Neue Freie Presse
- The Secrets of the Feme Murder
- Mussolini on the Assassination Attempt
- Berlin Autumn Days
This front page of the Neue Freie Presse for 11 November 1926 led with a correspondent's report on the Feme murder trial at Landsberg an der Warthe. The paper said it was the first such trial held fully in public, and the first to shed some light on the so-called Black Reichswehr. An interview with Mussolini had him describing the latest attempt on his life: he said he recognized the weapon by its sound as an army Beretta pistol, credited a mystical power with protecting him, and named Julius Caesar, whose bust stood above his desk, as his model. Kurt Münzer's Berlin column described Berliners driven home from the coasts and the Alps by rain and cold, returning to a city of golden autumn sunshine.
Translation
The Secrets of the Feme Murder
All over Germany, people have followed with intense attention the Feme murder trial held before the Grand Lay Assessors' Court (which in Germany has taken the place of the jury court) in the Brandenburg town of Landsberg an der Warthe. In the Feme murder trials so far, the courts had excluded the public, even when the government had submitted opinions stating that secrecy was not necessary in the interest of the welfare of the state. The court of the small town of Landsberg in the Mark has for the first time had the courage to conduct a Feme murder trial in full public view, and for the first time some light has fallen on the so-called “Black Reichswehr”.
Mussolini on the Assassination Attempt
Asked what he had felt at the moment of the attempt, the Duce said: “[?] meant it in bitter earnest. When I heard the bang, I recognized that it was a weapon of war, and indeed the Beretta pistol in use in the Italian army. Surely some mystical power protects me from the hands of murderers.” When asked whether he believed that perhaps a saint was protecting him, Mussolini smiled and, nodding his head, said: “Perhaps, perhaps. But I shall live until I have completed my work. We are repeating the history of the Roman Caesars. My great model is Julius Caesar. I always have his bust before me.” With these words he pointed to the bust of Caesar above his desk.
Berlin Autumn Days
The sun shone steadily, with all the bliss it had saved up through a whole summer. Blue and gold, glow and fragrance broke over the city. And they came home, the Berliners; rain and cold drove them from the coasts and the Alpine meadows. The cars with wardrobe trunks and yellow-leather suitcases sped from the Stettiner and the Anhalter station down into the West.
Context
What the “Black Reichswehr” on trial at Landsberg actually was
The Landsberg report says the trial for the first time cast “some light” on the so-called Black Reichswehr. The name referred to an extra-legal formation concealed inside the German army: to get around the manpower limits of the Treaty of Versailles, General Hans von Seeckt created it in the form of purportedly civilian labour battalions (Arbeitskommandos) attached to regular Reichswehr units. The Reichswehr and Defence Minister Otto Gessler publicly denied that it existed. Inside the organization, Oberleutnant Paul Schulz oversaw what was called Feme justice, which usually meant quick and secret murders of men suspected of betraying its secrets. A Feme murder trial therefore concerned not only individual killers but a clandestine structure that the government officially disowned. That context helps explain the paper's emphasis on the earlier closed hearings and on the Landsberg court's “courage” in sitting in public, though the claim that this was the first public Feme trial is the paper's own.
How the killings reached the courts and what the trials exposed
The Feme killings became public knowledge in 1925, when Carl Mertens, a former member of the Black Reichswehr, revealed many of the group's activities, including the murders, to the magazine Die Weltbühne. In the courtroom, counsel went further and alleged that the murders had been carried out on the orders of Reichswehr leaders, including Fedor von Bock, Kurt von Schleicher and even Seeckt; whether or not those allegations were true, press coverage of the trials revealed a considerable amount of secret information about the Black Reichswehr. Seeckt, unlike the official denials, wrote to the court admitting that such a group had existed and defending both its necessity and its secrecy. The cumulative revelations about the Black Reichswehr led to the fall of Wilhelm Marx's government at the end of 1926, only weeks after this report. The Neue Freie Presse article thus captures the moment when a hidden military issue was turning into a national political crisis in Germany.
What became of Paul Schulz and the other accused
The excerpt does not name the Landsberg defendants, and the best-known verdict came later. On 26 March 1927, more than four months after this report, Paul Schulz was sentenced to death for inciting the murder of Black Reichswehr Sergeant Walter Wilms; First Lieutenant Fritz Fuhrmann and Sergeant Erich Klapproth, who carried out the killing, were also sentenced to death. President Paul von Hindenburg commuted all three sentences to life imprisonment in February 1928, and a political amnesty in October 1930 freed Schulz, who joined the Nazi Party on 24 October 1930. This outcome fits a wider pattern: investigations of Feme crimes were slow, identified killers often received lighter sentences or acquittals, and some Germans who exposed the killings were themselves convicted of insulting the military. The openness the paper celebrated in November 1926 did not, in the end, lead to lasting punishment.
Which attempt on his life Mussolini was describing
Mussolini faced three attacks in 1926. On 7 April Violet Gibson fired a pistol at him and grazed his nose; on 11 September the anarchist marble worker Gino Lucetti threw a bomb at his car at Porta Pia in Rome; and on 31 October a shot was fired at him as he rode in an open car through Bologna, after which a 15-year-old boy, Anteo Zamboni, was lynched. The excerpt does not name the incident, but its date and the description of a single gunshot make the Bologna attack, eleven days earlier, the most likely subject. That episode remains murky: the terrorism scholar J. Bowyer Bell judged the boy probably innocent and the affair either a put-up job or a plot among Fascists. Mussolini's confident identification of an army Beretta and his talk of a protecting mystical power are therefore his own account of a contested event, not an established description of it.
How the regime used the attacks to tighten its grip
The interview appeared while the Fascist regime was converting assassination attempts into repressive law. Tito Zaniboni, a former Socialist deputy, was arrested on 4 November 1925 for plotting to shoot Mussolini, and historians believe the plot was engineered by Mussolini's administration as a pretext to consolidate power; laws enacted in late 1925 then allowed the suppression of any opposition political organization. The Bologna attempt of 31 October 1926 led to laws creating Mussolini's secret police, and the Special Tribunal for the Defence of the State was set up through the Leggi fascistissime, the package that consolidated the totalitarian regime. Against that background, Mussolini's remarks about living until his work was done and repeating the history of the Roman Caesars read as part of the personal myth that accompanied the dismantling of legal opposition in Italy.
Original
Die Geheimnisse des Fememordes.
Mit angespannter Aufmerksamkeit hat man in ganz Deutschland den Fememordprozeß verfolgt, der vor dem Großen Schöffengericht (das in Deutschland an Stelle des Schwurgerichtes getreten ist) in der brandenburgischen Stadt Landsberg an der Warthe geführt worden ist. In den bisherigen Fememordprozessen hatten die Gerichte die Oeffentlichkeit ausgeschlossen, auch dann, wenn Gutachten der Regierung vorlagen, daß die Geheimhaltung im Interesse des Staatswohles nicht erforderlich sei. Das Gericht der märkischen Kleinstadt Landsberg hat zum erstenmal den Mut gehabt, einen Fememordprozeß in voller Oeffentlichkeit durchzuführen, und zum erstenmal ist einiges Licht auf die sogenannte " Schwarze Reichswehr " gefallen.
Mussolini über das Attentat.
Auf die Frage, was er im Moment des Attentats empfunden habe, sagte der Duce: " [?] meinte es bitter ernst. Als ich den Knall hörte, erkannte ich, daß es sich um eine Kriegswaffe, und zwar um die in der italienischen Armee gebräuchliche Berettapistole handle. Sicherlich bewahrt mich irgendeine mystische Macht vor Mörberhänden. " Bei der Frage, ob er glaube, daß vielleicht ein Heiliger ihn schütze, lächelte Mussolini und mit dem Kopfe nickend, sagte er: " Vielleicht, vielleicht. Aber ich werde leben, bis ich mein Werk vollendet habe. Wir wiederholen die Geschichte der römischen Cäsaren. Mein großes Vorbild ist Julius Cäsar. Seine Büste habe ich immer vor mir. " Bei diesen Worten zeigte er auf die Büste Cäsars über seinem Schreibtisch.
Berliner Herbsttage.
Fest schien die Sonne mit der ganzen Seligkeit, die sie einen Sommer lang aufgespart hatte. Es brach Blau und Gold, Glut und Duft über die Stadt. Und sie kehrten heim, die Berliner, Regen und Kälte vertrieb sie von den Küsten und Alpenwiesen. Die Autos mit Schrankkoffern und gelbledernen Suitcases sausten vom Stettiner und Anhalter in den Westen hinab.