Haarmann's Sausages part 4

Alfred Hrdlicka, Stehender - Haarmann 1967 (red marble) 87 x 20 x 30 cm. source

The sculpture above is one of a series of Haarmann ispired statues proposed by Austrian artist Afred Hrdlicka to the city of Hanover. 

Maria Tatar notes in her book Lustmord:

Much as collective cultural memory has excluded Fritz Haarmann from the historical record and preserved his deeds in the popular imagination as something closer to lore than to fact, it was impossible to eradicate his real-life existence entirely. Of late, the Haarmann case has attracted a certain amount of notoriety , but, in one instance at least, the effort to remember turned into what was perceived to be a scandalous attempt to commemorate his deeds. In Haarmann's native city of Hanover, Alfred Hrdlicka proposed erecting a monument to Haarmann - a statue that would be a provocation to be sure - but with hope of provoking thought. It goes without saying that the plan was never approved, but Hrdlicka still had the chance to articulate what it was that made Haarmann worthy of memorialization. Haarmann's offenses lay at the heart of "the enigmas of a nation," Hrdlicka declared. "Haarmann the mass murderer... was not only a lightning flash revealing the state-sanctioned mass murderers that were to come; his antisocial preoccupations and drives were, above all, what made him a prototype of his time."

And another sculpture:

Alfred Hrdlicka, Haarmann (Haarmann und eines seiner Opfer III) 1967 - 1968 (bronze), 212 x 33 x 40 cm. source

Take a look at the 3 previous parts: 1, 2, 3

Haarmann's Sausages part 2

A comic entitled "Kiełbasy Harmanna" (Harmann's Sausages) by Sara Sapkowska & Bartek Biedrzycki has just been published in Kolektyw#4 magazine. The story has little to do with real Fritz Haarmann (except the name of the character and the city of Hannover). In general, it was based on a song by Polish rock band T-Love (take a look at my previous post). It seems a little odd, as the factual story of Haarmann was way more surprising and interesting, than what the song describes (according to the latter, Haarmann was a butcher, who used to make sausages out of people). 

I made a very brief interview with writer Bartek Biedrzycki

Foodfirstblog: what was the source of inspiration for your comic? I presume, the song by T-Love, but anything else?

B.B.: In fact, this was the result of my readings about the Weimar Republic and its fall. When working on the comic, I was freshly after "The Black Obelisk" by Erich Maria Remarque. This is where my interest in that particular legend and these times came from. The dialogues and constant references to bankruptcies and suicides were inspired by the book. 

Foodfirstblog: When did you get the idea for the story?

B.B.: During works on Kolektyw #3, which was about urban legends. The comic was ready by then, but somehow it wasn't included in the magazine. 

Foodfirstblog: How did you work on the script? Did you research the archives, old newspapers or other sources?

B.B.: As far as I remember, we have seen just a picture of the street, that we used as a model. Otherwise we didn't do any research. I only checked some facts about the "Butcher of Hannover", who has little to do with the character from the song by Staszczyk [T-Love's leader].

Foodfirstblog: Were you interested in the real Fritz Haarmann?

B.B.: Yes and no. I was intrigued by him in the context of my minimal interest in serial killers, like for instance the "Vampire of Rostov". But this interest is really negligible, a spin-off of my research concerning interesting historical figures.

Foodfirstblog: Did you research on other similar stories from the 1920's?

B.B.: No.

Foodfirstblog: Do you know other works (comics, movies etc) about Haarmann or similar stories?

B.B.: No.

He is part of our History

It was exactly a year ago, when the Hanover tourist board issued this Advent calendar for children. Nothing really special about it, if not one figure depicted behind a tree at the left of the image. 

 

Yes, it is Fritz Haarmann, the cannibal killer from Hanover, with a meat cleaver in his hand:

Haarmann had already appeared in a similar calendar the year before, but nobody took notice. 

The 2007 calendar sold very well - the whole run of 20 000 copies was out before Christmas.  

Hans-Christian Nolte, head of the Hanover tourist board defended the idea of including the mass murderer in the calendar, saying: "He is part of our history. Even on guided tours the serial killer's story is told". 

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The killer disappeared from the 2008 version of the calendar. 

Fritz Haarmann

Friedrich "Fritz" Haarmann (1879 - 1925) is the best known and most mythicized of the three most notorious German cannibal-killers of the 1920's: Georg Carl Grossmann and Karl Denke are the two others.

His deeds were rather well described on many occasions, so we can refer here to an article in the New Criminologist: here.

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Just like Grossmann and Denke, Haarmann used to accost his potential victims at a train station. Just like the others, he was aiming at the feeblest and destitute. Like Grossmann but unlike Denke, he was a sexual deviant.

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All three of them committed their worst crimes during the peak of recession in Germany - in the years after World War I. They all profited of the crimes. Although it has never been proved, they have all allegedly sold, eaten or offered meat of their victims to others (sometimes to their next victim as a prelude to another killing).

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There have been a few movies based on Haarmann's story. Karmakar's Totmacher (1995) was a reconstruction of Haarmann's interrogation by a psychologist at the police station (it has been made made into a theatre piece by the Berliner Kriminal Theater just recently), while Lommel's Die Zärtlichkeit der Wölfe (1973) focused on the last months of Haarmann's killing spree - a period when he was employed by the Hannover police as an informer (in reality he was both an informer and the main suspect in the case of the killings of boys).

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The following scenes show Fritz Haarmann (played by Kurt Raab) in Die Zärtlichkeit der Wölfe as an undercover police officer, a gay pedophile killer and cannibal entrepreneur.