Most Germans want to cite the period in the 1960s/1970s....where this event occurred. But the truth is....it goes back to the summer of 1913, and it's an interesting story.
A 30-year old German guy by the name of Heinz Schmidt had attempted in his life to be a teacher. He had grown up in the northeastern side of Germany and probably would have been classified as a gifted student as a kid. For roughly a dozen years...he was a teacher, and then around the spring of 1912, he had some type of emotional breakdown.
No one ever goes back to research the extent of this, or the factor that led him to this breakdown. Maybe dealing with kids....maybe it was just too much stress for the guy. But in this spring of 1912....he ended up at a mental facility for a couple of months.
The details are sketchy....but toward the fall of 1912, Heinz has lost his teaching job, and the mental facilities 'handlers' seem to think he's recovered from the breakdown. So he's released.
Heinz travels west and makes his way to Bremen....roughly a 300 km move. It's very little written over the next 18 months. But on 20 June 1913....Heinz enters a school in the Bremen area. The authorities will write in their final report....that he walked in with a minimum of six pistols (for some reason, it's often suggested that maybe it was up to ten).....and 1,000 rounds of ammo.
The authorities will note in their investigation that the dealer of weapons was kinda shocked over the size of the ammo purchase and actually did contact the local police. But they didn't seem to think it was a big deal.
When Heinz was done in the school.....he'd killed four young girls (under the age of seven), and wounded at least twenty more. It should be noted....a fifth girl died when she was trying to escape and fell down a stairs....breaking her neck.
All of this shooting led to locals around the school running toward the building (without weapons) to attempt to take the guy (these were the old-fashioned Germans....not the modern day types).
In the end, it was actually the janitor of the school who managed to grab ahold of Heinz and hold him. As the cops arrived, things got pretty intense with folks kinda disturbed by the killing of young girls. The crowd wanted to lynch Heinz on the spot, and the only thing that stopped them was the waving of swords by the local police.
What happened to Heinz after this episode? This is an interesting side-note. The authorities checked out Heinz and came to the conclusion that he was 'nuts'. While normal laws would dictate that he be tried, and executed if found guilty.....they stepped around that law, and just sent Heinz to some mental facility for the remainder of his life.
Heinz lived on for another 19 years, before dying of TB....in the mental facility.
Some Germans, who know of the Bremen school episode.....will say this was the upswing on gun laws in Germany in this early period. Yes, there were a fair number of changes to the German gun laws in the Nazi-era. And yes, there were even other changes noted in the 1922-to-1924 era. But this 1913-to-1914 gun law era had an effect as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment