Cold Angel: Murder in Berlin 1949

by Horst Bosetzky

  “Be careful out there at night. There’s that man, you know… You don’t want to end up in little pieces somewhere in the ruins,” Herta said.

  8.

  Gregor Göltzsch intended to make some headway in his inventory between closing time and midnight but he kept getting side-tracked. The ads for ladies’ underwear on his magazine rack kept beckoning at him. What drew him even more was a slightly yellowing copy of Stern Magazine featuring an article on the Ladies of Celle. During the blockade some 3000 women in the little city of Celle on the Aller river had offered their services to the GI’s. “Here’s to life, here’s to love…” For the American pilots, gin, cigarettes, chocolate and 1500 Marks every month were a very good reason to have a great time before they had to climb back into the Skymasters and fly over the blockaded city on the front the next morning. “It’s a very risky job. Come on, baby …”

  Göltzsch opened his secret wall cabinet and beamed at the bundles of banknotes that he kept stashed there. There was a thousand times enough to go to a bar and get himself the most expensive girl in Berlin. “Damn it, I need it again.” He needed it first for medical reasons, to avoid cancer. His testicles hurt and since he had a constant erection his penis was raw and red from rubbing against the rough material of his jocks. He would not satisfy himself. Impossible. His mother had beaten him too many times when he was a child and she discovered a stain on his night shirt or the bed sheets. Whenever he thought of those days he lost all sexual desire. If he masturbated he would damage his spinal cord. A man had to dispose of his seed in the natural way, in bed with his wife. But what can you do when your wife has been lying in the hospital for weeks trying to keep her baby? It wasn’t true of course what the boys used to tell each other at school, that if your semen didn’t flow down then it swam up your body to destroy your brain, and yet… In his mind’s eye, Gregor Gölztsch saw it do just that. When an old friend called him up he brought up the subject. “Helga is fine but I’m suffering from semen madness.” The kind of reasonable advice he got, such as taking cold showers or putting bromide in his food, wasn’t very helpful and going to the movies made matters worse since there were no films without women. So he immersed himself in his work again.

  A tram drove by on Kantstrasse with an ad for his own company just under the edge of the roof: “GG Furniture: a Great Idea.” The ad was worth it because people had slowly started buying again. Even in Berlin. The new Deutsch Mark made it possible. Even though the scramble for food was not yet over people had started thinking about refurbishing their homes again. So demand was incredibly high. Sofas and chairs were especially sought after. And if someone had been bombed out they probably lived with furniture that belonged in a museum or should be thrown to the fire. Things were really picking up, people could believe in the economic miracle. Soon new construction would be sprouting from the ground like mushrooms and people who now were still living in furnished rooms would need new closets, chests of drawers, tables, chairs and living room furniture for their new homes. Göltzsch knew that the next few years would be golden years. At least for him. But this knowledge was not going to solve his present problem; things down there… he just couldn’t control them.

  He got up, hoping that his hard on would vanish if he moved. But it didn’t, on the contrary. His accountant, a woman, had left a magazine with a full page ad from C&A Brenninkmeyer on top of the filing cabinet: Start in the Fall- Experience the pleasure of buying clothes. The ad featured a happy family – Father, Mother and Son taking a walk in the woods. Gregor Göltzsch pictured himself taking the woman’s coat off and discovering that she was naked underneath. At that point there was no way he could stop imagining the rest. The woman ran away and he followed her. They came to a back yard where an empty clothes line was stretched. He raised his arms up to it and dangled from it, then he ripped it down, took it with him and, as he walked on, formed it into a noose and coiled the line into a lasso. One throw and the woman was caught – she was his prisoner. As she turned he pulled on the noose and pushed into her from behind. His pleasure was matchless, extreme, beyond words. It made him cry out loud. Policemen moved in on him. He saw the titles in the newspapers: Furniture Salesman Sex Killer.

  He slapped himself on both sides of the head, right, left, trying to chase the images out. Sometimes he slapped himself across the ears. He must punish himself for thinking such unnatural thoughts. “You must turn away from this!” When he was alone for long periods he often talked to himself. It wasn’t a dialog, just orders he would give himself and his voice, at those times, sounded like his mother’s.

  Where had he put the book his wife had given him? “So that you have something to read during your evenings alone.” But he didn’t like reading books other than mysteries. It was on top of the record player cabinet. The Buchholz Family by Julius Stinde. Published in 1883 and very yellowed. Probably an heirloom or a rare book. He made a face. What he needed was Cleopatra or the story of some great courtesan.

  He went into the showroom where he would be so to speak in the eye of the public since the shade had not been pulled down yet. The hope was that people out for an evening walk might stop and take a look and be attracted by the furniture on display. But it was too cold to be strolling, people hurried by on their way to the streetcar stop at Zoo station. Nobody was interested in his shop window. Göltzsch settled down in an armchair where he could best look down Kantstrasse in the direction of the Zoo. Couples walked by and the women’s nylon clad legs shimmered in the light of the street lamps. He pictured the seams going up … the top of the stockings, then naked flesh, the garter belt… the panties… They were loose fitting and you could easily slide your fingers underneath… He closed his eyes so the vision would be brighter.

  When he opened them again there was a woman in front of the shop window and she was looking at him; she was probably wondering whether this was a man who had fallen asleep or a store manikin. Her scarf was blowing against her face. She pushed it back and tried to secure it behind her ears. Their eyes met. He felt jolted. In the light of the overhead lighting those eyes sparkled like shining twin stars against the dark firmament. As if she did not have a face… her eyes obliterated her face. He had seen that only with actresses when they stood at the front of the stage… with a few drops of belladonna in their eyes. Was the woman one of those actresses, was she on her way back from a performance? Was she still full of fire, searching for someone to have a drink with and slowly quell the excitement of the night’s performance? Or maybe she was just a costume lady with a high fever? He had to find out. He rushed to the door. The key was in the lock. She was already moving on and was just by the entrance to the store when he opened the door.

  He bowed slightly. “Good evening. Can I be of service?” She was somewhat taken aback. “But you must be closed already.”

  “For very special clients we stay open until midnight.”

  “I don’t have any money, I just wanted to…”

  Gregor Göltzsch was a good salesman, he could be as charming as any leading man in old UFA films.

  “But dear madam, you’ll have credit here. What would you like to surprise your dear husband with for Christmas?”

  “I don’t have a husband, I’m a war widow.”

  “Oh, forgive me”. Göltzsch could change his tune instantly and ooze sympathy like a professional funeral preacher at the cemetery chapel. “I’m so sorry. It must be so hard for you to take care of the children all alone…”

  “They’re in a children’s home.”

  Gregor Göltzsch now pulled out all the stops to win the woman with the scarf. “And you’re probably looking for a position. You’re in luck because right now I’m looking for a good saleslady.”

  “I’m a nurse.”

  “Too bad…” By now Göltzsch had sized her up. He liked her figure. He liked women who were strong, full of energy and crazy for men. The stories you heard about nurses! Surely this gal was just as man crazy as the others. Would she still
be standing here, would she have let him talk to her like this otherwise? No. This thought gave him the courage to make a decisive move.

  “It’s so cold outside. Why don’t you come in a little for a cup of coffee and you can tell me a little about yourself, your work at the hospital, your children…”

  “What are you thinking? I’m an honorable woman!”

  He doubted that: she wouldn’t be standing here if she was so honorable. Plus he could read the lines in her face and they spoke of many things: dissipation, sensuality, lust. His father had always warned him against such women: “Boy, these women will suck you dry and lead you to ruin, they always want more money and more money.” Well, if that were true there was only one kind of bait: money. So he leaned in a little closer. “I can see you’re in some kind of financial trouble. I could easily help you…”

  “I’m not a whore!” She left him standing there, turned the corner and walked quickly up Kantstrasse.

  Gregor Göltzsch took his coat off the peg, slipped it on, closed the store and followed her. Years before he had had the reputation of a ladies’ man and he believed he could tell instinctively when a woman was ripe for the taking. As for this one, he was absolutely sure. Her eyes had that telltale glint, her body yearned for a passionate embrace. “She wants it inside her.” He thought. “She needs it just as badly as I do.” He was fiercely determined not to let his prey get away. She probably had eighty meters lead on him. That wasn’t much. He could catch up with her just before Fasanenstrasse. And then…

  With every step he became a different man. Some dark force was gradually taking over and moving him now. There were no voices this time, no one speaking to him so he had no idea where this impulse was coming from that was now urging him on: ‘Catch her, go up to her room with her, throw her on the floor, choke her, take her, kill her! It will be the greatest pleasure you can have.’ He tried to defend himself. ‘I’m happily married, I’ll be a father in the new year and…’ In vain. “God help me, save me from myself!” he had a strict religious upbringing and so he hoped that God would make something happen to stop him: some ruins might crumble and block his way or an American jeep would stop and the MP would ask for his papers, or he might slip and break his wrist… But none of these things happened. As he grew closer his excitement grew…

  9.

  Albert Steinbock, a widower just turned 46, who hailed from Cottbus, was a policeman through and through. To his mind human beings required order to survive and they needed people who saw to it that this order was respected, people like himself, policemen. Policemen were just as important as doctors. Doctors fought illness and policeman fought crime. And crime was no different from illness, crimes were an illness of society. They must be extirpated. Without doctors and without policemen, things would go awry and that was why Albert Steinbock thought of himself as an extremely important and absolutely essential part of civilized society.

  That was why it hit him so hard when at the start of the year 1949 he lost the job he held in his hometown. In the Soviet occupied zone (SBZ) or GDR (German Democratic republic) they had started reorganizing the police and that meant that any policeman who had close family in the West or who happened to have landed in an American, British or French POW camp during the war, had to give up his job. Steinbock had a son and daughter-in-law in the West, in Berlin-Charlottenburg. Plus he was an old SPD (German Social Democratic Party) member and had refused the forced union of the party with the Communists. Belong to the SED (German Socialist Unity Party? Over my dead body. He was placed early on the list of those to be dismissed that the new regime had drawn up because in the early summer of 1948 he had refused to support the so-called ‘referendum’ of the SED “For Union and a Just Peace”. Still, he hadn’t expected them to throw someone as deserving and experienced as himself out on the street and it still surprised him. What to do now? Now that he wasn’t allowed to be a policeman anymore… “In that case, I’ll take my own life.” His son had screamed at him: “Father, don’t you see? It’s simple: pack up your things and come to our place.” That’s what Albert Steinbock had done, even though old trees can’t take root in new soil. Through contacts he had become a patrolman … in the West Berlin police. And now he had to prove himself, he wanted to but it wasn’t so easy.

  A bitter battle for power and influence had been playing itself out since 1948. Whereas the Western powers strove for a democratic police structure and wanted to resurrect the 1932 model, the police in the GDR was to be an instrument of power and had to be organized on a Stalinist, totally centralized model with a military type of command structure. For ordinary Berliners the two different police forces were quickly linked to the names of two men: Paul Markgraf for the Eastern structure, Dr. Johannes Stumm for the Western one. The East Berlin police department building was on Dirckenstrasse near Alexanderplatz, the West Berlin police was housed in Friesenstrasse near the downtown Tempelhof airport. And so things stood exactly as the August 19, 1948 headline in Der Morgen, the Berlin newspaper read: “Divided Berlin: A criminals’ paradise”. The article went on to explain how indicting a criminal was made even more difficult by the fact that some Western police precincts refused as a matter of principle to hand over people it had apprehended to Dirckenstrasse. Police officers in the West always suspected some communist villainy: there had in fact been a string of spectacular kidnappings and it happened repeatedly that some politically unpleasant person disappeared without a trace. Each police force accused the “other” of being illegal and anyone who wanted to conduct official business in the opposite sector was to be arrested immediately. A low intensity war was being waged between the two police departments and the hostility had escalated to the point where the East Berlin Chief of Police had been arrested by the Stumm (Western) police when he attempted, as a private citizen, to attend a boxing match in the Waldbühne outdoor arena in the West.

  As long as the jurisdiction of the police ended at the border between the sectors, people who intended to break the law could operate in both parts of the city and rest assured that the mutual hostility would throw a monkey wrench in any investigation or at the very least make the necessary cooperation between the two sides difficult or impossible. The newspaper commented: It used to be that a dangerous criminal who wished to escape from the long arm of justice had to go across the ocean and even then he wasn’t necessarily safe. Now all it takes for him is to walk to the opposite sector where he can enjoy a comfortable feeling of safety.

  “Father, must you constantly be doing overtime?” Steinbock’s son didn’t like to see his father crisscrossing the ruined landscape that stretched between the Zoo and the Knie late in the evenings in pursuit of the thieves stealing scrap metal.

  “I’ve got to catch the buggers, I owe it to myself.”

  “Just be careful.” Otwin Steinbock was a journalist and he knew that there were some people in the city who were afraid of nothing. Six months ago to the day Werner Gladow and his gang had been arrested after an Al Capone style shoot out in the East Berlin neighborhood of Friedrichshain. At the end of the trial, it was a foregone conclusion that the Senior Prosecutor would require the death penalty for a double murder and a series of other serious offences. In spite of that – or maybe because of it – Gladow had been turned into a hometown hero in both sectors of Berlin. Throughout the city youngsters played at being the Gladow gang.

  Albert Steinbock laughed. He played the whole thing down with a joke: “Gladow or Kladow, isn’t that in Spandau, down by the Havel?”

  “You and your stale jokes! You read my article about the body parts that were found at Stettiner station, didn’t you? The guy who’s doing these things …”

  His father shrugged. “You can only die once.” And with those words he left. Stealing scrap metal was rampant since one could make a lot of money reselling lead, copper and brass. Especially if you stole it in the East and disposed of it in the West. Even here in Charlottenburg where they lived, the stealing was going on. Everywhere
, especially in old cellars and empty lots scrap metal dealers sat waiting for loot. In Steinbock’s opinion they were all fences receiving stolen goods. When there were no lead pipes, brass faucets or locks or zinc window ledges to be found in the ruins, the thieves would slip into the houses still standing and set to work with saws, pliers and screw drivers. Just the day before, they had flooded a house on Carmerstrasse. ‘And who was blamed for all this? The police.’ That meant they were blaming him, Albert Steinbock. And that was why he had to catch the bastards.

  And so he went on his usual rounds on the evening of December 9, 1949. From Hardenbergerstrasse to Schillerstrasse then on to Schlüterstrasse. He had noted down the houses that had been destroyed on Hardenbergerstrasse: numbers 1 to 5, 13 to 15, 20 and 21, 23 and 24, 27 and 37 to 42. Numbers 1 to 5 were on the Southside of the street between the Knie or Bismarckstrasse and the Renaissance Theater on Knesebeckstrasse, which had itself suffered comparatively little damage. Steinbock didn’t care whether they put on shows there ever again or what was playing, he would never go. “I have enough entertainment as it is, thank you.”

  He suspected that the scrap metal thieves operated in groups of three. One stood watch while the other two sawed or unscrewed the metal. If they were working away inside a ruin they also needed someone to hold the flashlight or to watch out that the whole structure wasn’t going to come crashing down on them. Just then he thought he heard a whistle … He wasn’t sure because a streetcar rumbled by. If he had heard correctly the whistle had come from the corner lot between Schillerstrasse number 3 and Hardenbergerstrasse. Steinbock took a few steps and then stopped to examine the area. The entire block had been destroyed; what was left of the house fronts were already cleared but the ruined structures of the side and back walls still stood. The windows and doors to the cellars had not yet been walled up so that anyone could go in. Kids went in during the day and at night shadier types of people gathered there, the kind of people Steinbock was after. Had someone whistled again? Hard to tell… and harder to figure out where it came from. It could be a student across the way at the Technical Institute. Or maybe it did come from the clearing at the corner? He was torn between his hunter’s instinct to pursue and self preservation. The former won out. So he walked into the area and took careful steps over the cracked concrete, walking as if on thin ice. He could fall through at any moment. No, he couldn’t, of course not. He looked up and saw the black burnt out empty windows. A horrible sight. The scene was set: now the ghosts, dressed in floating white garb could appear. The light from the fairly weak street lamp on Hardenbergerger strasse didn’t reach into where he was so he turned on his flashlight. The beam lit the entrance to a cellar. He had heard a dragging noise down there. Maybe it was just a rat? Lovers trying to slip out? A hobo sleeping on his coat? Or maybe ‘his’ scrap metal thieves? Everything was possible.