Los Angeles herald., 1909-12-25
GERMANY HAS ITS
SHERLOCK HOLMES
WEALTHY YOUNG FARMER IS
GREAT DETECTIVE
Exposed kieI Dockyard Crafts and
Has Also Helped kaiser's
Officers in Unearthing
Wanted Criminals

BERLIN, Dec. 24.-From farmer u
detective - the uncommon route by
which Herr Wannowski, the German
Sherlock Holmes, has risen to fame.
Herr WannowSki is the brilliant young
Berlin detective who was chiefly re-
sponsible for unearthing the evidence
on which the great hiel dockyard
graft exposures are based. IL is due
primarily TO his adroitness that the
imperial admiralty has run to earth
the ring of contractors and dockyard
officials who are alleged to have Sc
cured 600 worth of plunuer dur
ing a period OF ten years.
WannoWsld, the son of a Posen law
yer, was born al DanZig in 1870. After
passing the examination for one-year
volunteers and serving for twelve
month iii the Eighteenth artillery he
became an officer OF the Twenty NTH
artillery, rank which he still holds.
With a fortune inherited from his
father, NannowsH became a landed
propr etor in his native province of
Posen and chose the career OF gem
tleman farmer. Fate, however, seemed
to decree that mysteries noC agricul-
ture, were to be WannoWski life work.
for his farming adventure was not sue
cessful, ana in 1900 he arrived in Berlin
intent on becoming police official.
Wannowsk was assigned to the detec-
tive department, where he speedily won
the title OF commissary. His first great
case was Il mystifying railway wreck
in East Prussia in 1908. a passenger
train had been derailed, three persons
killed and score more or less severely
injured. The perpetrator Of the out
rage-the rails had been deliberately
torn up-could not be traced by the
traffic authorities Young Wannowski
u = I1xFV n
deduction WannowslI decided that the
derailment was the work of a drunken
man who did not live more than three
miles from the railway line. Donning
the garb of an itinerant cyclist, Wan
noWsM proceeded to canvass all the
taverns in the region for three miles
on either bank Of the line. Within
twenty-four hours he had ferreted out
the wrecker, miller, who had the week
before unsuccessfully sued the railway
administration, and in a fit of drunken
desperation had revenged himself by
Wrecking a train.
Just before the I<iel revelations
Wannowski did a brilliant piece of
work in tracing the murderer Heider,
a Berlin apache who enticed a
Jewish tailors apprentice to his apart
ments, killing him and, after mutt
lating the body hid the remains in the
Tiergarten park. The trunk, arms and
legs were deposited in one part of the
park, the head, cut and slashed be-
yond all recognition, and 300 yards
away. After the surgeons of Alexan-
der Platz, Berlin's Scotland Yard, had
with rare skill practically recon-
structed the head, Wannowskfs en-
deavors succeeded in Identifying the
youth on whose shoulders 1t had once
rested.
Finds Right Man
Then began a long and heart-break-
ing search for the murderer. After
spending ten days and nights in the
local "Whitechapel' district the de-
tectlve convinced himself that GER
tain Heider was the culprit. A rev
nights later Heider was arrested by
Wannowski himself in a crowd watch
ing the garrison church fire. Heider
made a full confession.
A few months later Berlin was terri
fed by a series of mysterious Ripper
attacks on girls and women, For
weeks local womankind was in a state
of abiect fear. Women were afraid TO
be seen in the streets of even the most
fashionable residential districts, and
mistresses experienced difficulty In get
ting servants to visit shops in broad
daylight. Wannowsk was prominently
drive" organized by the police to
wipe out Ripper" attacks, which soon
ceased after the arrest of a number or
ow-cIass men and boys, some of whom
were caught in the act of stabbing
girls or preparing to waylay them.
After the Admiralty authorities
found themselves baffled in the at
tempt to elicit the source of dockyard
graft" at Kiel, the services of Wan
nowski were requesitioned from Ber-
lin. The manner of his assignment to
the case is interesting. His superior
officers at Berlin sent him to Ham
burg one night without or-ers, except
to call next morning at the Hamburg
G. p. O. for a letter which would con-
tain his instructions. They were to
the effect that he was to nose about"
Hamburg among material contractors
and then proceed to Kiel, where he
was to worm himself into the conf
dence of suspected dockyard officials
and employees. The arrest and indict-
ment Of Messrs. Frankenthal and
Jacobsohn, dockyard officials Helm
rich and Chrunst, and their respective
alleged accomplices in defrauding the
government speedily followed.
Wannowsk is the crowns chief bull
warll in the trial at Kiel.' He has been
bitterly attacked by the defense, but
his testimony has not been under
mined. The German sherlock
Holmes was decorated with the Prus-
scian order of the Red Eagle by the
kaiser a few months ago as a reward
for his clever work on the Heider
"Ripper" crime.
This extraordinary man is of medium
build, broad -shouldered and smooth
shaven. A particularly keen and
piercing pair of steel-blue eyes are his
ewes which have more than once, so
the story goes, extracted a confession
from guilty crooks.