Lecture on the Hemden double murder of 1919

Next Friday, August 5, the Bocholt historian Dr. Marius Lange will talk in his lecture about a crime that happened in shirts shortly after the First World War - and was only solved years later.

In the weeks and months following the end of World War I, the future of the German Empire is uncertain. In Berlin, the Ruhr region and elsewhere, there are violent riots from the left and the right. In Bocholt, too, there is a period of uncertainty. Nightly thefts and robberies, often involving gun violence, sweep through the surrounding farming communities in particular.

On the night of February 27-28, 1919, two gunshots startle several residents of a farmhouse in Hemden. They rush out of their beds to confront marauding burglars. Instead, they find their parents still lying in bed. A closer look reveals that Anton Nienhaus and his wife Maria were killed in their sleep.

How the investigating authorities only succeeded in catching the perpetrator years later will be explained by Bocholt historian Dr. Marius Lange in an evening lecture on August 5 at 7 p.m. in the Hemdener Saal. Admission is free.

The lecture is entitled "By a strange, nefarious hand their lives were violently ended" - The Hemden double murder of 1919.