A DRAMATIST’S CONFESSION

Hokitika Guardian, 30 December 1929, Page 7

A DRAMATIST’S CONFESSION

BERLIN, November 14. Peter Martin Lampel, the dramatist and novelist, who has been arrested for the murder in 1921 of Frit/, Koehler, a soldier of the Black Army, has, after a long examination in the prison at Liegnitz, in Silesia, admitted that he was present when she murder was committed. He declares that he did not take an active part in the crime. This announcement puts an end to the silly story that Lampel contrived to get arrested to advertise his novel about the Black Army called “Betrayed Youth.” There is in this novel a horrible study of barbarity mixed with idealism, a harrowing .account of the torture and murder of a young soldier who is suspected of betraying ttie secrets of the Black Army to the representatives of the Allies. One of the characters describes ttm horror with which h<? had looked on at the torture of the victim by the murderer, over whom he had no authority. Was this the part Lampel himself hau to play when he was serving in the “Army” ?

It is said there were 200 murders of th.s kind in the Black Army, when it., object was to terrorise the Poles of Upper Silesia. Both Lampel and Sehwenningen—another man arrested in connection with this horrible affair—made such serious charges against a comrade, von Bollwitz, that be also bad been arrested.