Ernst August Ferdinand Gennat (1 January 1880 – 20 August 1939) was director of the
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...
criminal police. He worked under three political systems in his 30-year career as one of the most gifted and successful criminologists in the
German Reich
German ''Reich'' (lit. German Realm, German Empire, from german: Deutsches Reich, ) was the constitutional name for the German nation state that existed from 1871 to 1945. The ''Reich'' became understood as deriving its authority and sovereignty ...
. His caseload included those of
Fritz Haarmann
Friedrich Heinrich Karl "Fritz" Haarmann (25 October 1879 – 15 April 1925) was a German serial killer, known as the Butcher of Hanover, the Vampire of Hanover and the Wolf Man, who committed the sexual assault, murder, mutilation and dismemb ...
and
Peter Kürten
Peter Kürten (; 26 May 1883 – 2 July 1931) was a German serial killer, known as "The Vampire of Düsseldorf" and the "Düsseldorf Monster", who committed a series of murders and sexual assaults between February and November 1929 in the city of ...
.
Biography
In his childhood, he lived with his parents in staff housing of the
correctional facility
In criminal justice, particularly in North America, correction, corrections, and correctional, are umbrella terms describing a variety of functions typically carried out by government agencies, and involving the punishment, treatment, and s ...
in Berlin-
Plötzensee. He graduated from high school on 13 September 1898, and entered the faculty of law at
Frederick William University on 18 October 1901. In the intervening years, it can be assumed that he served in the military (which he noted as his occupation when he was matriculated at the university).
On 12 July 1905, he left the university without a degree, shortly before the semester was scheduled to end (on 15 August) to embark on his career in the police – he had entered the police service in 1904 and passed the examination to criminal police officer on 30 May 1905. Two days later, he started as detective assistant and was promoted to criminal detective on 1 August.
When Gennat entered the criminal police, there was no separate homicide division. It was only on 25 August 1902 that an on-call homicide service was created. That had not even changed when the Berlin police was reorganized on 1 June 1925. It was solely by Gennat's efforts that a homicide squad was eventually created, which earned him promotion to lieutenant inspector (at the age of 45). He had previously been passed over for promotion owing to the insistent criticism he had levelled at how the criminal department operated.
During the
Third Reich
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
, he was able to continue working despite maintaining distance from the
Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...
. His successes even saw him promoted to departmental director in 1934 and deputy director of Berlin's police in 1935. He married criminal inspector Elfriede Dinger shortly before his death on 20 August 1939 at age 59 (he was suffering from cancer, although the suddenness of his death could indicate a stroke).
.html" ;"title="
">The Alexanderplatz with the police headquarters (middle)
Gennat's homicide division at the Berlin police
After the creation of the Zentrale Mordinspektion (central homicide inspectorate), the division had great success under Gennat's leadership. In 1931, the homicide inspectorate solved 108 of its 114 cases, a success rate of 94.7 percent (compared to 85 to 95 percent for modern homicide investigations). Gennat himself worked on solving 298 homicide cases. His department was organized as one standing team of detectives with two backup teams. The active team had one senior and one junior homicide detective plus between 4 and 10 criminal constables, a
stenotypist and a dog handler. The backup teams had one senior and one junior homicide detective (teamed under what was known as a "Mord-Ehe" or "marriage of murder") plus 2 or 3 constables and a
stenotypist. The make-up of the active team changed every four weeks to ensure that each officer gained proper work experience.
Advances in investigation techniques
Gennat reorganized much of the methodology by which homicide is investigated. Building on early
forensic science as established by
Hans Gross
Hans Gustav Adolf Gross or Groß (26 December 1847 – 9 December 1915) was an Austrian criminal jurist and criminologist, the "Founding Father" of criminal profiling. A criminal jurist, Gross made a mark as the creator of the field of criminal ...
, he was among the first to recognize the importance of the exact preservation of evidence at crime scenes. Up till then, it had been common practice for the first policemen at a crime scene to start by “cleaning up the mess” or arranging the corpse in a decorous, reverent manner. Gennat drew up precise guidelines for crime scene procedures and established the inviolable principle forbidding anyone from touching or changing anything until the investigators had arrived.
Aiming to facilitate thorough and quick investigation work, Gennat had the
Daimler-Benz AG build a standby homicide division car (colloquially known as the "murder car") according to his own plans. This was a passenger car equipped with office and forensic technology based on the Benz Limousine 16/50 PS. On the occasion of the Great Police Exhibition 1926 (September 25 – October 17) in Berlin the public got a chance to visit the murder car.
The murder car could be converted to a temporary office when necessary. A typewriter (complete with a stenotypist) was part of the inventory, as were collapsible chairs and a table for work in the open air alongside two retractable tables inside the car. For the immediate work at the crime scene there were materials for securing evidence and steel marking posts with sequential numbers; everything from searchlights to diamond cutters and axes.
Gennat would always sit behind the front seat passenger, where he had a special brace built in. Otherwise his weight would have disbalanced the car. The homicide division of the criminal investigation department in
Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...
, instituted in 1927, was provided with a murder car and the corresponding equipment as well.
What is more, Gennat's "central file for murder cases", also known as "death investigation card file", equally gained international fame. For several decades detective Otto Knauf was in charge of this system, where every violent death even outside of Berlin that was known to the police was systematically documented. Until 1945 no other police department had a collection of case descriptions as extensive as that of the Zentrale Mordinspektion. It allowed reconstructions of past cases in the shortest possible time in order to identify potential links in the execution of the crimes. Source material included press reports and
wanted posters
A wanted poster (or wanted sign) is a poster distributed to let the public know of a person whom authorities wish to apprehend. They generally include a picture of the person, either a photograph when one is available or of a facial composite ...
beside original files.
Ernst Gennat would also ask for investigation files from other police departments to be sent over for inspection – some of which he would then "forget" to return. The systematically structured card file comprised not just capital offences but also the categories "indirect or cold murder" (suicide following defamation or false accusations), "existential destruction through malicious deception" (suicides provoked by scammers, frauds, obscure fortune tellers or marriage impostors) and "existential destruction through blackmail". Gennat took the view that driving a person into suicide had to be penalised as well. Some pieces from his archive are now part of the inventory of the collection of the history of the police in Berlin (Polizeihistorische Sammlung Berlin).
Personality
Beside the advances in organisation and investigation techniques, it was Gennat's personal qualities which made him so successful. He was lauded in particular for his persistency and perseverance, his phenomenal memory, and the enormous psychological empathy which already enabled him to practise what came to be termed "
criminal profiling
Offender profiling, also known as criminal profiling, is an investigative strategy used by law enforcement agencies to identify likely suspects and has been used by investigators to link cases that may have been committed by the same perpetrator ...
" forty years later. He was strictly against forcible means in interrogations, emphatically warning his colleagues, "Whoever lays a finger on a suspect is out! Our weapons are brains and nerves!"
Moreover, it was Gennat (not
Robert Ressler
Robert Kenneth Ressler (February 21, 1937 – May 5, 2013) was an FBI agent and author. He played a significant role in the psychological profiling of violent offenders in the 1970s and is often credited with coining the term "serial killer", t ...
) who coined the term "
serial killer
A serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more persons,A
*
*
*
* with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant period of time between them. While most authorities set a threshold of three ...
" in his 1930 article "Die Düsseldorfer Sexualverbrechen" (on Peter Kürten). Gennat appears surprisingly modern in many regards. He stressed the importance of prevention as against the investigation of crimes. Being aware of the effect of capital offences on the public and of the opinion-forming role of the press, he strived to harness for the purposes of investigative work.
Beyond his dry Berlin humour and the numerous witticisms and anecdotes circulating about him, Gennat's striking corpulence (he weighed an estimated 21.3 stone, or 270 lbs) also contributed to no small degree to making the "Big Guy from the homicide squad" a famous character. This was owing to his huge appetite, in particular his passion for (gooseberry) cake. His secretary Gertrude Steiner was nicknamed "
Bockwurst
Bockwurst is a German sausage traditionally made from ground veal and pork (tending more towards veal, unlike bratwurst). Bockwurst is flavored with salt, white pepper and paprika. Other herbs, such as marjoram, chives and parsley, are als ...
-Trudchen" for a reason.
In culture
Ernst Gennat inspired the fictional character inspector Karl Lohmann who appeared in
Fritz Lang
Friedrich Christian Anton Lang (; December 5, 1890 – August 2, 1976), known as Fritz Lang, was an Austrian film director, screenwriter, and producer who worked in Germany and later the United States.Obituary ''Variety'', August 4, 1976, p. 6 ...
's ''
M'' (1931) and ''
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
''The Testament of Dr. Mabuse'' (german: Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse), also called ''The Last Will of Dr. Mabuse'', is a 1933 German crime-thriller film directed by Fritz Lang. The movie is a sequel to Lang's silent film ''Dr. Mabuse the Gambl ...
'' (1932).
Ein echtes Vorbild
Bettina Müller, taz-archiv, Die Tageszeitung
Ernst Gennat is a recurring character in several of the ''Bernie Gunther'' novels by Philip Kerr
Philip Ballantyne Kerr (22 February 1956 – 23 March 2018) was a British author, best known for his Bernie Gunther series of historical detective thrillers.
Early life
Kerr was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, where his father was an enginee ...
.
German actor Udo Samel
Udo Samel (born 25 June 1953) is a German actor. He has appeared in more than 80 films and television shows since 1977. He starred in the 1994 film '' Back to Square One'', which was entered into the 44th Berlin International Film Festival.
Se ...
plays Gennat in the second and third seasons of the TV show ''Babylon Berlin
''Babylon Berlin'' is a German neo-noir television series. Created, written, and directed by Tom Tykwer, Achim von Borries, and Hendrik Handloegten. It is loosely based on novels by German author Volker Kutscher.
The series premiered on 13 ...
'', which is based on Volker Kutscher's historical crime novels featuring inspector Gereon Rath.
Literature
* Karl Berg: ''Der Sadist, Der Fall Peter Kürten.'' Belleville, Munich 2004 (Gerichtsärztliches und Kriminalpsychologisches zu den Taten des Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian language, Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second- ...
er Mörders Peter Kürten
Peter Kürten (; 26 May 1883 – 2 July 1931) was a German serial killer, known as "The Vampire of Düsseldorf" and the "Düsseldorf Monster", who committed a series of murders and sexual assaults between February and November 1929 in the city of ...
)
* Dietrich Nummert: ''Buddha oder der volle Ernst. Der Kriminalist Ernst Gennat (1880 – 1939).'' In: ''Berlinische Monatsschrift
The ''Berlinische Monatsschrift'' was a monthly magazine published by Johann Erich Biester and Friedrich Gedike (though the latter resigned his editorship in 1791).
It served primarily as the mouthpiece for the Berliner Mittwochsgesellschaft ...
,'' 1999, Heft 9,
Volltext
* Franz von Schmidt: ''Vorgeführt erscheint. Erlebte Kriminalistik.'' Stuttgarter Hausbücherei, Stuttgart 1955
* Franz von Schmidt: ''Mord im Zwielicht. Erlebte Kriminalgeschichte.'' Verlag Deutsche Volksbücher, Stuttgart 1961
* Regina Stürickow: ''Habgier.'' Berlin-Krimi-Verlag, Berlin-Brandenburg 2003 (Historischer Kriminalroman, basierend auf dem authentischen Mordfall Martha Franzke von 1916)
* Regina Stürickow: ''Der Kommissar vom Alexanderplatz.'' Aufbau Taschenbuch-Verlag, Berlin 2000 (Biografie)
* Regina Stürickow: ''Mörderische Metropole Berlin, Kriminalfälle 1914 – 1933.'' Militzke, Leipzig 2004
* Regina Stürickow: ''Mörderische Metropole Berlin, Kriminalfälle im Dritten Reich.'' Militzke, Leipzig 2005
* Ernst Gennat: "Die Düsseldorfer Sexualmorde." In: Kriminalistische Monatshefte 1930, p. 2–7, 27–32, 49–54, 79–82.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gennat, Ernst
1880 births
1939 deaths
Offender profiling
German criminologists
German police officers
People from Berlin
People from the Province of Brandenburg