Damien Seaman's Blog
August 28, 2012
Who was the Vampire of Dusseldorf
The so-called Vampire of Düsseldorf was a serial killer named Peter Kürten who operated in Germany between 1913 and 1930. He was also a convicted arsonist and rapist who had spent several years in prison for these crimes, though the authorities had no idea until his capture in 1930 that he was a killer. Most of his murders – eight of them – took place in Düsseldorf between February and November 1929.
What was so unusual about this killer?
Kürten was notable because, unlike most serial killers we know of, he didn’t follow any clear pattern. Some of his crimes seemed well planned while some were spur of the moment. He used different weapons at different times, including two pairs of scissors and two hammers. He was also unusual in that his victims varied. Mostly he attacked young to middle-aged women, but he killed men and children too. This variety of victim and method was one of the reasons he was so hard to catch.
While Kürten’s attacks initially followed the common serial killer pattern of becoming more frequent and more vicious the more successful he became, his later attacks were non-fatal and seemed to decline in intensity even as they became still more frequent; after his final murder in November 1929, he attacked ten more women but didn’t kill any of them.
So is that why we remember him?
If Kürten is known at all to the wider world today, it is probably because he was the inspiration for the child killer Hans Beckert in Fritz Lang’s influential 1931 expressionist crime movie M. Celebrated Berlin police inspector Ernst Gennat also inspired Lang’s character Inspector Karl Lohmann; Gennat had played a key advisory role in the Kürten investigation.
Why was he called a vampire? Did he drink his victims’ blood?
No, he didn’t, though his main aim was to make his victims bleed because this gave him sexual pleasure. When using a hammer to strike women’s temples in some of his later crimes, the majority of the victims survived because they’d bled enough to gratify him without his feeling the need to kill them.
It’s unclear when exactly Kürten got lumbered with the name Vampire of Düsseldorf, but it almost certainly didn’t happen until after his trial in April 1931. The two most reliable sources from the time don’t mention the phrase at all. One of them, a contemporary account by British journalist Margaret Seaton-Wagner, even says that Kürten was instead called the Düsseldorf Ripper, and her book refers to him in its title as the Monster of Düsseldorf. As her book came out in 1932, this suggests the Vampire tag still wasn’t common to describe Kürten at that point.
So if he was so hard to catch, how did they get him in the end?
He gave himself up.
What, just like that?
Well, not quite. Kürten was about to be arrested for the rape of a young woman who had led police to his apartment, and he decided to come clean about being a killer as well. He confessed the whole thing to his wife and then got her to go and tell the police. Later he said this was so his wife could claim the reward money. He gave himself up at the Catholic Church of St Rochus, having arranged through his wife for the police to meet him there.
So Frau Kürten wasn’t in on it?
Apparently not. The killings seemed to come as a total shock to her. She ended up getting 4000 Reichsmark as a reward – roughly $14,000 in today’s money.
What happened to Kürten in the end?
At his trial, Kürten was found guilty of nine murders. He was executed by guillotine in Klingelputz Prison in Cologne in July 1931. Despite the Prussian state government being ideologically opposed to the use of capital punishment, public outcry over Kürten’s crimes was so great that they executed him anyway.
Guillotine? I thought that was a French thing.
Yep. Prussian too.
So how can I find out more about the Vampire of Dusseldorf?
My crime novel The Killing of Emma Gross is based on the case and contains a timeline of the investigation from February 1929 onwards that runs to over 20 pages. If you want more detail than that, most available second-hand accounts are of dubious quality. The best thing to do is seek out the two most reliable English language sources. The first is Margaret Seaton-Wagner’s book The Monster of Düsseldorf: the Life and Trial of Peter Kürten. The second is an account by forensic pathologist Karl Berg, who performed several of the autopsies on Kürten’s victims during the investigation and later carried out lengthy interviews with the accused as he awaited trial. The interviews formed the basis of Berg’s book The Sadist, which was published in an English translation in 1938.
What was so unusual about this killer?
Kürten was notable because, unlike most serial killers we know of, he didn’t follow any clear pattern. Some of his crimes seemed well planned while some were spur of the moment. He used different weapons at different times, including two pairs of scissors and two hammers. He was also unusual in that his victims varied. Mostly he attacked young to middle-aged women, but he killed men and children too. This variety of victim and method was one of the reasons he was so hard to catch.
While Kürten’s attacks initially followed the common serial killer pattern of becoming more frequent and more vicious the more successful he became, his later attacks were non-fatal and seemed to decline in intensity even as they became still more frequent; after his final murder in November 1929, he attacked ten more women but didn’t kill any of them.
So is that why we remember him?
If Kürten is known at all to the wider world today, it is probably because he was the inspiration for the child killer Hans Beckert in Fritz Lang’s influential 1931 expressionist crime movie M. Celebrated Berlin police inspector Ernst Gennat also inspired Lang’s character Inspector Karl Lohmann; Gennat had played a key advisory role in the Kürten investigation.
Why was he called a vampire? Did he drink his victims’ blood?
No, he didn’t, though his main aim was to make his victims bleed because this gave him sexual pleasure. When using a hammer to strike women’s temples in some of his later crimes, the majority of the victims survived because they’d bled enough to gratify him without his feeling the need to kill them.
It’s unclear when exactly Kürten got lumbered with the name Vampire of Düsseldorf, but it almost certainly didn’t happen until after his trial in April 1931. The two most reliable sources from the time don’t mention the phrase at all. One of them, a contemporary account by British journalist Margaret Seaton-Wagner, even says that Kürten was instead called the Düsseldorf Ripper, and her book refers to him in its title as the Monster of Düsseldorf. As her book came out in 1932, this suggests the Vampire tag still wasn’t common to describe Kürten at that point.
So if he was so hard to catch, how did they get him in the end?
He gave himself up.
What, just like that?
Well, not quite. Kürten was about to be arrested for the rape of a young woman who had led police to his apartment, and he decided to come clean about being a killer as well. He confessed the whole thing to his wife and then got her to go and tell the police. Later he said this was so his wife could claim the reward money. He gave himself up at the Catholic Church of St Rochus, having arranged through his wife for the police to meet him there.
So Frau Kürten wasn’t in on it?
Apparently not. The killings seemed to come as a total shock to her. She ended up getting 4000 Reichsmark as a reward – roughly $14,000 in today’s money.
What happened to Kürten in the end?
At his trial, Kürten was found guilty of nine murders. He was executed by guillotine in Klingelputz Prison in Cologne in July 1931. Despite the Prussian state government being ideologically opposed to the use of capital punishment, public outcry over Kürten’s crimes was so great that they executed him anyway.
Guillotine? I thought that was a French thing.
Yep. Prussian too.
So how can I find out more about the Vampire of Dusseldorf?
My crime novel The Killing of Emma Gross is based on the case and contains a timeline of the investigation from February 1929 onwards that runs to over 20 pages. If you want more detail than that, most available second-hand accounts are of dubious quality. The best thing to do is seek out the two most reliable English language sources. The first is Margaret Seaton-Wagner’s book The Monster of Düsseldorf: the Life and Trial of Peter Kürten. The second is an account by forensic pathologist Karl Berg, who performed several of the autopsies on Kürten’s victims during the investigation and later carried out lengthy interviews with the accused as he awaited trial. The interviews formed the basis of Berg’s book The Sadist, which was published in an English translation in 1938.
January 3, 2012
Top 5 reasons historical crime novels can suck
There are few reading pleasures to top a good historical novel for me,
especially if there’s crime involved in the story somewhere. I’m
ready. I’m ripe. I’m aching to like it.
Why then are there so few historical novels that satisfy?
Why, if I’m being blunt, are so many of them so damned awful?
1. Hello old friend, let’s have a conversion in which we tell each
other things we already know as though one of us has amnesia
Characters talk about why Henry VIII has been having such trouble with
Catherine of Aragon, and why that means he wants to divorce her and
marry again. But did you know that the Pope won’t stand for any talk
of divorce? Yes of course I bloody well knew that – I live in a
still-Catholic England where the teachings of the Church have been
drummed into me since the day I was born!
A variation on the theme is where characters don’t have others to
bounce their blindingly obvious thoughts off and end up monologing
themselves – and us – to death. Imagine a historical novel of the
future set in Obama’s USA where every time a character thought about
Obama they had to recap his being the first black US president. Does
anyone think like this?
This is just info-dump. Clumsy exposition, if you will. The only way
this works is to have an outsider enter a culture so that all the
other characters have to explain things to them. Otherwise, the rule
of thumb is this, authors: if you can’t dramatise it then leave it
out.
2. Dear Author, did you do any actual, you know, research for this?
Everyone makes mistakes, but some mistakes are more equal than others.
Take the novel set in 1919 Berlin that gets it wrong by not realising
how many streets or public squares had different names back then.
You might accept that kind of slip, though this is less likely if
you’re the sort of historical fiction reader who likes to learn stuff
as well as being entertained. What no one would let slide is when the
same book goes on to claim it took 15 minutes by tram from the
Brandenburg Gate to Potsdamer Platz. Anyone who’s visited Berlin knows
that even an arthritic granny can walk it in less than 15 minutes.
You’re left wondering how much of the rest of the author’s research
you can trust when they’ve committed such basic errors.
3. Nice laundry list you’ve got there…
Lists. Bad historical fiction writers just love ‘em.
Take the famous serial killer novel set in 1950s Russia, in which we
get a solid few pages listing all the ways the secret police used to
torture people. Yes this is interesting, but the historical novelist’s
job is to find out interesting stuff, absorb it and then dramatise it,
not regurgitate it over us like we’re chicks in a nest.
Was it asking the impossible to expect a scene in which some torture
occurred – perhaps even a scene in which the protagonist suffered a
few pangs of conscience at what he was a part of? Clearly it was, just
as it was too much to ask me not to dump that piece of crap in the
nearest charity shop bargain bin.
4. Wow, people in the past were so stupid! And so wrong about everything!
Yes, I know slavery is wrong and so, presumably, do you. But when
slavery actually happened, most people didn’t think this. Not in the
countries that carried it out, anyway. Harking on about how wrong
slavery was in a book featuring slavery is not helpful to anyone. In
case you hadn’t noticed, the trade was abolished some time ago.
Of more use is when a novelist tries to get inside the heads of their
characters to try and understand why they would do something that is
so alien to us. The modern age of slavery was also the age of
enlightenment. The Romans gave us the foundations of modern
engineering while they were clapping people in irons. And, frankly,
modern free market capitalism feeds sweat shops in the developing
world, so let’s take a look at our own time, authors, before we judge
others, shall we?
5. Stop telling me what to think!
A variation on the last point, the problem here is when the author
doesn’t give us credit for having our own opinions. For example the
novel which mentioned Reinhard Heydrich as one of the chief architects
of the Nazi holocaust of the Jews in WWII. This novel made a point of
its protagonist reminding us what an evil man this Heydrich was. Look
buddy, I can see that without you going on about it. And if I can’t
see that already then you telling me is unlikely to sway me, ok?
So there you have them, my top five reasons why so many historical
crime novels with great potential end up being terrible. It’s a shame,
but there are some terrific authors out there who avoid these mistakes
and give us great work all the time.
So who's your favourite author of historical crime? And do you think there are any more common errors I've missed out? Feel free to leave a comment.
especially if there’s crime involved in the story somewhere. I’m
ready. I’m ripe. I’m aching to like it.
Why then are there so few historical novels that satisfy?
Why, if I’m being blunt, are so many of them so damned awful?
1. Hello old friend, let’s have a conversion in which we tell each
other things we already know as though one of us has amnesia
Characters talk about why Henry VIII has been having such trouble with
Catherine of Aragon, and why that means he wants to divorce her and
marry again. But did you know that the Pope won’t stand for any talk
of divorce? Yes of course I bloody well knew that – I live in a
still-Catholic England where the teachings of the Church have been
drummed into me since the day I was born!
A variation on the theme is where characters don’t have others to
bounce their blindingly obvious thoughts off and end up monologing
themselves – and us – to death. Imagine a historical novel of the
future set in Obama’s USA where every time a character thought about
Obama they had to recap his being the first black US president. Does
anyone think like this?
This is just info-dump. Clumsy exposition, if you will. The only way
this works is to have an outsider enter a culture so that all the
other characters have to explain things to them. Otherwise, the rule
of thumb is this, authors: if you can’t dramatise it then leave it
out.
2. Dear Author, did you do any actual, you know, research for this?
Everyone makes mistakes, but some mistakes are more equal than others.
Take the novel set in 1919 Berlin that gets it wrong by not realising
how many streets or public squares had different names back then.
You might accept that kind of slip, though this is less likely if
you’re the sort of historical fiction reader who likes to learn stuff
as well as being entertained. What no one would let slide is when the
same book goes on to claim it took 15 minutes by tram from the
Brandenburg Gate to Potsdamer Platz. Anyone who’s visited Berlin knows
that even an arthritic granny can walk it in less than 15 minutes.
You’re left wondering how much of the rest of the author’s research
you can trust when they’ve committed such basic errors.
3. Nice laundry list you’ve got there…
Lists. Bad historical fiction writers just love ‘em.
Take the famous serial killer novel set in 1950s Russia, in which we
get a solid few pages listing all the ways the secret police used to
torture people. Yes this is interesting, but the historical novelist’s
job is to find out interesting stuff, absorb it and then dramatise it,
not regurgitate it over us like we’re chicks in a nest.
Was it asking the impossible to expect a scene in which some torture
occurred – perhaps even a scene in which the protagonist suffered a
few pangs of conscience at what he was a part of? Clearly it was, just
as it was too much to ask me not to dump that piece of crap in the
nearest charity shop bargain bin.
4. Wow, people in the past were so stupid! And so wrong about everything!
Yes, I know slavery is wrong and so, presumably, do you. But when
slavery actually happened, most people didn’t think this. Not in the
countries that carried it out, anyway. Harking on about how wrong
slavery was in a book featuring slavery is not helpful to anyone. In
case you hadn’t noticed, the trade was abolished some time ago.
Of more use is when a novelist tries to get inside the heads of their
characters to try and understand why they would do something that is
so alien to us. The modern age of slavery was also the age of
enlightenment. The Romans gave us the foundations of modern
engineering while they were clapping people in irons. And, frankly,
modern free market capitalism feeds sweat shops in the developing
world, so let’s take a look at our own time, authors, before we judge
others, shall we?
5. Stop telling me what to think!
A variation on the last point, the problem here is when the author
doesn’t give us credit for having our own opinions. For example the
novel which mentioned Reinhard Heydrich as one of the chief architects
of the Nazi holocaust of the Jews in WWII. This novel made a point of
its protagonist reminding us what an evil man this Heydrich was. Look
buddy, I can see that without you going on about it. And if I can’t
see that already then you telling me is unlikely to sway me, ok?
So there you have them, my top five reasons why so many historical
crime novels with great potential end up being terrible. It’s a shame,
but there are some terrific authors out there who avoid these mistakes
and give us great work all the time.
So who's your favourite author of historical crime? And do you think there are any more common errors I've missed out? Feel free to leave a comment.
December 14, 2011
Why campaigners are wrong to ask the British government to abolish tax on ebooks
The current British tax on ebooks is so unpopular that this online petition calling on the government to abolish it has close to 4000 signatures: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petit....
But these campaigners are wrong.
Don’t misunderstand me. Forcing readers to pay 20% VAT on ebooks is unfair, and, as regular readers of my posterous blog know, I’ve gone on record at the New York Times to say so: http://goo.gl/E09re. The thing is, petitioning the British government won’t work because the government cannot abolish the tax.
Don’t you think it would have done so already if it could? Look at Amazon, which has about 85% of the UK ebook market. Amazon.co.uk is tax registered in Luxembourg, where the VAT is lower, at 15%. This means that roughly 85% of all potential tax revenue from British ebook sales currently goes to Luxembourg. You think this is something the government wants?
Of course not. But the government’s hands are tied. All because it is bound by European Union law, which says that EU member states must charge VAT on ebooks.
Not only that, but each country must also charge their standard rate of VAT – which in Britain means 20%. As pointed out in this article http://goo.gl/GPZxZ, this means that ebook readers will pay £12.99 for the digital version of Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs while hardback readers will pay just £10.77.
A crazy situation. But, if petitioning the government to abolish the tax won’t work – and it won’t – then what can campaigners do?
The short answer is that we must look to Europe. From January 2012, France will reduce its VAT on ebooks to 5.5% - the same rate it charges on printed books. In theory, France risks a fine from the European Commission for doing this. However, the Commission is already discussing the possibility of reclassifying ebooks so that they will no longer be taxable at the standard rate, as mentioned on the website of the European Federation of Publishers: http://www.fep-fee.be/.
In a speech on 21 November, Neelie Kroes, the European commissioner for the digital agenda, called for VAT on ebooks to be reduced, saying: “Isn't it just common sense to think that ebooks should benefit from the same reduced VAT rates as physical books?
“The legal regime – the EU's own, I admit – makes it illegal to do that. Personally, I find this very difficult to explain.”
This looks positive, but be warned: Ms Kroes is not leading the debate on the relevant laws. Instead, that job falls to taxation commissioner Algirdas Semeta. His priority, as detailed in the Commission’s consultation document here http://goo.gl/ysQlh, is not to grant VAT exemptions but to abolish them. This could even make things worse than they are now by threatening Britain’s current VAT exemption on printed books.
For any campaigners serious about closing the ebooks VAT gap, now is the time to act. But lobbying the British government to abolish the tax is useless.
Instead, we should petition the government to support VAT exemptions for ebooks at the EU level. Or the other option is to see whether France avoids censure from the Commission for lowering its VAT rate. If it does, then there would be mileage in petitioning the UK to do the same.
Meanwhile, we should talk to the European Federation of Publishers, a group that exists purely to lobby on issues like this, which appears to support such a change (see the link above). Lastly, we should also contact our local MEPs, most of whom will be more than happy to at least acknowledge our concerns. You can find an MEP local to you by going here: http://goo.gl/AY8M7 (click on the tab marked ‘Country’ to search for MEPs by region).
So, let’s stop directing all this fire at the wrong target and set our sights higher. That’s the only way anything is going to change for the better.
But these campaigners are wrong.
Don’t misunderstand me. Forcing readers to pay 20% VAT on ebooks is unfair, and, as regular readers of my posterous blog know, I’ve gone on record at the New York Times to say so: http://goo.gl/E09re. The thing is, petitioning the British government won’t work because the government cannot abolish the tax.
Don’t you think it would have done so already if it could? Look at Amazon, which has about 85% of the UK ebook market. Amazon.co.uk is tax registered in Luxembourg, where the VAT is lower, at 15%. This means that roughly 85% of all potential tax revenue from British ebook sales currently goes to Luxembourg. You think this is something the government wants?
Of course not. But the government’s hands are tied. All because it is bound by European Union law, which says that EU member states must charge VAT on ebooks.
Not only that, but each country must also charge their standard rate of VAT – which in Britain means 20%. As pointed out in this article http://goo.gl/GPZxZ, this means that ebook readers will pay £12.99 for the digital version of Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs while hardback readers will pay just £10.77.
A crazy situation. But, if petitioning the government to abolish the tax won’t work – and it won’t – then what can campaigners do?
The short answer is that we must look to Europe. From January 2012, France will reduce its VAT on ebooks to 5.5% - the same rate it charges on printed books. In theory, France risks a fine from the European Commission for doing this. However, the Commission is already discussing the possibility of reclassifying ebooks so that they will no longer be taxable at the standard rate, as mentioned on the website of the European Federation of Publishers: http://www.fep-fee.be/.
In a speech on 21 November, Neelie Kroes, the European commissioner for the digital agenda, called for VAT on ebooks to be reduced, saying: “Isn't it just common sense to think that ebooks should benefit from the same reduced VAT rates as physical books?
“The legal regime – the EU's own, I admit – makes it illegal to do that. Personally, I find this very difficult to explain.”
This looks positive, but be warned: Ms Kroes is not leading the debate on the relevant laws. Instead, that job falls to taxation commissioner Algirdas Semeta. His priority, as detailed in the Commission’s consultation document here http://goo.gl/ysQlh, is not to grant VAT exemptions but to abolish them. This could even make things worse than they are now by threatening Britain’s current VAT exemption on printed books.
For any campaigners serious about closing the ebooks VAT gap, now is the time to act. But lobbying the British government to abolish the tax is useless.
Instead, we should petition the government to support VAT exemptions for ebooks at the EU level. Or the other option is to see whether France avoids censure from the Commission for lowering its VAT rate. If it does, then there would be mileage in petitioning the UK to do the same.
Meanwhile, we should talk to the European Federation of Publishers, a group that exists purely to lobby on issues like this, which appears to support such a change (see the link above). Lastly, we should also contact our local MEPs, most of whom will be more than happy to at least acknowledge our concerns. You can find an MEP local to you by going here: http://goo.gl/AY8M7 (click on the tab marked ‘Country’ to search for MEPs by region).
So, let’s stop directing all this fire at the wrong target and set our sights higher. That’s the only way anything is going to change for the better.
