It was one of the most brutal yet devious murders that the Berlin police had ever seen. Olschansky, a Frenchman, had prepared by renting out a small room on a street that was virtually devoid of other lodgers. He then wired himself one hundred marks (about $25), which were delivered by a class of German postmen called “Geld-brief,” because their entire job was to deliver money that had been sent through the mail. Consequently, they often carried large sums of cash.
Olschansky’s room was on the top floor. When the postman arrived that Monday morning, he found nothing unusual. The tenant was seated, enjoying his morning lunch, typically consumed at ten A.M., of bottled beer and sandwiches. The Frenchman politely offered the postman a beer, but tellingly gave him no glass. Compelled to drink straight from the bottle, the postman took a swig. Olschansky took a swing. He used a heavy board and drove the bottle halfway down the German’s throat. Too stunned to put up any resistance, the postman was finished off by some fifteen blows to the head.
Olschansky’s first mistake was in paying for the beer, which he had obtained on credit. When the Frenchman came to him to settle up the debt, the merchant noticed the dried bloodstains on the Frenchman’s shirt cuff. His second mistake was in using the shiny gold twenty-mark piece that had just been delivered to him. When he was finally tracked down and arrested, the German police found two lock-picks among Olschansky’s effects, which was how Houdini wound up in Olschansky’s cell at the police presidium the next morning.
Olschansky didn’t say much to Houdini. He was clever enough to know that before his trial for murder, it wouldn’t redound to his credit to admit that he had been using the picks to break into locked churches to raid their collection boxes. After his execution, Houdini did manage to obtain the picks from the police and found that one of the picks enabled him to open any church door in Germany that wasn’t secured with a padlock. The other key was a kind of master key for safes that utilized Bramah locks.
For a vaudeville performer, Houdini seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time and have unprecedented access at the Berlin police station. Even though his accounts suggest that his presence there was a mere coincidence, it is clear that Houdini was being utilized by the upper strata of the German police. During the same period when he interrogated Olschansky in his cell, a clever burglar went on trial. Not only did Houdini attend the trial but also, “after I had given my police performance, I was brought to him, as he had a notorious reputation as a lock picker.” Houdini went on to have many interviews with him “…and finally he gave me the lock picker and told me how he concealed it. I handed it to the police, who allowed me to keep it.” Houdini didn’t reveal what information or techniques he traded to the authorities for their generous gifts and access to convicted criminals.
In his 1906 book, The Right Way to Do Wrong, Houdini described serving as a liaison between the IACP in the United States and the top German police brass. While in Germany, Houdini had a copy with him of Our Rival the Rascal, a book written by his friend Chief Inspector William B. Watts of the Boston police force. The book contained many interesting photographs and case histories of leading criminals. Chief Watts was a member of the IACP and a crusader for international police cooperation in dealing with threats to world order from both anarchists and habitual criminals. “This book is the greatest book on the subject that I have ever seen,” Houdini enthused. “I happened to have a copy with me in Berlin, when the royal police, hearing that I had the book in the country, asked me as a favor to allow them to make extracts and photograph some of the famous criminals in the book. This I allowed them to do, and in return they handed me several photos of well-known criminals to send to Chief Inspector, Wm. B. Watts.”
On June 1, 1901, Watts sent Houdini a letter, thanking him for his letter “and other communications.” He reminded Houdini that when the magician left the United States, “I believed you would make a success of your trip,” and sent his kindest regards to his “better half.” To the titles of Handcuff King, Jailbreaker, and Master of Manacles, we now must add Courier for International Police Cooperation.
Houdini’s schedule seemed to be exacting a heavy toll on him. By December of 1900, despite protests from his German promoters who wanted to hold him over, he returned to England to fulfill his Alhambra contracts. After spending two months there, he returned to Germany. By the end of March, he wrote Dr. Waitt, “My nerves are all run down, and I am not well as the perpetual worry and excitement is beginning to tell on me.” By June word of Houdini’s stress had reached other friends back in the States. “I heard that you don’t laugh anymore. Neither do I…What seems to be the matter with us?” Gus Roterberg wrote.
Regardless of his run-down nerves, Houdini kept up his grueling schedule. Since his return to Germany, he had toured Leipzig, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, and Hamburg. On May 6, he started a three-week engagement in Essen Ruhr. Houdini was such a hit that the front doors and a side wall of the venerable Colosseum were removed to add extra seats. Despite selling standing room and even putting chairs on the stage, hundreds of people were turned away.
Essen Ruhr was important in another respect. It was the home of Krupp Works, Germany’s largest munitions manufacturers, a company that turned Essen from a sleepy village to a thriving city of more than 100,000, most of them dependent on the large munitions company. Krupp was known for secrecy and very few American iron and steel industry visitors had been allowed to tour the foundry, but under the guise of assessing a challenge from the Krupp workers, Houdini was able to visit and inspect the munitions factory. In fact, the Colosseum eventually hosted a Krupp night, where Krupp workers bought out the entire theater to see Houdini come up against the finest in German technology. Initially the Krupp representatives had proposed that Houdini enter a huge cannon, the mouth of which they would heat and close with a giant press. He declined that challenge but consented to try to escape from handcuffs designed by the Krupp master machinists. It took them twenty minutes to lock the cuffs on Houdini. In thirty minutes he was free, but he paid a price.
“The cuff used was a kind of an arrangement that screwed to fit the hand,” Houdini wrote Dr. Waitt. “And the Krupp man screwed it down until it touched the bone, and imigane [sic] the pain it caused me. The Krupp man has maimed my right hand so that I am unable to work, and it will be a week or so before I can have a cuff locked on me…I was in that dam (excuse the dam but I said worse than that)…I was in that cuff half of an hour and it seemed like an eternity.”
Houdini had some other unusual experiences in Essen Ruhr. He met with a man named Goldschmidt, who had invented a “terrible compound” named thermite that could be utilized to burn a hole through a safe without destroying its contents. Goldschmidt’s compound was a mixture of aluminum filings and iron oxide, which, when ignited, burned at the amazing temperature of three thousand degrees Celsius. Houdini noted that he was in Berlin when Goldschmidt performed his first test on a safe. He didn’t explain why a stage escape artist would be at such a demonstration.
The palm garden salon was the most luxurious room in all of Budapest. It was adorned with graceful fountains, verdant palms, wonderful complex tapestries, and, of course, gilded rococo chairs and lounges. It was a setting fit for a queen. And tonight, there was one in attendance. The queen’s dress had been custom-made in a small London shop. It was originally made for Queen Victoria, but she had died on January 22, 1901, and so it hung forlornly in the shop window. Until Houdini saw it. He marched into the shop and offered to buy it. At first, the owner was shocked that someone had the impudence to buy the queen’s dress. When Houdini told him that the gown was for his mother, and that he planned to bring her to Europe from America and throw a gala reception for her in her old hometown, the shopkeeper relented. After what must have been severe alterations, he sold the gown to Houdini for fifty pounds with the proviso that it never be worn in the United Kingdom.
Houdini and Bess with his mother. Note Mama Weiss’s pendant.Library of Congress
; And there was Cecilia Weiss, resplendent in her finery, thrilled by her son’s fanciful story of her dress’s royal origin, greeting nearly everyone who had ever known either Rabbi Weiss or her back in Budapest. Houdini took the greatest pleasure in seeing his mother’s uncle Heller, the snob of the family, who had boycotted Cecilia’s wedding to Mayer Samuel in protest. This would show him what the union of those two could produce. “How my heart warmed to see the various friends and relatives kneel and pay homage to my mother, every inch a queen, as she sat enthroned in her heavily carved and gilded chair,” Houdini would write with glee. That night Houdini and his mother stayed up all night, recounting every detail of the party. The next day, he “escorted the Fairy Queen Mother” to her ship and her voyage home.
Houdini stayed. And why not? He was a resounding success. His mother had arrived in Germany at the end of May, just in time to see her son presented with a solid silver bowl inlaid with more than six hundred marks in silver coins in recognition of his astounding box office success. A month later, he decided to fire Martin Beck, his U.S. manager; after all, Houdini had been handling his affairs on his own since he had come to Europe. Now he took on the additional burden of acting as agent for his old friends, the acrobat Jim Bard and Alexander Weyer, the strong man. Houdini wrote Bard several times a week, giving him advice, reporting on progress getting him bookings, and generally bolstering his friend’s spirits. “Dont you worry that any one can knock you now,” he wrote Bard on September 15, 1901. “As you have Houdini boosting you, and today ther[e] is no better known act in Europe. I have ennimies [sic] by the score…but so far I am not afraid of them.”
Immediately after his mother’s departure, Houdini toured as the feature act of the Corty-Althoff Circus. They played Dortmund, Osnabrück, and Cologne. After taking a much needed rest in August, Houdini played Prague in September before returning to Germany to perform in Hanover. It was there that he was challenged by Count von Schwerin, the chief of police. Houdini managed to escape from police manacles at the station, but then the count had his men lace Houdini into a straitjacket. It was used to secure violent prisoners, so it had been constructed from heavy canvas reinforced with thick leather. It took Houdini one hour and twenty-nine minutes to get free, and the ordeal left him bruised and battered, with his clothes in tatters. “The pain, torture, agony, and misery of that struggle will live forever in my mind,” he wrote in his diary. It must have made a big impression, for Count von Schwerin’s name found its way into Melville’s diary too.
Regardless of the pain, Houdini’s act was an unmitigated success in every country he visited. Part of his appeal was that he tried to perform in the audience’s native tongues, a tactic that he learned from Robert-Houdin’s account of the Italian conjurer Bosco’s endearing use of broken French. “I get through with my talk in my act better than I ever thought that I would, and it must be funny, as they laugh, as if I were doing a monologue act,” Houdini wrote Dr. Waitt. But he was also cognizant of the deeper, underlying appeal of his performance. “It does seem strange that the people over here, especially Germany, France, Saxony, and Bohemia fear the Police so much, in fact the Police are all Mighty,” he wrote Waitt a month later. “I am the first man that has ever dared them, that is my success.” His bravado was a bluff. He had just finished drawing up his first will.
“Your honor, I have no objections to showing the commissioners how I work my trick. But would it be possible for us to do this in a corner of the room to preserve my secrets?”
Revealing his secrets was the last thing that Houdini wanted. Reluctantly, he stood up in the courtroom on February 21 and allowed Lott, a civilian police employee of the Cologne department, to truss his body with a long chain and then fasten it with a lock. Lott then stepped back, but Houdini just stood there motionless.
The judges thought that was a reasonable request, so they followed as Houdini slowly and stiffly made his way into the far corner of the courtroom. Then, surrounding Houdini, they watched as the magician went to work. A few minutes later, the lock was open, and the chain fell to the floor.
Although this reads like a ploy by Houdini to defend himself in a case brought against him by the German authorities, in fact Houdini was the plaintiff in this bizarre case. He was suing the German police and a Cologne newspaper for slander. Back on July 25, 1901 an article had appeared under the title of “The Exposure of Houdini” in the Rheinische Zeitung newspaper. According to Houdini’s later accounts, the article maintained that a Cologne patrolman (the lowest rank on the force) named Werner Graff was so upset at Houdini’s ability to escape from Graff ’s lock, which had been “deadened” so that it couldn’t open even with a key, that the policemen alleged that Houdini was a charlatan who misrepresented his talents and “swindled” the German public. In fact, the allegations were much more damaging than that.
According to Graff, Houdini, through another escape artist named Josephi, had heard that Graff had a handmade lock that was said to be impregnable. When Houdini got to Cologne, he wrote Graff and asked if Graff would agree to let him test it. Then Houdini visited the police department and pulled Graff aside for a private conversation. He told Graff that he intended to give a demonstration at the police department, and he wanted Graff to lock him up. Houdini would perform this test nude, and after being bound by his hands and feet, he would be carried into an empty room, where he would affect his escape. What he needed from Graff was a duplicate key, which he would hide in his anus. As a gesture of goodwill, Houdini, according to Graff, offered him twenty marks at first, but claimed that if this stunt was pulled off successfully they “both could make a lot of money.”
Graff maintained that he turned Houdini down. Then, on the last night of Houdini’s engagement in Cologne, he challenged Houdini onstage to escape from his lock and chain. Graff claimed Houdini told him that if he locked him so that he couldn’t escape, his reputation would be ruined, since a circus clown at the Circus Sidoli had already exposed the way his Metamorphosis trunk worked. Graff insisted on the lock test, so Houdini then “fell on his knees and begged” the civilian employee Lott to give him a duplicate chain. Lott furnished a duplicate chain for twenty marks, and Houdini retired to his cabinet where he filed through the chain and removed Graff ’s lock. Then, leaving the sheared original chain in his cabinet, he triumphantly emerged, holding the duplicate chain and original lock. The “innocent public cried ‘Bravo!’” not knowing that they were duped.
Houdini’s story was different. He claimed that he had been turned down by the Cologne Police Department when he wanted to give a performance there and that the conversation with Graff never took place. In fact, it was Graff who challenged Houdini to escape from his lock, but Lott had warned him not to accept the challenge since Graff planned to switch locks and fetter him with a dead lock. The night of the performance, Bess tipped Houdini that Graff had switched the lock. Thinking quickly onstage, Houdini asked Graff to reopen the lock and make the chains a little less tight, but Graff protested that he couldn’t since he had misplaced the key.
“I think I have the right to get free however I can,” Houdini then proclaimed to the audience and withdrew into his cabinet, where he broke the lock. After the show, he sought out Lott and, appreciative for the tip about Graff, told him, “You’re a good guy. May I give you a little something?” Then he tipped him twenty marks.
Graff ’s account raises two interesting questions. Would Houdini be so bold as to offer a bribe to a police official in exchange for confederacy in an escape attempt? According to Tommy Downs, the great coin manipulator whose amazing sleight of hand made it seem like he snatched gold coins out of thin air, Houdini once told him, “You don’t realize how easy you get your salary. You almost catch it out of the air…I have to work early and late, day and night…If I find a lock or a jail I can’t spiritualize, I must fix or arrange a way out.” Downs added, “He had to fight every inch of his way.”
A depiction of Houdini’s trial in Germany.Nielson M
agic Poster Gallery
Houdini had even told friends that since “our Police are not in the best of repute in Europe, especially with our American methods of Graft,” his endorsements from the American police forces never impressed the European police, and eventually he “cut them out.”
Granted Houdini might give a cooperative cop “a little something,” the important question that emerges from this account is why didn’t the German authorities press charges against Houdini in July of 1901 after a German officer went public with a bribe attempt? This is the same government that jailed Mrs. Rothe, the flower medium, for two years for misrepresenting her ability to contact the dead, and prosecuted Dr. Slade, another medium, and a woman who claimed magnetic powers. Certainly attempting to bribe a public official would generate even harsher reprisals.
The idea that Houdini was in some way being looked out for by a sympathetic official in the German government gains credence when we look at the testimony at the slander trial. In a lot of respects, the charges and counter-charges boil down to one word against the other, but part of the case revolved around the attempts of Josephi, the other escape artist, to negotiate a larger bribe for Graff to remain silent after the show concluded. According to sworn testimony by both Graff and Lott, Josephi floated the idea that if Houdini would have offered three hundred or four hundred marks, the whole matter might take a different course. At that point, they claim that Josephi stated that it had cost Houdini at least one thousand marks to bribe the officers of the Berlin police to issue his certificate.
The Secret Life of Houdini Page 14