make remarks about him, for that is exactly what his guests were doing, criticising his bare legs, commenting upon his jewels and guessing how much his diamond necklace cost. He was quite relieved when a couple of gentlemen, who seemed to be acting as masters of ceremonies, placed a second garland of flowers around his neck--which one of them whispered to me had just come from the bride, the first one having been the gift of his mother--and led him out of the room like a lamb to the slaughter.

Nautch dancers (picture found in Modern India)

When we reached the street a procession of the guests of honor was formed, while policemen drove the crowd back. First came the military band, then the masters of ceremonies--each having a cane in his hand, with which he motioned back the crowd that lined the road on both sides six or eight tiers deep. Then the groom marched all alone with a dejected look on his face, and his hands clasped before him. After him came the foreign guests, two and two, as long as they were able to keep the formation, but after going a hundred feet the crowd became so great and were so anxious to see all that was going on, that they broke the line and mixed up with the wedding party, and even surrounded the solitary groom like a bodyguard, so that we who were coming directly after could scarcely see him. The noisy music of the band had aroused the entire neighborhood, and in the march to the residence of the bride's family we passed between thousands of spectators. The groom was exceedingly nervous. Although night had fallen and the temperature was quite cool, the perspiration was rolling down his face in torrents, and he was relieved when we entered a narrow passage which bad been cleared by the policemen.

The bride's house was decorated in the same manner as the groom's, and upon a tray in the middle of a big room a small slow fire of perfumed wood was burning. The groom was led to the side of it, and stood there, while the guests were seated around him--hooded Hindu women on one side and men and foreign ladies on the other. Then his trainers made him sit down on the floor, cross-legged, like a tailor. Hindus seldom use chairs, or even cushions. Very soon four Brahmins, or priests, appeared from somewhere in the background and seated themselves on the opposite side of the fire. They wore no robes, and were only half dressed. Two were naked to the waist, as well as barefooted and barelegged. One, who had his head shaved like a prize fighter and seemed to be the officiating clergyman, had on what looked like a red flannel shirt. He brought his tools with him, and conducted a mysterious ceremony, which I cannot describe, because it was too long and complicated, and I could not make any notes. A gentleman who had been requested to look after me attempted to explain what it meant, as the ceremony proceeded, but his English was very imperfect, and I lost a good deal of the show trying to clear up his meaning. While the chief priest was going through a ritual his deputies chanted mournful and monotonous strains in a minor key--repetitions of the same lines over and over again. They were praying for the favor of the gods, and their approval of the marriage.

After the groom had endured it alone for a while the bride was brought in by her brother-in-law, who, since the death of her father, has been the head of the household. He was clad in a white gauze undershirt, with short sleeves, and the ordinary Hindu robe wrapped around his waist, and hanging down to his bare knees. The bride had a big bunch of pearls hanging from her upper lip, gold and silver rings and anklets upon her bare feet, and her head was so concealed under wrappings of shawls that she would have smothered in the hot room had not one of her playmates gone up and removed the coverings from her face. This playmate was a lively matron of 14 years, a fellow pupil at the missionary school, who had been married at the age of 9, so she knew all about it, and had adopted foreign manners and customs sufficiently to permit her to go about among the guests, chatting with both gentlemen and ladies with perfect self-possession. She told us all about the bride, who was her dearest friend, received and passed around the presents as they arrived, and took charge of the proceedings.

The bride sat down on the floor beside the husband that had been chosen for her and timidly clasped his hand while the priests continued chanting, stopping now and then to breathe or to anoint the foreheads of the couple, or to throw something on the fire. There were bowls of several kinds of food, each having its significance, and several kinds of plants and flowers, and incense, which was thrown into the flames. At one time the chief priest arose from the floor, stretched his legs and read a long passage from a book, which my escort said was the sacred writing in Sanskrit laying down rules and regulations for the government of Hindu wives. But the bride and groom paid very little attention to the priests or to the ceremony. After the first embarrassment was over they chatted familiarly with their friends, both foreign and native, who came and squatted down beside them. The bride's mother came quietly into the circle after a while and sat down beside her son-in-law--a slight woman, whose face was entirely concealed. When the performance had been going on for about an hour four more priests appeared and took seats in the background. When I asked my guardian their object, he replied, sarcastically, that it was money, that they were present as witnesses, and each of them would expect a big fee as well as a good supper.

"Poor people get married with one priest," he added, "but rich people have to have many. It costs a lot of money to get married."

Every now and then parcels were brought in by servants, and handed to the bride, who opened them with the same eagerness that American girls show about their wedding presents, but before she had been given half a chance to examine them they were snatched away from her and passed around. There were enough jewels to set the groom up in business, for all the relatives on both sides are rich, several beautifully embroidered shawls, a copy of Tennyson's poems, a full set of Ruskin's works, a flexible covered Bible from the bride's school teacher, and other gifts too numerous to mention. The ceremony soon became tedious and the crowded room was hot and stuffy. It was an ordeal for us to stay as long as we did, and we endured it for a couple of hours, but it was ten times worse for the bride and groom, for they had to sit on the floor over the fire, and couldn't even stretch their legs. They told us that it would take four hours more to finish the ritual. So we asked our hosts to excuse us, offered our sympathy and congratulations to the happy couple, who laughed and joked with us in English, while the priests continued to sing and pray."

Modern India by William Eleroy Curtis (1904)

The British on the Germans: the Junker Edition

"The Prussian Junker is a kind of glorified peasant who may in some individual cases or even for some generations have acquired the veneer of Western civilization, French or English, but who remains essentially a well-to-do peasant, cunning, grasping, tenacious, and jealous to the death of his traditional privileges."

- The Times, 27 October, 1906

Policing Persia: Swedes Very far From Home

In the early 20th century, some forces in Persia were pushing to modernise the country which had, in regards to organisation and government, changed very little in the past few hundred years.

The Shah of Persia arriving in Ourmiah, 1911 (source: Library of Congress)

In July 1910, the Democrats came to power and one part of their modernisation program was the construction of a national gendarmerie - a sort of paramilitarian force that was part police force and part armed force aimed at keeping the peace by any means necessary. While events soon lead to the program being dropped, the idea of a gendarmerie survived, partly likely because it was in the interest of the two super-powers in the region - Russia and Great Britain - to ensure safe passage through the notoriously dangerous region. As an example, Mr Smart, the British Consul at Shiraz, was attacked in the neighbourhood of Kazerun in December 1912. Grazed by a bullet, and trapped under his wounded horse, he was only saved due to the efficiency of the troop of the Central India Horse that escorted him and the kind care of some of the locals, and the incident led to considerable diplomatic tension. In fact, the Gendarmerie was to be in great part funded by Britain and Russia – for example, in may 1913, the British Government advanced a sum of £100,000 to the Persian government for this purpose, following the Smart-incident.

However, in order to build such a force, Persia needed help from the outside since the country lacked officers with the relevant sort of training. The question was which country to turn to? In 1907, Russia and Great Britain had, much to the outrage of the Persians, divided the country into two speheres of influence; one Russian and one Britain. Naturally, it was unthinkable for either side to allow the other party to organise a national armed Persian force, and they also vetoed Teheran's first choice Italy, because Italy was viewed to be too much of a power in itself.

Sweden, however... Let's face it; while the Russians may once have been trounced by Swedish forces in battles such as Narva, Sweden in the early 20th century was not that impressive. In fact, she had just voluntarily granted Norway independence and was now only a small fraction of the Baltic power she had once been. Nobody needed fear the Swedes – least of all super-powers like Russia and Britain.

Hence, in August 1911, Colonel Harald O. Hjalmarson (helpful tip: 'hj' is pronounced as an English 'y', so he would be 'Yalmarson')  arrived and with the help of several other Swedish officers, began the laborious task of organising a gendarmerie, aimed at maintaining security on the highways and roads. It was called the Persian Central Governemt Gendarmerie (or in Persian, Zhandarmiri-yi Dawlati).

 General Harald Hjalmarson (source: Wikipedia)

The Swedish officers were to a large degree Swedish aristocrats, and the Persian officers were also drawn from the higher social strata and well-educated – many of them spoke French, for instance. At the end of 1912 the Gendarmerie consisted of 21 Swedes and nearly 3,000 Persian officers and men. By the end of 1913, the number of Swedish officers had risen to 36 while nearly 6,000 Persians were employed. According to an article in The Times, around 2,000 of them were mounted, and they were organised in six regiments, or more accurately, nine battalions.

The outbreak of World War I led to a distinct shift in policy. First of all, Sweden recalled all the officers who were on the roll for active duty. Second, Persia was in a very delicate position, finding itself between Germany's ally Turkey and British India. Both sides wooed the Persians, who nominally remained neutral. However, the Gendarmerie had distinct German loyalties. Not only were the Swedish officers by tradition friendly towards their bigger Germanic cousin, but nationalist Persian forces who were still outraged at Russia's and Britain's high-handedness in splitting the country between them, were also in favour of Germany. They accepted subsidiaries from Germany and covertly aided German expiditions, such as the expedition headed by Niedermayer, as well as allowing Wasserman's proslyting among local potentates in southern Persia.

In 1916, the force split; some siding with the nationalists, actively fighting the Russians, while parts of the first and second regiments in Teheran remained neutral along with their Swedish officers. The troops who had remained neutral would later form the nucleus for the reconstructed Gendarmerie, which took part in the campaigns against the Bolsheviks in the Caspian provinces and the Kurdish rebellion in Azerbaijan, as well as keeping up its police duties of guarding the roads.

After the coup d'état in 1921, the Gendarmerie formed the core for the new national Iranian army together with the the Iranian Cossack Division and the remaining Swedish officers returned home. Harald O. Hjalmarson would later head the Swedish Brigade in the Finnish Civil War, and died in 1919, only 51 years old.

And that is how, bizarrely, a few Swedish officers actively aided Germany's overtures to the Muslim World during World War I.

Sources:

"The Unrest In Southern Persia." Times [London, England] 5 Apr. 1912: 3. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 28 July 2012.

"British Officer Killed In Persia." Times [London, England] 12 Dec. 1912: 6. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 28 July 2012.

"Policing Persia." Times [London, England] 27 Dec. 1913: 5. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 28 July 2012.

"Indian Soldiers Attacked in Dangerous Pass: The Consul Smart Incident." The Straits Times, 26 January 1912, Page 2

Cronin, Stephanie, Gendarmerie, Encyclopaedia Iranica www.iranica.com, online edition, 28 July 2012 (available at http://www.iranica.com/articles/gendarmerie)

Hopkirk, Peter, On Secret Service East of Constantinople: the plot to bring down the British empire, J. Murray, London, 1994

Wikipedia; entry on Swedish Gendarmerie in English, and on Harald Hjalmarson in Swedish.

(This post was originally posted on my old blog)

Baghdad: Worth a Mosque?

The Kaiser; aka "Hadji Wilhelm Mohammed" (Source: Wikipedia)

World War I is usually associated with the trenches on the Western Front. You know; shelling, gassing, the Somme, the Battle of Verdun... But as Germany knew right at the outset; the Allies' weakest spot was not the French border. No, the soft, unprotected underbelly of the Allies was Britain's Achilles heel – India (why, yes, I do like mixing my metaphors – why do you ask?).

Germany had long groomed Turkey for the (officially un)express(ed) purpose of getting a foothold in Asia. When the rest of the world refused to have any truck with the late Sultan Abdul Hamid after his brutal crushing of the rebellion by the (Christian) Armenian minority, Germany had taken Turkey's side against the outraged Russians. Germany had even helped Turkey arm itself by offering military advisors and arms. In return, Germany only wanted a small thing – a railroad, running straight from Berlin to Baghdad. That way, Germany would be well prepared to open up an Asian front in case of a conflict with Russia and Britain without risking that her troop movements were impeded by Russia and her Slavic allies in Eastern Europe.

In order to affirm the friendship Germany felt with the Islamic world, Kaiser Wilhelm even declared himself the protector of the Muslim world. During a state visit to Turkey in 1898, he made speech to that effect which was repeated on postcards that were spread from Kabul to the Bosporus. Islam's cause, Germany declared, was also Germany's.

Example of the postcards described above, with the German text on the left and the same in Arabic on the right

When war finally broke out, Germany urged the Sultan as the leader of the Islamic world to declare a jihad, a holy war, on Britain. The idea was that the vast Muslim population in India would then rise up against its British masters and throw them back into the sea from whence they came. Without India, Britain would be little but a puny island kingdom whose bark was considerably worse than its bite.

Germany was not content to rely entirely on the sultan, however, considering the rather bad relationship between the Ottomans and many Islamic peoples. No, Germany was going to take it one step further and try to persuade India's closest neighbours, Persia and Afghanistan, to join their cause. In order to do so, Germany sent several expiditions in order to treat with the Shah of Persia and the Emir of Afghanistan, as well as to proselyte among the local tribes.

The full story of Germany's jihad is too long and complicated to relate here, but one of the more absurd aspects of it was the claim that Kaiser Wilhelm had converted to Islam and gone on a pilgrimage to Mecca. His name, therefore, was given as "Hadji Wilhelm Mohammed", a rather shameless, not to say blasphemous, attempt to exploit the genuine religious feeling of the Muslims. Meanwhile, Germany coldly planned to lay claim to most of the land under Ottoman control as soon as Britain and Russia had been defeated.

It didn't work though,  and perhaps it never could have. Perhaps Germany underestimated her Muslim allies' ability to see through her rather feeble ruse, or maybe they simply overestimated the religious ties and underestimated the political and ethnic tensions within the Islamic world.

Nevertheless, forgotten as it is today, the affair of the German Jihad without a doubt managed to further increase the gap between Christian Europe and Muslim Asia and helped contribute to the dichotomy so strongly and painfully experienced in the century that followed World War I.

(This post was originally posted on my old blog)

Review: The Ruling Caste by David Gilmour

Full title: The Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj (non-fiction) 
Writer: David Gilmour
First published: 2005
Available: digitally on Amazon and possibly in a library near you (I used both options as the pictures and extremely helpful sketch over the organisation of the Indian administration wasn't included in the Kindle version)

Quote: "Their ethos is portrayed in Kipling's story 'The Head of the District' in the persons of Orde, who on his deathbed by the Indus remembers that four villages need a remission of rent because their crops have been poor, and of Tallantire, who defeats a tribal rebellion and brings order to the district after the Indian Civilian has run away."

The Ruling Caste is an ambitious book. Gilmour states in the preface that his aim is to show how the senior Civil servants of Victorian India lived from chota hazri to sundown and to portray not only their careers but their thoughts and beliefs and domestic arrangements. Somehow, he actually manages that rather well, which is a feat in only 300 pages. I have seen several reviews that complain that too many details make it a sluggish read, and certainly, there isn't a page that is not loaded with information, facts and footnotes. However, to me it read fairly easily all the same – I admit that I may not be the typical reader being both obscenely interested in the Victorian world and having a good deal of bureaucratic experience myself which probably made it easier for all those administrative proceedings to leap to life for me  – and the focus is always rather up-close and personal.

Gilmour uses a rather fixed set of characters as the focus of his narrative – we meet and get acquainted with Henry Cotton, Alfred Lyall, Henry Lawrence among others – and mixes personal accounts and letters with official accounts of the India Civil Service in the late 19th century. Therein lies one of my reservations against this book; reading it, as I was, for the express purpose of research, it was a little annoying to have the dates occasionally obfuscated, especially since Gilmour also points out that the organisation and attitudes of the ICS was not static but evolving over the period. Despite that, there are sections where accounts as far apart as 50 years are treated side-by-side and the time-gap is only visible if you actually check the footnotes. Also, you may quirk an eyebrow at finding quotes etc. from the teens and 20s in a book that has "Victorian" in the title, but seeing as I do the same thing here, I'm not really at liberty to criticise a slightly wider interpretation of the Victorian era.

It is a fascinating world Gilmour describes; utterly different from the modern bureaucracy and yet strangely familiar. His Civilians work, dream, win promotions and marry until, finally, most of them slip into oblivion as pensioners reminiscing about "the good old days" in a rather suburban atmosphere in South Kensington. The book is a treasure trove for a novelist, because it tells you so much about the mundane life and attitudes of the British Raj precisely because of it's obsessive unfolding of details, and David Gilmour's love for his subject shines through on every page. While making for an entertaining read, that fondness is also the reason for my second big reservation about this book – there is a strong bias pro-ICS/Britain that sometimes shines through. While mostly providing a rather sober look at the British Civilian, there are places when Gilmour leaps to the defence of the ICS in a rather jarring way (he clearly loathes A Passage To India, for example). It's a pity, because these almost chauvinistic little outbursts mar an otherwise brilliant and detailed study, and makes me question if there is an underlying bias that tilts the entire narrative. That nagging doubt makes me a little wary about trusting it too much, which detracts a little from its usefulness.

Nevertheless, it is still a fascinating read and recommended for anyone interested in the subject.

I gave it 4/5 on Goodreads.

Wilhelm Voigt: The Captain of Köpenick

Wilhelm Voigt at his arrest (source: Wikipedia)

In October, 1906, Wilhelm Voigt, aged 57, was down on his luck. He'd first been convicted of theft at age 14, and had since then managed a rather impressive career of thievery and forgery. In February of 1906, he'd been released after a 15 year long sentence for having broken into the building of the Court of Justice at Wongrowitz, in Posen, and stolen the money box. It would later be noted by the judicial authorities that the sentence had been "excessively heavy and to have been imposed after a somewhat irregular trial."[1]

According to the accounts that were later given of his prison time, Voigt had been an exemplary prisoner who had shown great interest in reading, especially history, and apparently upon release, he had expressed a desire to live an honest life. He finally settled down outside of Berlin to work as a shoemaker. His employer, aware of his antecedants, later testified that "Voigt had rewarded his confidence, and had led an honest and most industrious life, and had made himself useful in a variety of ways. He had regularly attended church, had eaten his meals with the family of his employer, and had been kind to the children." [2] However, as a former prisoner he was an "undesirable", and on those grounds he was expelled from Berlin by the police. According to his employer, "[w]hen the order for his expulsion came, Voigt had utterly broken down and had felt that his last chance of leading an honest life."

But apparently Herr Voigt decided not to take this lying down. No, instead he planned and executed a caper which would resonate across the known world. First, he visited several used-clothes stores  and managed to piece together a uniform of an officer of the 1st Foot Guards. Thus equipped, he was ready to execute his coup.

His exact intentions may be disputed – he would later himself claim that "it had not been his original intention to rob the municipal treasury, that what he had chiefly desired to secure was a pass which would have enabled him to earn an honest living" [3] but that might obviously not have reflected the truth. Undisputed, however, is the fact that on 16 October, 1906 he commandeered all in all 11 soldiers from the local garrison and travelled with them by train to Köpenick, where he led them into the town hall. He then placed the local Burgomaster, Dr. Langerhans, and his treasurer under arrest for charges of crooked book keeping. He told the local police to care for law and order and to prevent calls to Berlin for one hour at the local post office. Then he ordered the treasurer to hand over the money box, containing 4,002 Marks. Frau Langerhans, the wife of the Burgomaster, would later state to the press that "it was the extreme politeness of the 'captain' towards herself and his official gruffness towards her husband which chiefly convinced her that he was a real officer." [4]

He then told some of the soldiers to take the arrested men to Berlin for interrogation in two commandeered carriages and left the remaining guards under orders to stay in their places for half an hour. Himself, he left for the train station and disappeared.

The incident caused great mirth and excitement. Only a few days after the incident The Times could report that in Berlin "(t)he music-halls are already giving representations of the whole drama, illustrated postcards with descriptive verses are being sold in thousands in the streets, and the schoolboys have invented a new game which they call 'Der Hauptmann von Köpenick' and in which they re-enact the comedy in all its details." [5] As the National-Zeitung reported "(i)mmeasurable laughter convulses Berlin and is spreading beyond the confines of our city, beyond the frontiers of Germany, beyond the ocean. The inhabited world is laughing, and if we still had an Olympus, the gods would undoubtedly be laughing too". [6]

But there was more to the attention that just ridicule, though. To a great many people, this was a comment on German society. In the words of the National-Zeitung only two days after the incident "(t)he boldest and most biting satirist could not make our vaulting militarism, which 'o'erlaps itself and falls on the other side' the subject of a satire which could stand comparison with this comic opera transferred from the boards to real life /.../ Somebody's brains and somebody's backbone have been lost; the honest finder is invited to hand them in at the office of the Köpenick town-hall". [7) The Social Democratic Vorwärts found "(t)he chief actor in the farce /.../ much more intimately acquainted with that mental attitude of the officials which has been produced by militarism and by Prussian administrative practice than all those questionable geniuses who have just been philosophizing in the Conservative Press upon the specific Prussian spirit." [8] The "Köpenick Caper" was considered by many to be the inevitable consequence of the "rule of uniform" and it gave rise a number of acerbic comments. The Berliner Tageblatt summed up the feelings of a great number of Germans when they wrote "(w)e talk of our civic pride, of manly courage before the thrones of Kings, of the State based on law, and of our constitutionalism. It is a strange commentary upon these and upon the rest of the fine phrases we employ, but it is undoubtedly a fact that in Prussia the uniform governs." [9]


On 26 October, Herr Voigt was arrested and later charged with "unlawfully wearing uniform, with offending against public order, with depriving subjetcs of their liberty, with fraud, and with forgery." [10] At the trial, sympathies lay almost universally with the defendant. Even the judge in the case the chief in summing up the case passed his chief censure "upon the police system or expelling discharged prisoners from places where they had settled down to a new life and to honest work." [11] He then admitted several of the extenuating pleas which were advanced by counsel for the defense, and, after having found Voigt guilty on all counts of the indictment, sentenced him to four years' imprisonment. Kaiser Wilhelm II, however, pardoned him on 16 August, 1908, and Voigt would go on capitalizing on his fame until he died in 1922.

The case gave rise to several books, songs and plays. There was simply something irresistibly fascinating about the simplicity and sheer gall of Wilhelm Voigt's exploit. Not only had he dared to camly impersonate a Prussian officer; he had managed to do so in such a manner that it never even occurred to the soldiers that he was not the genuine thing. As The Times put it; "(f)rom his studies of the German officer at work and at play this decrepit cobbler of nearly 60 years of age, with his horny hands, his white hairs and his gaunt figure bowed by years of penal servitude, was able to evolve a personage which passed for a captain of the 1st Foot Guards." [12] And even if the comments on "the rule of uniform" weren't entirely on the mark, in the general debate following it was claimed that "the soldiers who took part in the raid are understood to have been exonerated from all blame by their genuine military superiors and to have been told that they acted quite correctly. Some /.../ jurisconsults are indulging in speculations as to what would have been the position of those ten soldiers if /.../ they had shot down or bayoneted the unhappy Burgomaster of Köpenick. there appears to be consensus of opinion that they could not have been held legally responsible for their homicidal action." [13] As such, the interpretation of the event at the time was as important as what had actually transpired.

And poor Dr. Langerhans? Well, not suprisingly, he was overwhelmed by the public ridicule and sent in his resignation a few days after the incident. However, the citizens of Köpenick held a meeting at which they passed a resolution of confidence in their Burgomaster and promised to stand by him.

As a great writer once put it – all's well that ends well, isn't it?


Footnotes:
1. "The 'Captain Of Köpenick.'." Times [London, England] 3 Dec. 1906: 5. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 14 Oct. 2012
2. Ibidem
3. Ibidem
4. "The Kopenick Raid." Times [London, England] 19 Oct. 1906: 3. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 14 Oct. 2012.
5. "The Köpenick Raid." Times [London, England] 20 Oct. 1906: 5. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 14 Oct. 2012.
6. The National-Zeitung, as translated and referred in The Times; "The Kopenick Raid." Times [London, England] 19 Oct. 1906: 3. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 14 Oct. 2012.
7. As translated and referred in The Times; "The Kopenick Raid." Times [London, England] 19 Oct. 1906: 3. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 14 Oct. 2012.
8. As translated and referred in The Times; "The Kopenick Raid." Times [London, England] 19 Oct. 1906: 3. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 14 Oct. 2012.
9. As translated and referred in The Times; "The Kopenick Raid." Times [London, England] 19 Oct. 1906: 3. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 14 Oct. 2012.
10. The 'Captain Of Köpenick.'." Times [London, England] 3 Dec. 1906: 5. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 14 Oct. 2012
11. Ibidem
12. "The 'Captain' Of Köpenick." Times [London, England] 30 Oct. 1906: 5. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 14 Oct. 2012.
13. "The Köpenick Raid." Times [London, England] 22 Oct. 1906: 6. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 14 Oct. 2012.

(This post was originally posted on my old blog)