Cold Angel: Murder in Berlin 1949

by Horst Bosetzky

  He sneezed hard. The weather was an awful mixture of cold and wet, and his feet were soaked. His old shoes soaked up water like a sieve. Two days before five centimeters of fresh snow had fallen so that in many places the streetcar and S-Bahn switches were impossible to operate and this had created increased delays. Now though, a mild wind blew in from Southwest Europe and everywhere the snow and the ice were melting. He sneezed over and over again. It was high time he bought a car. Maybe he could ask his mother and aunt for a small loan. Driving through the country with Helga – what a wonderful dream. And maybe that would be the last little thing that would convince her to move to the West… Ford had lowered its prices just recently and the TAUNUS Special cost only 6,285 Mark. If only…

  Just as he was thinking of Helga she called him. “That’s what I call thought transmission.”

  She was very businesslike. “I wanted to inform you, Mr. Bacheran, that Mrs. Kusian slit her wrists in the women’s prison here.”

  Bernhard shuddered, he imagined the scene. “And …?” Should he feel relieved if she…? Or should one pity her even if she had twice killed…?

  “No, no, we saved her at the last moment, before she had lost all her blood.”

  “Well then the Press and all the Berliners can now hope for a beautiful trial.”

  “Don’t be so cynical!”

  “I just want the best for everyone. And such a horror story is a great thing for everybody. Apart from the two victims and the people involved.”

  “You should really go live in America.”

  “Only with you Helga, only with you.”

  “Only over my dead body.”

  “Severed or in one piece?”

  “Stop, I’m going to hang up right now.”

  “Not before we make a date to go to the movies.”

  “What’s playing?”

  “Wait, I have a huge stack of newspapers here.” Bernhard started leafing through the papers but he didn’t find much. “At the Studio on Kurfürstendam, there’s Happiness lost with Yvonne Printemps… Nah… we don’t want that. At the Kurbel they’re showing The Fan… I don’t know. Oh, here at the Bonbonniere: Slow Poison. Something about sexual diseases, oh! God no. But in any case we couldn’t go in together anyway. Wait, listen to this: Warning! Because this film explores this theme in an unusually graphic way, it is being shown separately to men and women so as to avoid any feeling of embarrassment. What do you think…?”

  “If you’re not embarrassed, I would rather go to the theater.”

  “Othello is playing at the Hebel theater and The Devil’s General at the Schlosspark Theater…”

  “Both please.”

  “At the same time or one after the other?”

  “At the same time.”

  “Then I would have to cut you up…”

  This brought them back to the Kusian case. In the evening at home it was also a hot topic at the dinner table with his mother and his aunt. Especially for Anne Marie Bacheran who would spring eloquently to Elisabeth Kusian’s defense.

  “The whole thing is part of the dark machinations of the Volks Police. There’s only one word for it: brainwashing. They probably extracted a confession through psychological pressure. Why? In order to demonstrate how decadent the West is: ‘Look, in the West, even nurses are mass murderers.’”

  “Mother, all the evidence points to Kusian.”

  “But it can all be distorted to make her look guilty. Everything we hold dear, they want to drag through the mud. For all the East cares. Think of all the assistance our nurses provided during the nightly bombing raids and at the very end in the fight for Berlin.”

  “No one is questioning that, Mother.”

  “But they are. A colleague of mine told me that Elisabeth Kusian had been wounded by a Russian grenade as she was tending to wounded soldiers. Such a woman should be given a medal, not made to stand before the law.”

  “These two things are completely separate,” Bernhard insisted.

  “No they’re not.”

  During the next few days he discovered that people in West Berlin did not want to believe that Kusian was a murderer. Der Abend had obtained a couple of lines she had written and, without revealing her name, sent them to a graphologist, asking for their expert opinion. The January 13, 1950 issue reported the results in an article entitled “The Murderer’s Handwriting”. A person of sober intelligence, egotistic, forceful, practical. A certain lack of imagination, lack of feminine empathy, not a feminine type. Subject to an inferiority complex. Very reserved, silent and secretive. Sensitive. Deficient outlook on the world. Naïve, almost childlike attitude to her environment. According to the opinion of the graphologist, after he had been told whose handwriting he had examined… he would not have thought the person capable of murder. Bernhard thought it all very unscientific and it reminded him more of a horoscope.

  After that the interest in Kusian faded – until the trial, and then it took on gigantic proportions. But that only started 12 months later. Only the Berliner Zeitung dealt with it one more time on January 13, 1950, mainly to ‘fulfill their political duties.’ Bacheran was not the only one to think so. The headline ran: Cooperation is possible in Berlin – What Berliners learned from the Kusian investigation. The article strongly highlighted the cooperation between East and West. If this cooperation fails, or if it is met with a refusal on the part of West Berlin authorities, as has often happened before, or if it is rejected out of hand for political reasons, then the people suffer the consequences and get the short end of the stick. Who has to suffer? Not the ‘Officials’, not the ‘Politicians’, no, the millions of workers who dwell inside our divided city have to suffer. We must take their welfare or their suffering to heart, we must strive to make their lives better. And that is why Berlin must be reunited and become one city again. Until then all public institutions must do their best to work together and lay the foundations of a new and fruitful life in the German capital city. That such cooperation is perfectly possible had been demonstrated by the Kusian case. How well put! Bacheran admired the East Berliners for their masterly political agitation. Translated into plain language the report was saying: Men and women of the Western sector of Berlin, choose to be a part of the GDR – only then will you live a perfectly happy life.

  As for the Kusian case: On February 8, 1950, Elisabeth Kusian was transferred to the West. The official report of the West Berlin Police Department MI/3 stated the following: After discussions and subsequent agreement per telephone, nurse Elisabeth Kusian, née Richter, born 8/5/1914 in Bornsheim/Thuringia, living at 154a Kantstrasse in Berlin/Charlottenburg, apprehended on 1/6/1950 by the Criminal Police of the Eastern sector, was handed over today at 9:05 AM at the Sector border at Sandkrug Bridge/lnvalidenstrasse (…) Files together with a small suitcase containing Elisabeth Kusian’s personal effects were also delivered. Transfer to investigating unit in 12a Alt Moabit prison.

  She would soon see Bernhard Bacheran in that prison, once again. Dr. Weimann, Inspector Menzel and two other officers met in a conference room to discuss Kusian. Their colleagues from East Berlin had sent the minutes of the interrogation but Menzel and the State Attorney’s Office in West Berlin were inclined to regard them as worthless. For them the GDR was an illegal state – consequently, something that their officials had put on paper would not stand in court in the Western justice system. And so the investigation into Seidelmann’s and Merten’s deaths and Kusian’s interrogation were restarted, almost from scratch.

  Elisabeth Kusian was brought in. She was dressed in grey blue prison garb and held her head down. Guards led her to the left side of a long conference table and she was told to sit down. She sat there looking like a lost child and Bacheran thought to himself ‘Woe unto her’, just as his father would have said in his old fashioned way. The phalanx of men were arrayed on the opposite side of the table. Menzel, as head of the Homicide Division, was the first to speak.

  “Do you feel able to answer our questions, Mr
s. Kusian? How are you?”

  “I’m well, thank you.” Her voice was low and she kept her shoulders hunched up as if she wanted to hide her head and her face.

  Menzel introduced the men who were present. When she heard the name Weimann, she lifted her head for the first time. Her large dark eyes were shining feverishly. The Chief Medical Examiner, who sat next to Bacheran, whispered to him that her face was somehow known to him. “The prominent cheekbones, the full sensual lips…” Bacheran was surprised.

  “Now, Mrs. Kusian, be kind enough to tell us about yourself and about your life.” Menzel wanted to establish contact with her and get her to speak freely at first.

  “Yes… I was born on May 8, 1914 in Thuringia.” And so she went on quietly and willingly, in a soft voice. She spoke in something of a sing-song. There was not a single jarring note, everything was smoothed out. Bacheran took notes: a hard life on the farm when she was young. A loveless marriage soon followed by divorce. Three children, sent to a home after the separation. Living in one furnished room after another. Men. Constant money problems.

  Then Menzel cut in again. “This brings us up to the Christmas holiday. You want to make your dear Kurt a present, a typewriter in particular, and you don’t have the money. That’s when you come across Mr. Seidelmann from Saxony…”

  Kusian stiffened immediately. She sat rigidly erect. She froze, hard as a rock. “I already described all that to the Eastern Police. I do not wish to go over those events again.”

  Menzel’s tone became hard. “The statements you made on the Eastern side don’t all fit together. I strongly advise you to tell us the whole thing over again.”

  Bacheran wondered what he would do in Kusian’s shoes. He would probably remain silent, wouldn’t say another word. And let himself be taken away. She wasn’t in any event going to be tortured if she refused to speak. But she did speak. After a few minutes of silence, hesitatingly and visibly against her will. Why then? Because she had been brought up like that, because she had grown up in a world where the person who had the authority over you asked the questions and you answered. Just so. Otherwise, you got hit, locked in the cellar with no food, grounded for a week.

  She started with December 3rd and made a brief description of the louche milieu at Bahnhof Zoo station. “Black marketers, prostitutes, bums… Money changers, East for West.”

  “And what were you there for?”

  “Nothing. I was just passing through on my way out of the S-Bahn to go home.”

  “And yet you let Mr. Seidelmann come on to you?”

  “Yes, because I needed East marks.”

  “What for?”

  “I had to pay for the typewriter in the East.”

  “Menzel glanced down at his notes.” Seidelmann had 1800 East D-mark on him. And you saw that money…?”

  “I exchanged 30 West-mark for 180 East D-mark from him.”

  “You needed a further 75 East D-mark but you didn’t have enough West-mark. And you told him…” Menzel kept up the pressure on her.

  “Yes. Then he asked me where I lived. And he wrote down my address. He would come by in the evening, around 8 PM, if that was convenient.”

  Bacheran could just see it: Hardenberger Platz, the portly showman from Voigtland writing ‘Beautiful woman at zoo’ on his pack of cigarettes, thinking more of exchanging caresses than marks. A little fun before returning home, living it up, doing what provincials had always expected of Berlin, the city of sin.

  “The doorbell rang around eight,” Kusian said. My landlady went to the door on the landing. Whether I said that I was expecting someone, or whether she came with me to the door, I don’t remember anymore.”

  Bacheran threw his hands in the air, figuratively speaking: God, could a person be so addlebrained as to murder a man in the room she rented when her landlady had seen the victim! He almost regretted that he wasn’t Kusian’s defense attorney. He could have demonstrated the absurdity of the murder accusation: ‘Your Honor, the defendant is a highly intelligent woman, not an imbecile! Only an imbecile could have planned and executed a crime in such circumstances.’

  Menzel proceeded to establish the detailed circumstances of the events. “What were you wearing?”

  The question seemed harmless but it struck deep into Kusian’s heart, she looked down and was obviously ashamed. “I was still wearing my nurse’s uniform…”

  Menzel could have given her a little time. He did not. Maybe her growing sense of shame might have given birth to some kind of feeling of regret. Instead he struck hard, too fast. “Tell me, Mrs. Kusian, did you tie the noose you used to kill Seidelmann before he arrived?”

  Elisabeth Kusian jumped up angrily. “I refuse to say another word!” Her chair fell over and the back banged the floor hard. Her dark eyes were shining and her voice became shrill as she screamed at the inspector. “I signed a confession with the East German Police, I will not repeat it… I cannot…” she lurched sideways and had to lean against the wall. All strength seemed to have left her body. It shook with her painful sobbing. Bacheran felt a strong impulse to go to her and put his arms around her shoulders and comfort her. He suppressed the urge. Are you crazy, she murdered two people! You’re not Jesus.

  Puzzled, Menzel looked over at Dr. Weimann. He was a doctor and… “Is that a nervous breakdown?” he whispered. “Is she no longer fit to answer questions?”

  Dr. Weimann got up, went around the long conference table and put his right hand on Kusian’s shoulder to soother her. Her sobs slowly subsided. Bacheran thought he knew what the Medical Examiner’s purpose was at that moment: to find out whether she had staged this outburst in order to gain time and avoid falling into Menzel’s trap. If she admitted to having prepared the noose in advance, then she had committed a cold blooded heinous crime and risked a life sentence. If the judges decided that she had acted without premeditation then the sentence would be far more lenient. But maybe it was not a calculated break down, maybe it was the memory of the terrible events of December 3rd that had made her lose control.

  Dr. Weimann tried his best to uncover the layers in Kusian’s soul, like a surgeon operating on the stomach cavity. “Do you want to tell us, maybe, how you dismembered the corpses.”

  Bacheran knew what he was trying to do: get her to talk about her dream, or fantasy, of being a surgeon and operating. She had told her lover Kurt Muschan and her colleagues that she was the widow of a surgeon, that she herself had a medical degree or, at the very least, that she, a woman, had begun to study medicine. As the skill with which she had separated the limbs from the victims’ torsos clearly demonstrated, she would have been quite gifted for such a career. This was not just cold blooded imposture. And she didn’t lie because she wanted to make herself sound important. No, her lies were part of the structure she needed in order to cope with her life. To survive, she had to imagine herself as a surgeon, at least part of the time, and at those moments, she truly believed that she was one. Afterwards, she was thrown back into the cruel reality of her life.

  “Now?” Dr. Weimann was still waiting for an answer.

  “I already explained that in the East.” She sounded tired, even exhausted.

  Dr. Weimann’s next question carried within it a hint of hidden admiration. “Is it true that all you used was a kitchen knife?” He stressed the word ‘all’.

  But she didn’t take the bait. “I already answered that question too.” She pressed her hands to her face as if to keep her mouth tightly shut.

  “Mrs. Kusian, I autopsied both corpses,” Weimann continued. “And I was really surprised…”

  She took her hands off her face and turned expectantly towards the doctor. “Yes…?”

  “You performed an exemplary hip disjunction.”

  “Oh…” Her eyebrows went up and Bacheran thought she blossomed all of a sudden. She offered no resistance when he led her back to her chair which he set back upright. She sank down on the fake green leather upholstery. She took a deep breath, they h
eard a long sigh and she shut her eyes and let the famous pathologist’s words echo in her mind. It was almost like an apology when she answered that she did not, in fact, have any experience in surgery.

  “Did you maybe inject yourself with morphine before you started on this unusual work?” Dr. Weimann continued.