Fritz Haarmann: The Vampire of Hanover, Germany
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Then, on May 29th, another skull washed up along the shore. Were these relics from the First World War? Or was something sinister happening in peacetime Germany? The city soon calmed. Talk of missing skulls faded from the papers until June 13th, when two more appeared in the same area of the Leine River. Autopsies proved that two of the skulls belonged to young men between 18 and 20 years old.

The last one found was that of a child no older than 12. The crania had been precisely severed with a sharp instrument in all four cases. At first, police in Hanover believed the skulls were part of a med school prank by students at the anatomical institute in Göttingen. They also figured grave robbers could have ditched the skulls while running from the law.

Both theories were disproven when another group of boys found a literal bag of human bones in the marshlands outside the city. By then, Hanover had a significant missing persons problem on their hands. In 1923, upwards of 600 young boys between the ages of 14 and 18 had gone missing. Rumors spread that they were killed, and their meat was sold at public markets.

By early June, newspapers suggested there was a werewolf or man-eater at large in Hanover. Spurred by fear, hundreds of locals banded with the police to comb the area for more body parts. They dammed the Leine River only to make a grisly find. They found 500 more bones belonging to at least 22 young people. Despite being submerged for several years, police could tell that many joints had smoothly cut surfaces.

Whoever killed these men had dismembered them too, and they were good at it. Ironically, the butcher of Hanover was right under their noses. He was an army veteran and a known homosexual, which was illegal in Germany at the time. He'd been in and out of prison for petty crimes like robbery and assault, but proved his worth as a police informant. His name was Fritz Harman, one of Germany's most prolific serial killers.

He targeted young men and boys and lured them back to his home under the guise of work. Then, like a vampire, he'd bite into their necks, ripping out their Adam's apples and tracheas, thus causing them to suffocate and bleed to death. He'd dissect their bodies like a mad scientist before throwing the remains into the Laina River. He operated with impunity between 1918 and 1924, killing at least 24 people.

though many believed the final number could be much higher. They called him Der Schlechte von Hanover, or the Butcher of Hanover, because he carved up his victims and allegedly sold their meat to the public. Some called him Der Vampir von Hanover, or the Vampire, due to his method of biting through victims' necks. Only this vampire operated during the day. He mingled with the public and was friendly with the police.

Nobody knew how sharp his fangs were until it was too late. Part 1: Sins of my Fuhrer Friedrich Heinrich Karl Fritz Harman was born in Hanover in October 1879. He was the youngest of six children and was especially beloved by his mother. She was 41 when Fritz was born, which is considered risky even by today's standards. The pregnancy and delivery left her incredibly ill.

and she was bedridden for the rest of her life. Fritz was a quiet kid with few friends. He felt more comfortable around his sisters than his brothers, often playing with their dolls and dressing in their clothes. He developed a passion for cooking and sewing, and many considered his behavior noticeably effeminate. Fritz loved his mother but hated his father. The couple was odd by German standards. She was seven years his senior,

They say Fritz's father only married his mother because doing so would earn him a healthy dowry of real estate. It elevated Harmon Sr. to a status of wealth that he loved flaunting. He'd spent his nights drinking and sleeping with women from the seedier corners of Old Town. He was argumentative and short-tempered at home, especially with his effeminate son. Karma caught up with him though, as he contracted syphilis from one of his many affairs.

When Fritz was 15, he left school to enroll in the German Military Academy. Training began in April of 1895, and Fritz quickly proved his worth as a soldier. Five months later, he began suffering lapses in consciousness. Doctors diagnosed the fits as being "equivalent to epilepsy" and issued Fritz a discharge in October of 1895. The structure of military life had kept Fritz out of trouble.

left to his own devices, he began acting on his sexual impulses. He'd lure young boys into secluded areas where he'd touch and abuse them. The accusations piled up, and soon, the town doctor declared Fritz incurably deranged. He was remanded to a mental institution in Hildesheim in February 1897. In January 1898, Fritz escaped the mental hospital and fled to Zurich, Switzerland.

Many believe his mother funded the escape. He remained in Zurich for a little over a year. In April 1899, he returned to Hanover and married a girl named Erna Lurvoort. Both set of parents agreed to the union. Fritz's mother and father hoped the wedding would quell the young German's depraved impulses. It did not. Fritz abandoned Erna when she got pregnant and ran away to join the army again.

Despite being a skilled marksman and an exemplary soldier, Fritz was forced to leave the army again due to medical issues. He was diagnosed with probable dementia praecox, a disused term that, at one time, described young people suffering from rapid cognitive disintegration. Today, we would call it schizophrenia. The diagnosis earned him a monthly military pension of 21 gold marks.

He returned to Hanover to live with Erna and began working in his father's cigar factory. But honest work didn't interest Fritz. He filed a maintenance lawsuit against his father, claiming he couldn't work due to his mental ailments. A year later, Fritz's mother died, and a violent fight occurred between father and son. Harmon Sr. wanted Fritz sent back to the mental institution. He claimed his son was blackmailing him and had made several death threats.

his bid failed. But Fritz was still ordered to undergo a mental evaluation in 1903. A doctor determined that, while Fritz's morals were slanted, he was not mentally unstable. Der Vampir von Hanover was released back into society. For the next decade, he lived off the taxpayer's dollar, earning extra as a petty thief and small-time conman. He was in and out of jail between 1905 and 1912.

In 1913, a search of his home revealed a stockpile of stolen goods linking him to several area robberies. For these latest offenses, he was sentenced to five years in prison. In other words, he spent the entirety of World War I behind bars. Running a retail business isn't easy. Juggling multiple stores, staff, and fulfillment centers? That's a lot to handle. But Shopify Point of Sale streamlines it all.

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Germany was a starving and demoralized state after losing the First World War. Hanover itself was called the Sodom of Germany, referring to the famous city of sin from the Old Testament. Con artists, prostitutes, thieves, gamblers, runaways, and downtrodden soldiers flooded the streets. It was the kind of place where crime thrived, and the police simply couldn't keep up. Fritz Harman flourished in the chaos.

He ran a lucrative fencing business, selling all kinds of stolen goods. He specialized in clothes and smuggled meats, the latter of which was hard to find post-war. As the saying goes, "There's no honor among thieves." Fritz took that saying to a new level when he became a trusted informant for the local police department. They knew his criminal history. They knew he was likely still committing similar crimes.

Worst of all, they all knew he was a homosexual, which was enough to arrest him on the spot. But Fritz had connections. He fed them a steady stream of low-level crooks to keep the heat off his own back. The setup was simple: Fritz would arrange to sell stolen goods for a petty thief. The thief, in turn, agreed to meet Fritz at his flat with the items. When he arrived, the police would kick the door in and arrest both men.

Fritz would be released in secret later, to keep up appearances in the criminal underworld. His police work put him in close contact with young boys and men around Hanover. Fritz liked to patrol the train station and detain people for not having the proper paperwork. The police would arrive later and take the person into custody. Fritz became such a crutch for the police department that they allowed him to operate with impunity.

He was free to patrol the station at will and harass anybody he saw fit. Fritz took it a step too far and began killing and dismembering people as he saw fit. On September 25th, 1918, a 17-year-old runaway named Friedl Roth vanished from his home in Hanover. According to his mother, he left a note saying he would not return home until she was nice again.

Several friends reported seeing Friedl with Fritz Harman after the teen ran away. Other tips led police to Fritz's single-room flat. Under pressure from the Roth family, police raided the apartment in October of 1918. They found Fritz in bed with a half-naked 13-year-old boy. They arrested and charged him with sexual assault and battery on a minor, yet failed to search the rest of the home for Friedl Roth.

Fritz would later say that, if they had, they'd have found the boy's head wrapped in newspaper behind the stove. Fritz was sentenced to nine months in jail for assaulting a minor. However, his cunning and close ties to the local police allowed him to delay prison for about a year. During that year, he met 18-year-old Hans Granz at the Hanover train station.

Hans was a runaway from Berlin, who left home after an argument with his father on October 1st. He'd been sleeping around the Hanover station for two weeks, selling old, and likely stolen, clothes to feed himself. That's when he spotted an older man harassing people over paperwork. Even though Hans was heterosexual, he talked himself into prostitution for extra cash. He knew Fritz Harman was gay, and chose him as an easy target.

He approached Fritz, but then something unexpected happened. A friendship blossomed. Hans began living with Fritz, and the two became inseparable. They were lovers, and they quarreled like it too. On several occasions, Fritz would kick Hans out for mocking and manipulating him. But they'd always reconcile, and Hans would come back home. Fritz later admitted to viewing Hans more like a son than a lover.

In his own words, he needed someone he meant everything to. By 1920, Fritz could no longer delay his jail sentence. He spent March to December behind bars. During that time, Hans moved around Germany, stealing and selling goods until he could finally be with Fritz again. Upon his release, Fritz and Hans found a vacant ground-floor apartment near the Leine River in Hanover.

Fritz told the landlady they'd be using it for storage, but he and Hans wound up living there as of July 1921. By early 1922, both men were making decent money. Fritz was still collecting disability checks while also trading in stolen goods, mainly clothes. People knew Fritz was a homosexual, so they assumed he was making the clothes himself. They never thought he'd start killing young men while also selling the jackets off their backs.

Part 3: Der Vampir von Hanover The vampire's second victim was a 17-year-old pianist named Fritz Franke. We'll refer to the victim as Franke to avoid confusion. Fritz met Franke at the train station on February 12th, 1923. He invited him back to the Leine River flat, where Hans and two female companions were waiting.

When Fritz entered with Franke, Hans leaned over to one of the girls and whispered, "He's going to be trampled on today." The girls returned the following day to learn that Franke had caught a train to Hamburg. That was obviously a lie. As the story goes, Hans arrived hours before and found Fritz in bed with Franke's dead body. Hans allegedly did not react. He simply asked, "When shall I come back again?"

Fritz killed his next three victims over the next two months. 17-year-old Wilhelm Scholz disappeared while traveling for work. 16-year-old Roland Huck vanished in May after running away to join the Marines. 19-year-old Hans Sonnenfeld went missing shortly after. Fritz was known to wear Sonnenfeld's distinctive yellow overcoat after the murder. For the rest of 1923, Fritz would capture and kill about a dozen more young men.

almost all were lured away from the Hanover train station under the guise of work or accommodations. Some allowed themselves to be apprehended, believing Fritz was a police officer. Some train station workers even believed Fritz was a secret detective for the Hanover police. They watched him drag young men away, assuming he had good reason.

All hell broke loose inside Fritz's apartment. He claims he never intended to kill his victims. He simply could not quench the urge to bite into their necks and rip out their Adam's apple. He'd do so as he strangled them. Then, while in the throes of ecstasy, he'd collapse atop their bodies as they choked and bled to death. Fritz always insisted that dismembering the bodies was his least favorite part.

He knew he wouldn't like it, but his passion at the moment of murder was stronger than the horror of cutting and chopping. Some writers dispute that fact, citing Fritz's fascination with knives dating back to his childhood. They think he loved it and was quite good at it.

It generally took him two days to chop up and dispose of a body. Each dissection began with a stiff cup of black coffee. Then, Fritz would place the victim's body on the floor and cover the face with a cloth. He didn't like the way they looked at him. He'd cut open their bellies and place their intestines in a bucket. Then, he'd stuff the cavity with towels to soak up the remaining blood. From there, he made three cuts along the shoulders and ribs.

He'd take hold of the bones and push until they broke. He'd remove the victims' lungs, kidneys, and heart, and dice them up like a chef making a stir-fry. They'd wind up in the blood bucket with the intestines. Next to go were the arms and legs. Like a proper butcher, he cut flesh from the limbs and torso, not wasting a single piece of meat. There are rumors that Fritz bagged the human meat and sold it to the public.

Authors who've written about him believe he discarded it in the toilet or river. The last piece to go was, of course, the head. Fritz removed it from the torso and used a paring knife to carve excess flesh. He then wrapped the skull in rags and bludgeoned it with an axe until it splintered. He finally removed the brain, which was placed in the blood bucket and discarded into the river. The murders continued unabated throughout 1924.

Police believe he killed his final victim, 17-year-old Enric de Vries, on June 14th, about a month after the first skull was found in the Leine River. Perhaps that's why Fritz dumped Enric's remains in a lake near Herrenhassen Gardens instead of the river. He claims it took him four trips to lug all the bones from his flat. Part 4: Stake Through the Heart There was a scavenger hunt for bones in Hanover.

By mid-June 1924, over 500 pieces had been discovered and tied to 22 dead bodies. Police blocked the flow of the river and searched a large section of the Laina River, expecting to uncover a graveyard at the bottom. Some bones were fresh, others had been there for years. All of them belonged to young men, and most had knife wounds and signs of dismemberment.

Suspicion quickly fell on Fritz Harman, who had already been tied to the disappearance of Friedel Roth in 1918. They also suspected him for the murder of 14-year-old Hermann Koch, who vanished a week before Roth. Fritz was known to keep company with Koch and allegedly wrote a letter to the boys' school explaining his prolonged absence. Police, however, were never able to confirm Fritz Harman's role in the 14-year-old's disappearance.

Investigators began tailing Fritz, and two undercover officers were brought from Berlin to observe his every move. On June 22nd, 1924, the undercovers spotted Fritz stalking the Hanover train station. They watched him argue with a 15-year-old boy, only to drag the boy before uniformed officers, claiming he was traveling with forged documents. Police arrested the boy, who confessed to living with Fritz for three days.

During that time, Fritz had raped and assaulted him repeatedly. The accusation was enough to arrest Fritz and charge him with sexual assault. It also gave the police enough reason to raid his home. Inside, they found blood all over the floors, walls, and mattress. Fritz claimed it was all the illegal meat he was smuggling. His neighbors and acquaintances told police about all the young men they saw Fritz bringing home.

Oddly, they never saw any of those boys leave. In fact, after these men "visited," neighbors saw Fritz the next day carrying what looked like heavy bags down toward the Leine River. Police found clothes and personal items belonging to many missing young men around Hanover. They confiscated everything and put it on display at the station. Grieving parents from around Germany came to see if their boy had fallen victim to the vampire.

Two of those parents were Mr. and Mrs. Witzel. On April 26th, 1924, their 18-year-old son, Robert, asked to borrow 50 cents to visit a traveling circus. He was never seen again. As his parents investigated the case, they learned that Robert was seen leaving the train with an official from the railway station.

While sitting in the police station after Fritz Harman's arrest, they spotted another couple walking through. Robert Witzel's father immediately recognized his son's jacket. The man wearing it claimed he'd gotten the jacket from Fritz Harman. The interior identification tag bore the name Witzel. Coincidentally, the woman walking with this man was Fritz's landlady.

The only reason they were in the police station was to inquire about her tenants' military pension. The fact that their paths crossed that day was pure luck. The nail in the coffin came when police found Robert Witzel's skull buried in Fritz's garden. In the face of overwhelming evidence, Fritz broke down and confessed to the murders. He told the police everything: how he bit out their Adam's apples and meticulously dismembered their bodies.

He described the feeling of killing them as "rabid sexual passion." He claims he lost control and never meant to kill anybody. Police didn't buy it and were able to prove forethought and intent. Fritz would spend days planning his kills and then take steps to dissuade friends and family members from filing missing person reports. When they asked Fritz how many people he'd killed, he responded, "Somewhere between 50 and 70."

The figure could easily be that high, though police could only connect 27 disappearances to Fritz through the clothing found in his possession. Therefore, Fritz Harman was arrested and charged with 27 counts of murder. Hans Granz was detained in July and charged with being an accessory. Part 5: Trial of the Vampire Fritz Harman's trial began on December 4th, 1924.

He was like the German O.J. Simpson. Everyone wanted to know every salacious detail. Newspapers described the Vampire of Hanover as the most revolting case in German criminal history. That headline obviously didn't age well. Fritz insisted on representing himself and remained nonchalant throughout the trial. At one point, he complained about too many women in the courtroom.

He began smoking a cigar out of boredom while a grieving mother testified about her son. He routinely interrupted other witnesses and made an overall mockery of the legal system. He only got quiet when asked to identify photographs of his victims. He claimed he didn't know them despite their clothes being found in his home. When police asked how that was possible, Fritz shrugged and said, "I probably killed him."

Nearly 200 people testified during the trial. Some included neighbors who bought meat from Fritz, claiming he always left with new packages but never arrived with them. His landlady testified about her family getting violently sick after eating sausages purchased from Fritz. He claimed the skins were typical sheep's intestines. The landlady feared they could have been human. Hans Granz's female friends testified about human mouth bones boiling in a soup kettle.

They took the bones in secret to the police, but the cops said they belonged to a pig. As more details emerged about Fritz's relationship with Hanover police, many questioned why he was never a suspect when young boys began going missing. Police knew his criminal history. They knew he was a homosexual and that he'd been caught with a young boy before. His value as an informant may have helped them ignore the situation. Fritz did their job for them.

Maybe they just got used to it. After a two-week trial, Fritz Harman was found guilty of murdering 24 of the alleged 27 victims. He was promptly sentenced to death by beheading. Upon hearing the sentence, Fritz stood tall and proclaimed, "I accept the verdict fully and freely, and I shall go to the decapitating block happily." Hans Granz was found guilty of incitement to murder and also sentenced to death by beheading.

He was less enthusiastic and collapsed in his cell after the reading. He appealed his conviction but was denied in February of 1925. Meanwhile, Fritz had all kinds of demands for how his execution was to take place. He wanted to be killed in the marketplace. On his tombstone, he wanted the inscription "Here lies mass murderer Harman." To his dismay, all of his requests were denied.

On April 15th, 1925, around 6 o'clock in the morning, Fritz walked into the executioner's chamber in Hanover prison, according to the few people who witnessed the beheading. Fritz's last words were: "I repent, but I do not fear death." The blade came down moments later. You might think the guillotine had no place in 20th century Europe, but it was still 50 years away from being abolished.

The last person beheaded in the Western world was a Tunisian murderer sentenced to death in France. He was executed in September 1977. Back in 1920s Germany, sections of Fritz Harman's brain were removed and kept for forensic analysis. His head was preserved in formaldehyde at the Göttingen Medical School until it was cremated in 2014.

The bones of his victims were collected and buried in a shared grave in Strkina Cemetery. It's marked by a trifold tombstone bearing their names and ages. As for Hans, he was spared the executioner's blade when police found a letter written by Fritz before he died. The letter, addressed to Hans' father, stated that Hans knew nothing of Fritz's crimes. Whatever horrible things Fritz said about him during the trial were not true.

The letter earned Hans a new trial, in which he was found guilty of aiding and abetting Fritz Harman. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison, but acquitted of all prior charges. His death sentence was wiped away. After his sentence, Hans was allegedly interned at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he remained until Allied forces liberated the area in 1945.

He returned to Hanover and lived quietly until he died in 1975. In the wake of Fritz Harman's crimes, no community suffered more than the gay community. The 1920s was a fraught time for homosexuals in Germany. Before the National Socialists, aka the Nazis, rose to power, cities like Berlin and Hanover had a thriving scene.

Gay men lived somewhat openly despite homosexuality being illegal in Germany under paragraph 175 of the Reich Penal Code of 1872, which states: "An unnatural sex act committed between persons of male sex or by humans with animals is punishable by imprisonment. The loss of civil rights might also be imposed." Fritz's crimes hardened every harmful stereotype about gay men in Germany.

As one historian puts it, "It split the movement irreparably, fed every prejudice against homosexuality, and provided new fodder for conservative adversaries of legal sex reform." As the Nazi Party gained traction, they doubled down on paragraph 175, gay men were brought to concentration camps and labeled with pink triangles.

According to historical records, 53,000 men were prosecuted under paragraph 175. Roughly 10,000 were brought to the camps where many of them likely died. Der Vampir von Hanover was dead, but a new horror was on the horizon. The most revolting case in German criminal history was about to be left in the dust.

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