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The Captain of Köpenick and the Uniform Fantasies of German Militarism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2022

Jeffrey Schneider Open the ORCID record for Jeffrey Schneider [Opens in a new window]
Jeffrey Schneider*
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Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, USA
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Extract

Few events in Imperial Germany's forty-plus years of existence have been remembered with as much pride and hilarity as the one that took place on October 16, 1906. It began shortly after noon, when a man dressed in a captain's uniform appeared on the streets in the northern part of Berlin and commandeered two small contingents of soldiers returning to their barracks from guard duty. Claiming to be acting on instructions from the kaiser himself, the man ordered the ten soldiers to accompany him to Köpenick, a small but growing city on the southeastern outskirts of Berlin. Arriving in front of city hall around 3:30 p.m., he assigned four of the men to take up positions at the three entrances of the building to ensure that no one entered or left without his permission. The remaining troops followed him inside, where he instructed two men to secure the ground floor. Heading upstairs, he encountered an off-duty constable, who, along with other police officials, was given the task of controlling the growing crowd of curious gawkers that had begun to amass in the plaza and streets outside. With these arrangements set, he barged into the offices of the mayor and other top officials, announcing their arrest on the kaiser's orders and stationing soldiers outside their doors. Within an hour, he arranged to have the mayor and city treasurer transported by carriage to the Neue Wache, the main guardhouse in central Berlin. After issuing orders for the remaining soldiers to withdraw at 6:00 p.m., the unidentified captain disappeared into the night with the contents of the city's cash box, totaling 3557 marks and 45 pfennig.

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Article
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Central European History , Volume 55 , Issue 2 , June 2022 , pp. 187 - 204
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Central European History Society of the American Historical Association

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References

1 “Kassenraub im Köpenicker Rathaus,” Coburger Zeitung, October 21, 1906.

2 See “Ein unerhörter Gaunerstreich,” Berliner Volks-Zeitung, October 17, 1906, morning edition; “Die Komödie von Köpenick,” Berliner Volks-Zeitung, October 17, 1906, evening edition; “Germany Sees the Joke,” New York Times, October 18, 1906.

3 See Löschburg, Winfried, Ohne Glanz und Gloria. Die Geschichte des “Hauptmanns von Köpenick” (Berlin: Buchverlag Der Morgen, 1978), 100–12Google Scholar.

4 Voigt, Wilhelm, Wie ich Hauptmann von Köpenick wurde (Leipzig and Berlin: Julius Püttmann, 1909)Google Scholar.

5 These early works include P. W. Spassmüller, Gubalke auf der Spur oder Der Hauptmann von Köpenick: Olympische Komödie (Berlin-Steglitz: Quehl, 1906); Gustav Westphal, “Hauptmann v. Köpenick.” Tragikomödie in 4 Handlungen und 1 Soldaten-Intermezzo (Danzig: G. Macholz, 1906). For a listing of additional plays, see Roswitha Flatz, Krieg im Frieden. Das aktuelle Militärstück auf dem Theater des deutschen Kaiserreichs (Frankfurt/Main: V. Klostermann, 1976), 307.

6 Wilhelm Schäfer, Der Hauptmann von Köpenick (Berlin: Verlag der Nation, 1931); Carl Zuckmayer, Der Hauptmann von Köpenick. Des Teufels General (Frankfurt/Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1992).

7 The scholarly literature on German militarism is extensive. For a recent overview, see Roger Chickering, “Militarism and Radical Nationalism,” in Imperial Germany, 1871–1918, ed. James Retallack (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

8 David Blackbourn, The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany, 1780–1918 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 375.

9 Voigt initially found a job in the city of Wismar, until the local police, which viewed him as a threat, summarily deported him from all of Mecklenburg. Only after he was also ordered by the police to leave Berlin did he decide to execute the swindle in Köpenick. See Warren Rosenblum, Beyond the Prison Gates: Punishment and Welfare in Germany, 1850–1933 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 107.

10 Benjamin Carter Hett, “The ‘Captain of Köpenick’ and the Transformation of German Criminal Justice, 1891–1914,” Central European History 36, no. 1 (2003): 3–4.

11 Rosenblum, Beyond the Prison Gates, 103–19.

12 Benjamin Ziemann, “Der ‘Hauptmann von Köpenick’—Symbol für den Sozialmilitarismus im wilhelminischen Deutschland?,” in Grenzüberschreitungen oder der Vermittler Bedrich Loewenstein. Festschrift zum 70. Geburtstag eines europäischen Historikers, ed. V. Precan, M. Janisova, and M. Roeser (Brno and Prag: Ustav pro soudobé dejiny, 1999), 252.

13 Ziemann, “Der ‘Hauptmann von Köpenick,’” 261.

14 Joan Wallach Scott, The Fantasy of Feminist History (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011), 5, 19. On the value of fantasy for historical analysis, see also Lyndal Roper, “Beyond Discourse Theory,” Women's History Review 19, no. 2 (April 2010).

15 Scott Spector, “Was the Third Reich Movie-Made? Interdisciplinarity and the Reframing of ‘Ideology,’” American Historical Review 106, no. 2 (2001): 481; emphasis in original.

16 Slavoj Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London: Verso Books, 1989), 124.

17 For an etymology of the term concurrent with Voigt's scam, see Hans Gross, Handbuch für Untersuchungsrichter als System der Kriminalistik, 5th ed., vol. 1 (Munich: J. Schweitzer Verlag, 1908), 339.

18 G. Pitz, “Hochstapler,” Der Gendarm. Zeitschrift für die Mitglieder der Königlich Preußischen und reichsländischen Gendarmerie 1, no. 5 (May 30, 1903): 107. See also Gustav Aschaffenburg, “Zur Psychologie des Hochstaplers,” März. Halbmonatsschrift für deutsche Kultur 1 (1907): 547.

19 Hans Hyan, “Vorwort,” in Wie ich Hauptmann von Köpenick wurde (Leipzig: Julius Püttmann, 1909), 5.

20 LAB A Rep. 358, Generalstaatsanwaltschaft bei dem Landgericht Berlin, “Judgment of the 3. Strafkammer LG II,” December 1, 1906.

21 Hans von Hentig, Zur Psychologie der Einzeldelikte, vol. 3, Der Betrug (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1957), 38–39, 81, 133.

22 Thomas Mann, Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull (Frankfurt/Main: Fischer, 1989), 39.

23 Gordon A. Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army, 1640–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955), 218.

24 Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army, 1640–1945, 218.

25 Stig Förster, Der doppelte Militarismus. Die deutsche Heeresrüstungspolitik zwischen Status-Quo-Sicherung und Agression 1890–1913 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1985), 26.

26 Förster, Der doppelte Militarismus, 34.

27 Nicolas Stargardt, The German Idea of Militarism: Radical and Socialist Critics, 1866–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 94. On the diminishing need for a coup, see Wilhelm Deist, “Die Armee in Staat und Gesellschaft, 1890–1914,” in Das kaiserliche Deutschland, ed. Michael Stürmer (Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1970), 317–21.

28 See Christopher M. Clark, Kaiser Wilhelm II (Harlow: Longman, 2000), 163.

29 See Stargardt, The German Idea of Militarism, 94.

30 Stenographische Berichte, vol. 259 (1910), 898.

31 Maximilian Harden, “Köpenick,” Die Zukunft, October 27, 1906, 135–36.

32 See, for example, Karl Demeter, The German Officer-Corps in Society and State, 1650–1945, trans. Angus Malcom (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1965), 30–32.

33 See, for instance, Lamar Cecil, Wilhelm II. Prince and Emperor, 1859–1900, vol. 1, 2 vols. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 26–27.

34 “Die Komödie von Köpenick.”

35 O. Gulbransson, “Der heilige Rock von Köpenick oder die Macht der Uniform,” Simplicissimus 11, no. 33 (November 12, 1906): 517 (http://www.simplicissimus.info/uploads/tx_lombkswjournaldb/1/11/11_33_517.jpg).

36 Pitz, “Hochstapler,” 106.

37 Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Lehrbuch der gerichtlichen Psychopathologie, mit Berücksichtigung der Gesetzgebung von Österreich, Frankreich und Deutschland, 3rd ed. (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke, 1900), 41.

38 Hentig, Zur Psychologie der Einzeldelikte, 3, Der Betrug, 146–47.

39 For instance, the head of Hamburg's criminal police, G. A. Hopff, admitted that “actually one has to admire the deftness (Gewandtheit) of their appearance, the cleverness with which they adjust to all situations, and the elegance of their manners.” G. A. Hopff, “Das internationale Verbrechertum und seine Bekämpfung,” in Mitteilungen der Internationalen Kriminalistischen Vereinigung, ed. Ernst Rosenfeld (Berlin: J. Guttentag, 1906), 219.

40 Voigt, Wie ich Hauptmann von Köpenick wurde, 9–10.

41 Reproduced in Walter Bahn, Meine Klienten: Beiträge zur modernen Inquisition, ed. Hans Ostwald, Großstadt-Dokumente, vol. 42 (Berlin and Leipzig: Hermann Seeman Nachfolger, 1908), 103.

42 Friedrich Gustav Graf von Waldersee, Leitfaden bei der Instruction des Infanteristen, 30th ed. (Berlin: C. Grove, 1850), 13.

43 See the sixth section, “Strafbare Handlungen gegen die Pflichten der militärischen Unterordnung,” in Königlich Preußischen Kriegsministerium, ed., Kompendium über Militärrecht (Berlin: Ernst Siegfried Mittler und Sohn, 1900), 178–87.

44 Elaine Glovka Spencer, “Police-Military Relations in Prussia, 1848–1914,” Journal of Social History 19, no. 2 (1985): 306.

45 Förster, Der doppelte Militarismus, 93.

46 Carl Friccius, ed., Preußische Militair-Gesetz-Sammlung, vol. 5, 5 vols. (Berlin: Nicolai, 1856), 374. This royal order remained a source of contention. See, for example, the Reichstag debate from March 14–19, 1898, in Stenographische Berichte. IX. Legislaturperiode. V. Session 1897/1898, vol. 2 (1898), 1495–637.

47 “Der ‘Hauptmann von Köpenick’ vor Gericht,” Berliner Volks-Zeitung, December 2, 1906, morning edition; emphasis in original.

48 “Der ‘Hauptmann’ vor Gericht,” Berliner Volks-Zeitung, December 2, 1906, morning edition; emphasis in original.

49 “Der ‘Hauptmann’ vor Gericht,” Berliner Volks-Zeitung, December 2, 1906, morning edition; emphasis in original.

50 “Der ‘Hauptmann’ vor Gericht,” Berliner Volks-Zeitung, December 2, 1906, morning edition.

51 Robert Zelle, Rudolf Korn, and Georg Langerhans, Handbuch des geltenden öffentlichen und Privat-Rechts für das Gebiet des Preußischen Landrechts, 5th expanded ed. (Berlin: Springer, 1904).

52 “Der Köpenicker Gaunerstreich,” Freiburger Zeitung, October 21, 1906.

53 “Der ‘Hauptmann’ vor Gericht,” Berliner Volks-Zeitung, December 1, 1906, evening edition.

54 “Der ‘Hauptmann’ vor Gericht,” Berliner Volks-Zeitung, December 2, 1906, morning edition; emphasis in original.

55 “Der ‘Hauptmann’ vor Gericht,” Berliner Volks-Zeitung, December 2, 1906, morning edition; emphasis in original.

56 “Der ‘Hauptmann’ vor Gericht,” Berliner Volks-Zeitung, December 2, 1906, morning edition; emphasis in original. Voigt was aware that a helmet was required but was unable to find one that fit him properly, so he purchased and used an officer's cap instead.

57 Only after the carriages carrying the mayor, his wife, and the chief municipal secretary had departed for the Neue Wache and Voigt had himself left the scene, did any of those with authority decide to take measures to ascertain the truth. According to Winfried Löschburg, members of the city council (Stadtrat), who despite Voigt's takeover had been admitted into the building for a scheduled meeting, attempted to contact the district administrator (Landrat) of Teltow as well as the commandant's headquarters in Berlin, which both initially took the request for information about the “military occupation” of Köpenick's city hall as a practical joke and delayed responding. Löschburg, Ohne Glanz und Gloria, 80.

58 The Niederbarnimer Zeitung in Friedrichshagen. Quoted in “Der ‘Hauptmann’ von Köpenick,” Berliner Volks-Zeitung, October 18, 1906, morning edition.

59 Karl Kraus, “Karl der Große und Wilhelm Voigt,” Die Fackel 8, no. 213 (1906): 2.

60 Harden, “Köpenick,” 134–35.

61 Bakhtin discusses the carnivalesque in M. M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968). For useful overviews of this tricky concept, see Simon Dentith, Bakhtinian Thought: An Introductory Reader (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 65–87; Caryl Emerson, The First Hundred Years of Mikhail Bakhtin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 93–107, 162–206.

62 Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology, 124.

63 Hentig, Zur Psychologie der Einzeldelikte, 3, Der Betrug, 81–82.

64 Voigt, Wie ich Hauptmann von Köpenick wurde, 109.

65 Voigt, Wie ich Hauptmann von Köpenick wurde, 109.

66 Though the police official was called as a witness at the trial, he was unable to be present, having been temporarily reassigned to the province of Posen to deal with the school strike. “Der ‘Hauptmann’ vor Gericht,” Berliner Volks-Zeitung, December 1, 1906, evening edition.

67 Voigt, Wie ich Hauptmann von Köpenick wurde, 127.

68 See Philipp Müller, “Journalistische Vermittlung und ihre Aneignung. Die öffentlichen Verhandlungen über Wilhelm Voigt alias Hauptmann von Köpenick in Berlin 1906/08,” Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften 13, no. 2 (2002).

69 “Der Staatsstreich von Köpenick oder: Ein unsterblicher Schelmenstreich,” Volksstimme, October 19, 1906; emphasis in original.

70 LAB A Pr Br Rep. 030-07 Nr 1091, Personal-Akten des königlichen Polizei-Präsidium zu Berlin betreffend Wilhelm Voigt alias Hauptmann von Köpenick, “Bekanntmachung,” October 22, 1906.

71 “Steckbrief,” Kladderadatsch 59, no. 43 (October 28, 1906): 170 (https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/kla1906/0636).

72 Quoted in “Der Köpenicker Gaunerstreich,” Freiburger Zeitung, October 21, 1906.

73 “Kassenraub im Köpenicker Rathaus.”

74 “Der Hauptmann gefaßt,” Volksstimme, October 27, 1906.

75 “Der Köpenicker Gaunerstreich,” Freiburger Zeitung, October 21, 1906.

76 Löschburg, Ohne Glanz und Gloria, 221.

77 Löschburg, Ohne Glanz und Gloria, 221.

78 “Der ‘Hauptmann von Köpenick,’” Freiburger Zeitung, December 2, 1906.

79 “Treibt wieder mal die Sympathie / Beim Baden Sie zu meinem Wohle, / Dann bitt’ ich sehr, gestatten Sie, / Daß ich die Gabe selbst mir hole!” “Der ‘Hauptmann’ Voigt an die Spenderinnen vom Admiralsgartenbad,” Kladderadatsch, 1906, 673.

80 “Respekt vor der Uniform,” Volksstimme, October 31, 1906.

81 “Nervenkur des ‘Hauptmanns von Köpenick,’” Berliner Tageblatt, October 2, 1908, evening edition.

82 Though Voigt claimed at his trial to be a widower with children in Prague, probably in an effort to convince the judge that he was a family man, he in fact exhibited a surprising lack of interest in “the fair sex.” His lawyer hinted that Voigt may have had homosexual inclinations, noting that his long prison sentences involved “the deprivation of normal sexual pleasure combined with the inevitable mushrooming (Emporwuchern) of perverse tendencies, the least of which is the masturbation.” Bahn, Meine Klienten, 72; emphasis in original.

83 “Was in Deutschland noch möglich ist,” Wiener Caricaturen 26, no. 43 (October 28, 1906): 1 (https://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/annoshow?call=wcc|19061028|1|33.0|0).

84 “Die Tochter des Bürgermeisters,” Simplicissimus 11, no. 33 (12 November 1906): 527 (http://www.simplicissimus.info/uploads/tx_lombkswjournaldb/1/11/11_33_527.jpg).

85 Dentith, Bakhtinian Thought, 74.

86 “Der Gaunerstreich von Köpenick,” Freiburger Zeitung, October 20, 1906.

87 “Der Köpenicker Gaunerstreich,” Freiburger Zeitung, October 21, 1906.

88 “Der Köpenicker Gaunerstreich,” Freiburger Zeitung, October 21, 1906.

89 “Der Staatsstreich von Köpenick oder: Ein unsterblicher Schelmenstreich,” Volksstimme, October 19, 1906.

90 Dentith, Bakhtinian Thought, 74.

91 See Löschburg, Ohne Glanz und Gloria, 70.

92 Hentig, Zur Psychologie der Einzeldelikte, 3, Der Betrug, 81.

93 Aschaffenburg, “Zur Psychologie des Hochstaplers,” 544.

94 Aschaffenburg, “Zur Psychologie des Hochstaplers,” 544.

95 Ziemann, “Der ‘Hauptmann von Köpenick,’” 258.

96 Slavoj Žižek, “The Seven Veils of Fantasy,” in The Plague of Fantasies (London: Verso, 1997), 6.

97 Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology, 28, 33; emphasis in original; Karl Marx, “The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof,” in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: Norton, 1978), 322.

98 Knowledge of uniforms was inculcated at an early age. For instance, many middle-class men recalled receiving as a child army and navy outfits that were “so carefully and exquisitely executed that they can only be distinguished from real uniforms by their smaller size.” Paul Hildebrandt, Das Spielzeug im Leben des Kindes (Berlin: G. Söhlke, 1904), 284–85. Meanwhile, one pedagogue who grew up in a city frequented by soldiers from around the world proudly recalled that he “not only acquired a great knowledge of uniforms (Uniformkenntnis) but also eventually studied them in such depth that I was capable of immediately recognizing each foreign uniform.” Dr. Grävell, “Die Uniform als Erzieher,” Pädagogisches Archiv. Monatsschrift für Erziehung und Unterricht 46, no. 12 (1904): 788.

99 For a good account of Voigt's travails in collecting his uniform, see Löschburg, Ohne Glanz und Gloria, 15–20.

100 Reproduced in Wolfgang Heidelmeyer, ed., Der Fall Köpenick. Akten und zeitgenössische Dokumente zur Historie einer preußischen Moritat (Frankfurt/Main: Fischer, 1968), 98.

101 “Der Hauptmann, der Hauptmann—gefangen!,” Volksstimme, October 28, 1906.

102 Voigt, Wie ich Hauptmann von Köpenick wurde, 130.

103 Kennedy, Robert F., The Pursuit of Justice, ed. Lowi, Theodore J. (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), 47Google Scholar.

104 LAB A Rep. 358, Generalstaatsanwaltschaft bei dem Landgericht Berlin, “Judgment of the 3. Strafkammer LG II.”

105 On the case's impact on criminal justice reform, see Rosenblum, Beyond the Prison Gates, 113–19; Hett, “The ‘Captain of Köpenick’ and the Transformation of German Criminal Justice, 1891–1914.”

106 Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology, 49.

107 “Voigts Dankschreiben an den Kaiser,” Berliner Tageblatt, August 25, 1908, evening edition.

108 Voigt, Wie ich Hauptmann von Köpenick wurde, 16.

109 “Koepenick Raider Tells of His Exploit: Voight [sic], the Cobbler, Who Posed as a Kaiser Guard and Held Up a Treasury, Is Here,” New York Times, April 8, 1910.

110 Robert Salis, “Ein anderes Hauptübel unserer Zeit,” Allgemeine Rundschau 5, no. 2 (September 5, 1908): 592.

111 Lindau, Paul, “Der Hauptmann von Köpenick,” in Ausflüge ins Kriminalistische (Munich: A. Langen, 1909), 272Google Scholar.