The newspapers, in any case, showed no sympathy at all for her, they did however question whether the whole truth had really come out and the headlines grabbed the reader with titles such as: Kusian’s attorneys ask for a revision. So says the Nacht-Depesche of January 15, 1951, and writes, among other things: Most circles in the city of Berlin have been satisfied with the life sentence being handed down against that woman. The two cold blooded and bloody murders she was found guilty of created great indignation everywhere. There still remain a few questions concerning the trial, those questions were not answered satisfactorily during the proceedings and have consequently left a certain amount of disquiet. (…) it is a fact that the trial did not clarify whether Kusian had accomplices and who they might have been. The search for the ‘Lady in Black’ was abandoned. For whom was the third glass in Kusian’s room intended? The Tagesspiegel of January 26, 1951 had a headline asking: What happens to the children now? – Elisabeth Kusian’s daughters and her son know their mother’s fate. A change of name could not be effected. The thought that ten children in all – including Seidelmann’s and Kurt Muschan’s – have been made to suffer, is one more thing in the end that makes people shudder.
What else was there to report about Kusian? The request for an appeal remained unsuccessful. The Third Criminal Panel of the Federal Court of Justice confirmed the verdict of the Berlin court on December 13, 1951. Seven years later, Elisabeth Kusian was diagnosed with cancer. Did remorse for her actions and her divided soul also make her ill, one can only speculate.
As one good nurse among many she would have been long forgotten but as the ‘Cold Angel’ she lives on in the German public’s collective memory. She was ‘unearthed’ again by Medical Examiners, by Waldemar Weimann in 1964 and by Gunther Geserick, Klaus Vendura and Ingo Wirth in 2001. Now this documentary novel has been written about her. The only way to justify this is to quote Bertold Brecht: It’s a cynical, rootless point of view. I like it.
43.
When Elisabeth Kusian’s remains were laid to rest in 1958 in Berlin, Bernhard Bacheran had for some time been working as a prosecutor in Bremen, where he still lives today and where he has risen to Senator. When, at the end of my research on the Kusian case I visit him in his villa in Oberneuland on November 11, 2001, he has just turned 76 the day before. We had talked on the phone for many hours previously but many things remained to be discussed.
“Mostly, I’d like to know why it didn’t work out in the end between you and Helga Leupahn…?”
“Well…” Bacheran swallowed hard and coughed. “Think of the two kingly children who come to each other … Neither was willing to give in. Then I moved to Bremen, she to Greifswald. We both married – other people. But have we been happy?”
“Just asking the question is sufficient. You did see each other again, at least after the wall came down?”
“No…” Bacheran sighed. “But… How does it go in Fontane, the beautiful lines he wrote: ‘In a sense it’s a gift to spend an entire lifetime sucking on the milk of yearning.’ And I still do that with great pleasure when I sit on the banks of the Wümm, the Weser or by the North Sea and stare into the water.”
“And what does your wife say to that?”
“Rosemarie…? She died in 99. She put up with it. But with a heavy heart. She knew Helga. My mother had invited Rosemarie to our house: she hoped I would be cured of my love for Helga and forget her. The strategy worked in the end. The children don’t know anything. But that will change when your novel is published.”
“Why? In the novel your name isn’t Bernhard Bacheran but Bernhard Baronna.”
“Oh no, no. If I’m to be one of your characters, then please use my real name.”
I look at him and smile. “Helga asked me to do the same when I visited her in Greifswald last week to ask her how things had been in those days.”
“How is she then?” Bacheran asks, his eyes closed.
“She is living a very withdrawn life.”
“And – is she widowed?”
“Yes and she had a child out of wedlock with a navy officer. And now she’s a grandmother.”
“And her career?”
“She didn’t stay long in Homicide, but she did sit in the People’s Chamber of Representatives for a while. Well… she seemed a little bitter. What did she look like in those days, during the trial – don’t you have a picture of her?”
“I do, just a minute…” He goes to his desk, opens it and returns with a plastic pouch in which there are bits of pictures, like pieces of a puzzle, only they have straight sides and sharp angles. “There she is … Helga… in 1950. But my wife took her scissors one day and cut her up…”
Final words and acknowledgments
My heartfelt thanks to Professor Peter Erich who told me about Elisabeth Kusian ten years ago one day when we met in the corridors of the university where we both teach. Without him, I would never have had the idea for this book. My thanks also to Ursula Brock who did such wonderful work for me, researching articles about Elisabeth Kusian in libraries and newspaper archives.
Cold Angel: Murder in Berlin 1949 Page 33