BERLIN ANGERED

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 249, 11 January 1928, Page 9

BERLIN ANGERED

CAUSE OF DISASTER

LABORATORY IN CELLAR

j, CoAto. Brew Association. — Copyright. BERLIN, Monday. Investigations which have been mide by the police concerning the dieaetrous explosion in a large tenement house in Berlin, have reverted that the basement was used as a chemical laboratory for the manufacture or detonators. The presence of explosives in the building had been a strict secret, as the owners feared that the police would Interfere. They told the authorities that they were engaged in the manufacture of cosmetics. When the debris was cleared away nine barrels of high explosive were found in the ruins. This was sufficient to wreck the whole of the wealthy residential district. The indignation in the neighbourhood is intense.

One of the partners in the laboratory, named Weingaertner, is being prosecuted. The other, whose name wu Stammer, was blown to pieces by the explosion, which occurred while he was filling detonators with fulminate of mercury. Neither of the partners was a trained chemist. Weingaertner was a fruit canner before the war, upon the outbreak of which he converted his factory for the manufacture of flare lights for airplanes.—A. and N.Z.