Cold Angel: Murder in Berlin 1949

by Horst Bosetzky

  “Erna!” Bacheran’s mother was deeply shocked. “Nothing can excuse such deeds and I’m just sorry they did away with the death penalty. Imagine if we had had something to do with her…”

  Bacheran left the house a little after 8:30. The sun had just risen. There had been a light frost during the night but now, it was probably two or three degrees above freezing. The landscape was so grey that the red tail lights of the cars were the only touches of color anywhere. He felt frozen to the bone and longed to be on some atoll in the South Seas. Jack London was one of his favorite authors. He ran down the steps of the U-Bahn. It was not particularly brighter there either apart from the few dim lights hanging from the ceiling, but at least it was comparatively warmer. It wasn’t so easy to get from Neukölln to Moabit. He thought for a while and then decided to go to Stettiner Station first and from there to walk to Sandkrug bridge and take the 44.

  Helga was already standing on Turnstrasse in front of Moabit Criminal court waiting for him. He crept up silently behind her and whispered in her ear: “My name is Hermann Seidelmann from Plauen. How much is it with you today?”

  “Very funny!” She was a little annoyed but still she gave him a kiss. He couldn’t leave it alone though. “From the back, not the front.”

  “Stop that!”

  Bacheran played dumb. “What’s wrong? Don’t you see the long line here? We don’t need to join it since we have reserved seats in a sense and we can go in through the back, on Wilsnacker strasse.”

  It still took a good fifteen minutes before they could take their seats in Room 230. They were in the second row on the right.

  Although the clock showed just 9:27, the big Criminal Court room was already bursting at the seams. And outside on the landing hundreds more who had been unable to get an entrance pass, stood, prepared to wait, every one of them gripped by one question: “Did she do it or are we in for a big surprise?”

  Bacheran and Helga weren’t a minute too early since they had barely settled in when Elisabeth Kusian was led in. She was not wearing a nurse’s uniform but an old dark blue suit and a white blouse and she looked very well groomed. She seemed slimmer, almost skinny and was artfully coiffed. Her face however was pale and waxy, only the tip of her nose looked red. She was constantly kneading her rough and remarkably powerful hands as if carefully washing them and disinfecting them before an operation. Flashbulbs fired at her. It went on for ten minutes. “Like Gina Lollobrigida,” Bernhard said. Although Elisabeth Kusian did not look particularly beautiful and somehow was not fascinatingly ugly either: she just looked plain. Soon she fell into a sort of trance and sat strangely perched on the defendant’s bench, leaning forward away from the back. “She looks like she’s sitting on the john,” Helga whispered. The background noise reminded Bacheran of a school auditorium just before a big event. Everyone was excited, and also filled with happy anticipation. Many of the people sitting in the back took out their opera glasses. Journalists came in; they were greeted by the defense attorneys. Behind Bernhard someone was saying that Dr. Arno Weimann, a younger brother of the Medical Examiner, had often represented members of outlawed political groups.

  The high court judges entered the room, and everyone rose. The trial began at exactly 9:30 AM. The county court director, Dr. Korsch, led the proceedings. Six jurors were sitting by his side. While Dr. Korsch was swearing in the jurors in a booming voice, the prosecuting attorneys, District Attorney Dr. Marion Countess Yorck zu Wartenburg and District Attorney Schulz, took their seats. The countess with the big name stood out because of her medieval page boy hair cut. Bacheran tried to remember: Ludwig, Count Yorck zu Wartenburg was a Prussian Field Marshal and, on December 30th 1812, in Tauroggen, he had concluded, basically on his own, a neutrality pact with the Russians thereby provoking the downfall of Napoleon. Count Peter Yorck zu Wartenburg was a co-founder of the Kreisauer circle and had been hanged as a resistance fighter against the Nazis. “To be judged by such a woman is a real bonus,” Bacheran said in typical Berlin humor. “I’d like that one myself.” State Attorney Kuntze took his seat at a desk of his own and allowed himself the hint of a smile as if he anticipated the bombshell that was about to explode…

  The presiding judge asked Elisabeth Kusian to approach the judges’ desk. She walked slowly, feeling her way, swaying from side to side and she seemed to be a little lost because of the many microphones. She had never been in such a situation. Her voice failed her as she gave her name. Afterwards she spoke in a low voice with an accent from Thuringia. “I have had to fight all my life. I didn’t have enough money. I was mostly the one who had to bear the brunt of a dysfunctional marriage. I was in love with another man…”

  Me…Me… Me…, Bacheran thought.

  Kusian waxed more and more eloquent, but when Dr. Korsch asked his first question about the two murders, she became a totally different person and refused to go on.

  “I refuse to answer,” she declared in a firm voice. “I don’t have anything to say, I will say nothing…”

  At that point Arno Weimann got up – and the bombshell exploded: “In this case the defense will do a very rare thing: we intend to plead against the former statements made by our client. We first thought that the murders could be attributed to Mrs. Kusian’s morphine habit. But in the meantime we have established that although she did use Morphine and Pervitin, she was not addicted to them. We now request that the court investigate this state of affairs. We submit that Mrs. Kusian did not commit these murders, that she could not have committed them!”

  Unbelievable! But it was to be expected. There had always been talk of the mysterious other person. A few people in the room laughed at this. Everyone whispered excitedly: was it possible that the defense knew so much more than the District Attorney and the investigators from Homicide? The judges and jurors looked around reprovingly. “I knew it,” Helga whispered. “Now they will try their best to make us look bad, to attack all the work we did, everything we established in the Democratic sector.”

  “Come now…This is more likely an attempt to take advantage of the mood in the city which is very much pro-Kusian. Things that should not happen cannot happen. Put differently, certain types of professionals cannot be murderers or else our entire value system breaks apart: doctors, pastors, mothers, nurses, pediatric nurses…”

  Dr. Nicolai, the other defense attorney now stood to speak. “At the time of the crime against Mr. Seidelmann, Mrs. Kusian was marked down as ill. Her left hand was wounded, one of her fingers was in a splint. Would she really have been capable of throttling such a strong man as Mr. Seidelmann, in such circumstances? No!”

  A clever chess move, Bacheran coolly acknowledged. But Dr. Korsch was not easily pushed into a corner. He exchanged a few more words with the defense attorneys and then signaled to the court clerk to approach; he asked him to phone the doctor who had handled Elisabeth Kusian that day and have him appear in court: the Robert-Koch Hospital was just across the street from the court house.

  While they waited Elisabeth Kusian was asked to talk about her life. She spoke in a throaty voice and gave a factual account. Bacheran didn’t learn anything new. Apart from the fact that Walter Kusian, her ex-husband, had worn the ‘Golden insignia’ of the Nazi Party.

  After the doctor arrived and gave his statement to the court, the defense was forced to accept its first defeat. The hospital register which the doctor had brought with him clearly showed that, on December 3rd, the day of the first murder, Nurse Kusian had only superficial wounds on her index and middle finger.

  “And…?” asked Dr. Korsch. “Did she… could she have carried out the murder?”

  The answer was clear and straightforward: “If the defendant was capable of such an act, then she could also do it with her bandaged hand.”

  The presiding judge then heard the relatives, friends and acquaintances of both murder victims, and also the female co-workers and friends of the defendant.

  First the Seidelmann family testified. They gave a t
horough description of all the things Bacheran and Helga had long known. “My brother in law would not consort with such a ‘woman’,” said one of the women. Even Hannes Seidelmann was absolutely convinced that his brother Hermann would never have had an extramarital relationship. His widow shuddered when Dr. Weimann handed her a glass of water – the same glass that Kusian had touched before: “No, I will not drink from that glass.”

  Herta, Vera and Christa, the Moabit nurses, all stated unanimously that the defendant had been selfless, totally dedicated and kind to her patients.

  The excitement started growing only when Annemarie Gruschwitz, Kusian’s friend, was called to the stand.

  Dr. Korsch looked at her. “You lent the defendant the suitcase she used to dispose of the body parts. When Mrs. Kusian returned it did you notice any traces of blood?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “And you asked Mrs. Kusian about them?”

  “I did.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “That she had carried rabbits in it.”

  The president acted somewhat surprised and Bacheran had the impression that he didn’t entirely trust Kusian’s friend. He didn’t use the word ‘accomplice’ but seemed to imply it. “Tell me, Mrs. Gruschwitz, you were not at all suspicious, even when Mrs. Kusian brought you Mr. Seidelmann’s overcoat – with blood on it…?”

  “No, I wasn’t. Lisbeth said she had had a nose bleed.”

  Bacheran also found this display of naiveté a little surprising: after all, at the time, there had been at least some news of the severed corpse in the rubble. On the other hand: would he personally have been alerted if a good friend had brought him a bloodied coat to exchange or sell? Probably not.

  Still, he could hardly believe it when Annemarie Gruschwitz said she had gone to Zoo station with Kusian. “I sold the coat for 30 D. marks to a foreigner and Lisbeth sold a pair of shoes to a man selling chocolate in a stall for 8 marks.”

  “And – she didn’t tell you where the stuff came from…?”

  “She did: from a grateful patient.”

  “And on the third day of Christmas, did Mrs. Kusian give you a hat and a scarf?” These things belonged to Dorothea Merten. “Yes, she did. But how could I have guessed that the… ‘Poor me,’ she said to me, ‘I don’t have anybody to spend Christmas with. Here, take this.’”

  Dr. Korsch turned to the defendant. “What do you have to say to this, Mrs. Kusian?”

  “I refuse to make a statement.” That was all she said.

  37.

  Today Bacheran decided to take the S-Bahn to Moabit even though that was a slight detour. It allowed him to spend a bit more time with Helga: they would meet at Ostkreuz. To him the Kusian trial often felt like a serial novel in a newspaper or like a sports event with multiple stages like the Giro d’Italia or the Tour de France: Every day people expected something new, every day they were eager to know how things would unfold. The second day of hearings was set for January 16, 1951. The weather report said: ‘Changeable weather, colder, variably cloudy, some hail showers, high temperature 3 degrees.’ In other words a very unpleasant cloudy day, cold and wet. And yet Berlin, on that day, was about to witness two high points of its history: first, the mistake landing of a Soviet Düsenjäger in Tegel airport – it immediately took off again before there could be a diplomatic incident – and second, the dramatic turn of events in the Kusian trial.

  When Bacheran got on the S-Bahn at Neukölln station early that morning, he found a Berliner Zeitung someone had left on the bench. The newspaper turned the criminal trial into a sweeping ideological attack, under the headline “Scandal at any price”: Let us come to the point: for our contemporaries who delight in bloody murder stories, American gangster films and the nameless suffering of the people, the Kusian trial is keeping all its promises – according to the bombastic propaganda of RIAS and the assorted Western press. It’s not only the fact that in December 1949, 36 year old nurse Elisabeth Kusian lured two people into her apartment and strangled them with a noose that so inspires the public – who used their strength and their fists to beat each other and secure one of the 70 tickets to the Kusian show – this enthusiasm is an extreme example of the cultural dumbing-down the American taskmaster intends to inflict on the people and it should be properly attributed to the fact that the killer severed her victims’ bodies after killing them with a bread knife and that she hid the body parts in the rubble of our houses in the Democratic sector – thereby cleverly taking advantage of the unfortunate division of the city. The authorities in West Berlin and their puppet masters are using this circus in order to distract the population from their plans for remilitarization, from the fear of war and to prevent them noticing the tanks rumbling through the streets of their hometown. ‘Severed with a bread knife…’ the title of this film turned reality screams out. Meanwhile, the unemployed of the Western sector will hopefully forget their troubles.

  This was signed ‘Cobra’. Right under the article was a short segment entitled “New Terror Sentence” intended to open the reader’s eyes to the reality of Western justice: Monday, the district criminal court in Tiergarten, presided by Judge Kogge, sentenced the young peace activist Rudi Grosskopf from Wedding to a four month jail sentence. Grosskopf had been arrested in the night of November 25 in the Wedding neighborhood as he was returning home from a meeting of the FDJ. He was found in possession of Democratic newspapers.

  Bacheran had some fun with this later when he met Helga at the Ostkreuz station. “So, my little peace activist, have you been good, did you read everything your democratic newspaper writes?”

  It was as if his kiss had stuck in her throat. “Stop your smear campaign!”

  “Who’s doing the smearing? Your side.”

  “Shush… we’re still in the Democratic sector.”

  “If you were really a democracy and the people could really vote under your government, your number one warlord would certainly not be a man called Walter Ulbricht.” In Ostkreuz, platform D was so wide that they could speak without having to worry about unfriendly ears.

  Helga embarked on a political tutorial. “In some particular historical circumstances it is necessary to use force to guide the masses blinded by ideology towards happiness.”

  “Good, then I’ll drug you later when we’re in the Western sector, I’ll transport you by plane to Bonn and we’ll arrange for you to become my wife in a sort of coerced marriage ceremony.”

  “Over my dead body.”

  “Go ahead. For the love of you I’ll become a necrophiliac.”

  The train to Charlottenburg came in and put an end to the exchange. They were lucky: they got two facing seats. Bacheran asked her what she thought of the article on Kusian in the Berliner Zeitung.

  “It’s absolutely true what they’re saying. What Cobra is showing is the direction Western culture is taking: it will serve the purpose of distracting the masses like a drug, so that the imperialists can carry out their plans undisturbed. The Nazis used to sing Today, Germany is ours, Tomorrow, the whole world and now it’s the Americans who are singing that same song. The monopoly capitalists will not rest until they have subjugated all the peoples of the world.”

  Bacheran smiled. “They would if we didn’t have our brotherly Soviet people and Josif Vissarionovitch Djugashvilli, aka Stalin.”

  “Your analysis is absolutely correct, comrade Bacheran,” she answered in the deadpan voice of a political officer.

  Bacheran interpreted this as self derision and it made him happy. During the rest of the trip to Bellevue station they talked about minor events in the city. Men in the Western sector complained that they had to fork out 80 pfennig for a haircut, sometimes even a whole mark, and a proposal was being debated to charge the unemployed and the retired only 50 pfennig: this drew cries from the association of barbers. “We will go bankrupt!” As Bernhard was leafing through the Tagesspiegel that he had bought on top of the Berliner Zeitung, he said: “If you are poor, you should be
obliged to have a bald patch. He read out some items from the local pages: Saturday night, the first film ball since the war had taken place on the Esplanade. It was quite an elegant affair and very well attended by many visitors – my God, what awful German – still it wasn’t the usual big event since it had to represent the decentralization of German film. Bacheran looked at Helga. “And who is most pleased that there is no more Babelsberg? Hollywood, of course. The way is open. We win.” Next. Another death in a baby carriage – Sunday morning, on Koblenzerstrasse in Wilmersdorf, seven week old Claudia Ch. was found dead in her carriage by her mother. Right under this there was: Gas pipe had been disconnected – 29 year old Gerda G., her 9 year old son Volker and 35 year old Robert M., a butcher who also lived there were found dead in the kitchen of their apartment, poisoned by gas. The hose connecting the gas to the cooker had come loose. Bernhard was pensive for a moment. “It seems to me that things like this should put Kusian’s crimes in perspective…”

  “What do you mean?” Helga didn’t see it.

  “Because…” he hesitated to speak because what was on the tip of his tongue was so banal, that he didn’t like saying it out loud: everybody dies. “Because it’s almost as if everything were decided in advance: if you’re fated to die from gas poisoning, you do so. If it’s your fate to die at the hands of an assassin, you are murdered. And seen from that perspective, Kusian is nothing more than the hand of fate, moved by a higher power – so then she is innocent of any crime. It is written in the book of life: Seidelmann, you will be throttled by Elisabeth Kusian and you, Dorothea Merten, will be her second victim.”

  “If you had written that in your essay at our school you would have had an F: ‘Bacheran is caught in a metaphysical cloud.’”

  “Then please explain Kusian’s actions in clear Marxist materialistic terms for me.”

  “Misdirected biochemical processes in certain regions of the brain freed the impulse to kill.”