Peter Kürten
Encyclopedia
Peter Kürten was a German serial killer
dubbed The Vampire of Düsseldorf by the contemporary media. He committed a series of sex crimes, assault
s and murder
s against adults and children, most notoriously from February to November 1929 in Düsseldorf
.
family in Mülheim am Rhein
, the third of 13 children. As a child, he witnessed his alcoholic father repeatedly sexually assault
his mother and his sisters. He followed in his father's footsteps, and was soon sexually abusing his sisters. He engaged in petty criminality from a young age, and was a frequent runaway. He later claimed to have committed his first murders at the age of nine, drowning
two young friends while swimming. He moved with his family to Düsseldorf
in 1894 and received a number of short prison
sentences for various crimes, including theft
and arson
. As a youth he was employed by the local dogcatcher, a job which allowed him to indulge in animal cruelty.
Kürten progressed from torturing animals to attacks on people. He committed his first provable murder in 1913, strangling a 10-year-old girl, Christine Klein, during the course of a burglary
. His crimes were then halted by World War I
and an eight-year prison sentence. In 1921 he left prison and moved to Altenburg
, where he married. In 1925 he returned to Düsseldorf
, where he began the series of crimes that would culminate in his capture, sentencing to death and execution.
ed a woman and molested and murdered an eight-year-old girl. On 13 February he murdered a middle-aged mechanic
, stabbing him 20 times. Kürten did not attack again until August, stabbing three people in separate attacks on the 21st; murdering two sisters, aged five and 14, on the 23rd; and stabbing another woman on the 24th. In September he committed a single rape
and murder
, brutally beating a servant girl with a hammer in woods that lay just outside of Düsseldorf. In October he attacked two women with a hammer. On 7 November he killed a five-year-old girl by strangling and stabbing her 36 times with scissors, and then sent a map to a local newspaper disclosing the location of her grave. The variety of victims and murder methods gave police the impression that more than one killer was at large: the public turned in over 900,000 different names to the police as potential suspects.
The November murder was Kürten's last, although he engaged in a spate of non-fatal hammer attacks from February to March 1930. In May he accosted a young woman named Maria Budlick; he initially took her to his home, and then to the Grafenberger Woods, where he raped but did not kill her. Budlick led the police to Kürten's home. He avoided the police, but confessed to his wife and told her to inform the police. On 24 May he was located and arrested.
s. He went on trial
in April 1931. He initially pleaded not guilty, but after some weeks changed his plea. He was found guilty and sentenced to death
.
As Kürten was awaiting execution, he was interviewed by Dr. Karl Berg, whose interviews and accompanying analysis of Kürten formed the basis of his book, The Sadist
. Kürten stated to Berg that his primary motive was one of sexual pleasure. The number of stab wounds varied because it sometimes took longer to achieve orgasm
; the sight of blood was integral to his sexual stimulation.
Kürten was executed on 2 July 1931 by guillotine
in Cologne
.
In 1931 scientists attempted to examine irregularities in Kürten's brain in an attempt to explain his personality and behavior. His head was dissected and mummified
and is currently on display at the Ripley's Believe It or Not!
museum in Wisconsin Dells
.
's 1931 film M
, in which a serial child killer terrorizes a big city, is often said to have been based upon Kürten, but Lang denied that Kürten was an influence. Because of the similarities between Kürten and the film's villain, Hans Beckert, the film was known as The Vampire of Duesseldorf in some countries. While the location is never mentioned in the film, the dialect used by the characters and the several maps used throughout the film bearing the city's trademark bear symbol heavily suggest that the action takes place in Berlin
.
The first biopic about Kürten was Robert Hossein
's The Secret Killer (Le Vampire de Düsseldorf, 1965). Kürten was subsequently played by Nigel Green
in the LWT play Peter and Maria, written by Clive Exton
and broadcast on 9 October 1970.
Playwright Anthony Neilson
's 1991 work Normal: The Düsseldorf Ripper
is a fictional account of Kürten's life, is told from the point of view of his defense lawyer. It was adapted for the screen as Angels Gone
, and also released under the title Normal.
Randy Newman
's song "In Germany Before the War" from the album Little Criminals
is based on Kürten's life, with some poetic license (the song is set in 1934, for example, despite the fact that Kürten was executed in 1931).
In 1981 the British
noise
band Whitehouse
released an album titled Dedicated to Peter Kürten
.
The American
death metal band Macabre
recorded a song called "Vampire of Düsseldorf" about Kürten.
A number of novels have made substantial mention of Kürten. In the 1975 novel Salem's Lot by Stephen King
, Kürten's history is summarized by Matt Burke as part of his research into vampirism, though Kürten is referred to as 'Kurtin' throughout. In Chapter 4 of D.M. Thomas's
The White Hotel
(1981), the main protagonist, Frau Lisa Erdman, is haunted by Kürten's story, which she experiences as a "compulsive daylight nightmare". In the novel Swimsuit (2009) by James Patterson
, Henri Benoit, a serial killer himself, makes a reference to Kürten while recounting his own crimes for an autobiography. In the Arianna Franklin novel City of Shadows, one of the main characters is a police inspector who helped to catch Kurten.
In the movie Copycat
(1995), a serial killer uses "Peter Kürten" as an alias (the protagonist, played by Sigourney Weaver
, explains the reference).
Serial killer
A serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...
dubbed The Vampire of Düsseldorf by the contemporary media. He committed a series of sex crimes, assault
Assault
In law, assault is a crime causing a victim to fear violence. The term is often confused with battery, which involves physical contact. The specific meaning of assault varies between countries, but can refer to an act that causes another to apprehend immediate and personal violence, or in the more...
s and murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
s against adults and children, most notoriously from February to November 1929 in Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...
.
Early life
Kürten was born into a poverty-stricken, abusiveChild abuse
Child abuse is the physical, sexual, emotional mistreatment, or neglect of a child. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Children And Families define child maltreatment as any act or series of acts of commission or omission by a parent or...
family in Mülheim am Rhein
Mülheim am Rhein
Mülheim is a city district of Cologne in Germany and a formerly independent town . Mülheim is located on the right bank of the Rhine opposite the old town of Cologne....
, the third of 13 children. As a child, he witnessed his alcoholic father repeatedly sexually assault
Sexual assault
Sexual assault is an assault of a sexual nature on another person, or any sexual act committed without consent. Although sexual assaults most frequently are by a man on a woman, it may involve any combination of two or more men, women and children....
his mother and his sisters. He followed in his father's footsteps, and was soon sexually abusing his sisters. He engaged in petty criminality from a young age, and was a frequent runaway. He later claimed to have committed his first murders at the age of nine, drowning
Drowning
Drowning is death from asphyxia due to suffocation caused by water entering the lungs and preventing the absorption of oxygen leading to cerebral hypoxia....
two young friends while swimming. He moved with his family to Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...
in 1894 and received a number of short prison
Prison
A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...
sentences for various crimes, including theft
Theft
In common usage, theft is the illegal taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent. The word is also used as an informal shorthand term for some crimes against property, such as burglary, embezzlement, larceny, looting, robbery, shoplifting and fraud...
and arson
Arson
Arson is the crime of intentionally or maliciously setting fire to structures or wildland areas. It may be distinguished from other causes such as spontaneous combustion and natural wildfires...
. As a youth he was employed by the local dogcatcher, a job which allowed him to indulge in animal cruelty.
Kürten progressed from torturing animals to attacks on people. He committed his first provable murder in 1913, strangling a 10-year-old girl, Christine Klein, during the course of a burglary
Burglary
Burglary is a crime, the essence of which is illicit entry into a building for the purposes of committing an offense. Usually that offense will be theft, but most jurisdictions specify others which fall within the ambit of burglary...
. His crimes were then halted by World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
and an eight-year prison sentence. In 1921 he left prison and moved to Altenburg
Altenburg
Altenburg is a town in the German federal state of Thuringia, 45 km south of Leipzig. It is the capital of the Altenburger Land district.-Geography:...
, where he married. In 1925 he returned to Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...
, where he began the series of crimes that would culminate in his capture, sentencing to death and execution.
Murders
On 8 February 1929 he assaultAssault
In law, assault is a crime causing a victim to fear violence. The term is often confused with battery, which involves physical contact. The specific meaning of assault varies between countries, but can refer to an act that causes another to apprehend immediate and personal violence, or in the more...
ed a woman and molested and murdered an eight-year-old girl. On 13 February he murdered a middle-aged mechanic
Mechanic
A mechanic is a craftsman or technician who uses tools to build or repair machinery.Many mechanics are specialized in a particular field such as auto mechanics, bicycle mechanics, motorcycle mechanics, boiler mechanics, general mechanics, industrial maintenance mechanics , air conditioning and...
, stabbing him 20 times. Kürten did not attack again until August, stabbing three people in separate attacks on the 21st; murdering two sisters, aged five and 14, on the 23rd; and stabbing another woman on the 24th. In September he committed a single rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
and murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
, brutally beating a servant girl with a hammer in woods that lay just outside of Düsseldorf. In October he attacked two women with a hammer. On 7 November he killed a five-year-old girl by strangling and stabbing her 36 times with scissors, and then sent a map to a local newspaper disclosing the location of her grave. The variety of victims and murder methods gave police the impression that more than one killer was at large: the public turned in over 900,000 different names to the police as potential suspects.
The November murder was Kürten's last, although he engaged in a spate of non-fatal hammer attacks from February to March 1930. In May he accosted a young woman named Maria Budlick; he initially took her to his home, and then to the Grafenberger Woods, where he raped but did not kill her. Budlick led the police to Kürten's home. He avoided the police, but confessed to his wife and told her to inform the police. On 24 May he was located and arrested.
Trial and execution
Kürten confessed to 79 offenses, and was charged with nine murders and seven attempted murderAttempted murder
Attempted murder is a crime in England and Wales and Northern Ireland.-Today:In English criminal law, attempted murder is the crime of more than merely preparing to commit unlawful killing and at the same time having a specific intention to cause the death of human being under the Queen's Peace...
s. He went on trial
Trial (law)
In law, a trial is when parties to a dispute come together to present information in a tribunal, a formal setting with the authority to adjudicate claims or disputes. One form of tribunal is a court...
in April 1931. He initially pleaded not guilty, but after some weeks changed his plea. He was found guilty and sentenced to death
Death Sentence
Death Sentence is a short story by the American science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the November 1943 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and reprinted in the 1972 collection The Early Asimov.-Plot summary:...
.
As Kürten was awaiting execution, he was interviewed by Dr. Karl Berg, whose interviews and accompanying analysis of Kürten formed the basis of his book, The Sadist
The Sadist
The Sadist is a book published by psychiatrist Karl Berg, following the confessions of Peter Kürten, a well-known serial killer in the late 1920s in Germany....
. Kürten stated to Berg that his primary motive was one of sexual pleasure. The number of stab wounds varied because it sometimes took longer to achieve orgasm
Orgasm
Orgasm is the peak of the plateau phase of the sexual response cycle, characterized by an intense sensation of pleasure...
; the sight of blood was integral to his sexual stimulation.
Kürten was executed on 2 July 1931 by guillotine
Guillotine
The guillotine is a device used for carrying out :executions by decapitation. It consists of a tall upright frame from which an angled blade is suspended. This blade is raised with a rope and then allowed to drop, severing the head from the body...
in Cologne
KOLN
KOLN, digital channel 10, is the CBS affiliate in Lincoln, Nebraska. It operates a satellite station, KGIN, on digital channel 11 in Grand Island. KGIN repeats all KOLN programming, but airs separate commercials...
.
Analysis
Kürten said to the legal examiners that his primary motive was to "strike back at oppressive society". He did not deny that he had sexually molested his victims, but he always claimed during his trial that this was not his primary motive.In 1931 scientists attempted to examine irregularities in Kürten's brain in an attempt to explain his personality and behavior. His head was dissected and mummified
Mummy
A mummy is a body, human or animal, whose skin and organs have been preserved by either intentional or incidental exposure to chemicals, extreme coldness , very low humidity, or lack of air when bodies are submerged in bogs, so that the recovered body will not decay further if kept in cool and dry...
and is currently on display at the Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Ripley's Believe It or Not! is a franchise, founded by Robert Ripley, which deals in bizarre events and items so strange and unusual that readers might question the claims...
museum in Wisconsin Dells
Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin
Wisconsin Dells is a city in south-central Wisconsin, with a population of 2,418 as of the 2000 census. It straddles four counties: Adams, Columbia, Juneau, and Sauk. The city takes its name from the dells of the Wisconsin River, a scenic, glacially formed gorge that features striking sandstone...
.
Cultural references
Fritz LangFritz Lang
Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang was an Austrian-American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute...
's 1931 film M
M (1931 film)
M is a 1931 German drama-thriller directed by Fritz Lang and written by Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou. It was Lang's first sound film, although he had directed more than a dozen films previously....
, in which a serial child killer terrorizes a big city, is often said to have been based upon Kürten, but Lang denied that Kürten was an influence. Because of the similarities between Kürten and the film's villain, Hans Beckert, the film was known as The Vampire of Duesseldorf in some countries. While the location is never mentioned in the film, the dialect used by the characters and the several maps used throughout the film bearing the city's trademark bear symbol heavily suggest that the action takes place in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
.
The first biopic about Kürten was Robert Hossein
Robert Hossein
Robert Hossein is a French film actor of Azeri origin, director and writer. He directed the 1982 adaption of Les Misérables, and appeared in Vice and Virtue, Le Casse, Les Uns et les Autres and Venus Beauty Institute...
's The Secret Killer (Le Vampire de Düsseldorf, 1965). Kürten was subsequently played by Nigel Green
Nigel Green
Nigel Green was a South African-born English character actor. Because of his strapping build and commanding demeanour he would often be found playing military types and men of action in such classic sixties films as Jason and the Argonauts, Zulu, Tobruk and The Ipcress File.-Early life and...
in the LWT play Peter and Maria, written by Clive Exton
Clive Exton
Clive Exton was a British television and film screenwriter, sometime playwright, and former actor. He is best known for his scripts of Agatha Christie’s Poirot, P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster, and Rosemary & Thyme.-Early career:He was born Clive Jack Montague Brooks in Islington, London,...
and broadcast on 9 October 1970.
Playwright Anthony Neilson
Anthony Neilson
Anthony Neilson is a Scottish playwright and director commonly associated with the "in-yer-face theatre" movement and is known for his collaborative way of writing and workshopping his plays. His work is characterised by the exploration of sex and violence...
's 1991 work Normal: The Düsseldorf Ripper
Normal: The Düsseldorf Ripper
Playwright Anthony Neilson's 1991 work Normal: The Düsseldorf Ripper is a fictional account of Peter Kürten's life, told from the point of view of his defense lawyer. Published in Neilson Plays 1: Normal, Penetrator, Year of the Family, Night Before Christmas, Censor, Methuen Drama 1998, ISBN...
is a fictional account of Kürten's life, is told from the point of view of his defense lawyer. It was adapted for the screen as Angels Gone
Angels Gone
Normal is a film adaptation of playwright Anthony Neilson's 1991 work Normal: The Düsseldorf Ripper, a fictional account of serial killer Peter Kürten's life, told from the point of view of his defense lawyer. With Milan Kňažko as Kürten, Dagmar Veškrnová as his wife and Pavel Gajdoš as his lawyer...
, and also released under the title Normal.
Randy Newman
Randy Newman
Randall Stuart "Randy" Newman is an American singer-songwriter, arranger, composer, and pianist who is known for his mordant pop songs and for film scores....
's song "In Germany Before the War" from the album Little Criminals
Little Criminals
Little Criminals is a 1977 album from Randy Newman. Like most of Newman's work, the album eschews traditional pop-music themes in favor of musical story-telling, often featuring quirky characters and cynical views. The first song on the album — "Short People" — became a hit single in its own right...
is based on Kürten's life, with some poetic license (the song is set in 1934, for example, despite the fact that Kürten was executed in 1931).
In 1981 the British
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
noise
Noise music
Noise music is a term used to describe varieties of avant-garde music and sound art that may use elements such as cacophony, dissonance, atonality, noise, indeterminacy, and repetition in their realization. Noise music can feature distortion, various types of acoustically or electronically...
band Whitehouse
Whitehouse (band)
Whitehouse are a pioneering English power electronics band formed in 1980, largely credited for the founding of the power electronics subgenre.-History and personnel:...
released an album titled Dedicated to Peter Kürten
Dedicated to Peter Kürten
Dedicated to Peter Kürten is the fourth album by Whitehouse released in 1981 by Come Organisation . The album is known as by its full title, Dedicated to Peter Kürten Sadist and Mass Slayer.-Overview:...
.
The American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
death metal band Macabre
Macabre (band)
Macabre is an extreme metal band from Illinois. They were formed in 1985 in Chicago, Illinois, and have never had a line-up change. They blend thrash metal, death metal, and grindcore to form their own unique style dubbed murder metal...
recorded a song called "Vampire of Düsseldorf" about Kürten.
A number of novels have made substantial mention of Kürten. In the 1975 novel Salem's Lot by Stephen King
Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...
, Kürten's history is summarized by Matt Burke as part of his research into vampirism, though Kürten is referred to as 'Kurtin' throughout. In Chapter 4 of D.M. Thomas's
D. M. Thomas
Donald Michael Thomas, known as D. M. Thomas , is a Cornish novelist, poet, and translator.Thomas was born in Redruth, Cornwall, UK. He attended Trewirgie Primary School and Redruth Grammar School before graduating with First Class Honours in English from New College, Oxford in 1959...
The White Hotel
The White Hotel
The White Hotel is a novel written by the English poet, translator and novelist D. M. Thomas. It was first published in January 1981 by Gollancz in Great Britain and in March 1981 by The Viking Press in the United States...
(1981), the main protagonist, Frau Lisa Erdman, is haunted by Kürten's story, which she experiences as a "compulsive daylight nightmare". In the novel Swimsuit (2009) by James Patterson
James Patterson
James B. Patterson is an American author of thriller novels, largely known for his series about American psychologist Alex Cross...
, Henri Benoit, a serial killer himself, makes a reference to Kürten while recounting his own crimes for an autobiography. In the Arianna Franklin novel City of Shadows, one of the main characters is a police inspector who helped to catch Kurten.
In the movie Copycat
Copycat (film)
Copycat is an American psychological thriller, starring Sigourney Weaver and Holly Hunter. The film was directed by Jon Amiel, with a score composed by Christopher Young.-Plot:...
(1995), a serial killer uses "Peter Kürten" as an alias (the protagonist, played by Sigourney Weaver
Sigourney Weaver
Sigourney Weaver is an American actress. She is best known for her critically acclaimed role of Ellen Ripley in the four Alien films: Alien, Aliens, Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection, for which she has received worldwide recognition .Other notable roles include Dana...
, explains the reference).
Further reading
- The Monster of Dusseldorf: The Life and Trial of Peter Kürten by Margaret Seaton Wagner, 1932.
- The SadistThe SadistThe Sadist is a book published by psychiatrist Karl Berg, following the confessions of Peter Kürten, a well-known serial killer in the late 1920s in Germany....
by Karl Berg, 1945. - Peter Kurten: A Study In Sadism by George Godwin 1938.