Peter Kürten was known as Germany’s serial killer the “Düsseldorf Vampire,” a murder who killed at least nine people before surrendering to police in 1931.
Kürten was born in Cologne, Germany on May 26, 1883 to a childhood of poverty and misconduct. Being first born out of thirteen children he was a witness to accounts of brutal acts and sadistic tendencies from an alcoholic father. For the majority of Kürten’s childhood, his father projected his misconduct onto both the mother and his siblings in the one room apartment they shared. From the subjection to sexual violence of his father had an influence on Kürten who, at the age of nine years old, established an unhealthy relationship with a dog-catcher who live in the same building. The man introduced him to the practice of bestiality with dogs. As Kürten matured sexually, his bestiality expanded to sheep, goats, and other barnyard animals. He even went as far as discovering a pleasure when the animal would be stabbed during intercorse. By the age of 16, Kürten has progressed to petty crime, and ran away from home from the subjected violence. Not long after his father was arrested and jailed for sexual relations with Kürten’s thirteen year old sister.
Kürten’s small crimes soon led toward short prison sentences, multiple misdemeanors which occurred for several years. As he was jailed the conditions of his environment confirmed Kürten’s sadistic behavior as he moves from animals to human victims. The more that Kürten was sentence to jail the more his rage against the German society and capacity for crimality grew. He soon discovered a fascination with brutal sexual acts while in solitary confinement; the fascination grew so much that he would break prison rules to ensure t...
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...mean ten years' or more separation for us — probably forever. At that, my wife was inconsolable. She spoke of unemployment, lack of means and starvation in old age. She raved that I should take my life, then she would do the same, since her future was completely without hope. Then, in the late afternoon, I told my wife that I could help her." Kürten then revealed to his wife he was the “Vampire” and disclosed every murder to her. He then allowed her to turn himself over to the police to insure that she would receive a large reward to supply money to help her in her old age.
On May 24th 1930, Frau Kürten told the police of who her husband was that she was to meet him outside a church. Later in the day the area had been surrounded and four officers who rushed forward with loaded revolvers the moment Peter Kürten showed. The man then smiled and offered no resistance.
This paper is about the book 'Behind a Convict's Eyes' by K.C. Cerceral. This book was written by a young man who enters prison on a life sentence and describes the world around him. Life in prison is a subculture of its own, this subculture has its own society, language and cast system. The book describes incidents that have happen in prison to inmates. With this paper I will attempt to explain the way of life in a prison from an inmate's view.
This radical find would provide important details that would exonerate the Jewish community in Konitz of the accusation that Ernst Winter had been killed in order to use his blood as an ingredient in their Passover matzah bread. Later that year, in October, Dr. Puppe, a forensic medicine professor in Berlin, would re-examine and evaluate the original autopsy report. Upon close examination of the lungs and face, as well as the absence of blood on the skin surrounding the area of the throat incision would testify against the notion that Winter had died from a fatal cut to the throat. Thus, Puppe concluded that fatal bleeding did not lead to the death of Winter, rather, suffocation was the probable cause (Smith 2002, 188). When police found new clues to Winter’s demise, “semen stains: on the vest (just below the left pocket), on the jacket, and on the outside of the pants close to the zipper,” the location of the stains confirmed that Winter had been killed, “as a forensic report put it, while attempting to have intercourse with his clothes on” (Smith 2002, 188).
Carmilla is an example of a woman who loves her food far too much. Carmilla is consumed entirely by her food, even sleeping in a coffin of blood: “The limbs were perfectly flexible, the flesh elastic; and the leaden coffin floated with blood, in which to a depth of seven inches, the body lay immersed” (Le Fanu 102). There exists a unique relationship between the vampire and their victims. Food becomes defined in terms of victimhood, distinctly separated from humanity’s general consumption of meat. The need for human victims makes hunting synonymous with courtship, as intense emotional connections are established between the vampiress and her food. As seen in the intense relationship developed between Laura and Carmilla, the vampire is “prone to be fascinated with an engrossing vehemence, resembling the passion of love, by particular persons” (105). For Carmilla, cruelty and love are inseparable (33). The taking of the victims’ blood for sustenance is a highly sexualized exchange of fluids from one body to another. The act of consumption is transformed into an illicit carnal exchange between the hunter and the hunted.
The “pains of imprisonment” can be divided into five main conditions that attack the inmate’s personality and his feeling of self-worth. The deprivations are as follows: The deprivation of liberty, of goods and services, of heterosexual relationships, autonomy and of security.
In 1978 behavioral scientist Han Brunner interviewed a patient at a Nijmegen hospital in the Netherlands whom was concerned about the extremely aggressive and violent behavior of the males in her family. This family had produce five generation of men that were attempted murders and rapists tracing back a hundred years to 1870. [2]
Kurtz was an English man who traveled to the Congo in search of excitement, money and experience. To many people back home, he was known to be a loving intelligent young man. In Congo he was also known as being very intelligent, but also as being insane. The question is what happened to Kurtz how and why he let his self go insane. In a way you can say that he found the “heart” of his “darkness,” embraced it and could not escape it.
... inferior. Auschwitz is the most notorious concentration camp there was. Two things this camp had that others didn’t was the Gas Chambers and Dr. Mengele. His experiments took on a whole new meaning of cruel and the gas chambers were just another way to kill people. This paper gives me a better understanding of Night because sometimes it’s easier to understand what someone has gone through if you know the extent of the situation. Through my research of Auschwitz I found the extent of cruelty surpassed even my imagination. One thing Elie Wiesel said has stuck with me throughout all of my research on Auschwitz “To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.” (book's introduction xv) It made me realize that we need to remember the Holocaust and the Genocide that took place during this time because letting it happen again is just as bad as forgetting.
The thoughtlessness in which Eichmann embodied in the courtroom, along with the normalcy he possesses, aids in the development of the enigmatic structure of the trial. Arendt's battle to find middle-ground between the idea of Eichmann as a common man attempting to fulfill objectives and his connection to the Nazi regime is what defies original theories on evil. The guilt Eichmann carries is clearly much larger than the man himself, especially one so simplistic and thoughtless. Therefore, the evil presented in Eichma...
Through segregation, loss of identity, and abuse, Wiesel and the prisoners around him devolve from civilized human beings into savage animals. The yellow stars begin separation from society, followed by ghettos and transports. Nakedness and haircuts, then new names, remove each prisoner’s identity, and physical abuse in the form of malnourishment, night marches, and physical beatings wear down prisoners. By the end of Night, the prisoners are ferocious from the experiences under German rule and, as Avni puts it, “a living dead, unfit for life” (Avni 129). Prisoners not only revert to animal instincts, but experience such mental trauma that normal life with other people may be years away.
Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Vintage, 1997. Print.
We see that the author’s purpose is to allow the readers to understand that the prisoners were not treated humanly, and allows us to see the negative attitudes the authority had towards the prisoners.
Director Mark Herman presents a narrative film that attests to the brutal, thought-provoking Nazi regime, in war-torn Europe. It is obvious that with Herman’s relatively clean representation of this era, he felt it was most important to resonate with the audience in a profound and philosophical manner rather than in a ruthlessness infuriating way. Despite scenes that are more graphic than others, the films objective was not to recap on the awful brutality that took place in camps such as the one in the movie. The audience’s focus was meant to be on the experience and life of a fun-loving German boy named Bruno. Surrounding this eight-year-old boy was conspicuous Nazi influences. Bruno is just an example of a young child among many others oblivious of buildings draped in flags, and Jewis...
“If one speaks about torture, one must take care not to exaggerate,” Jean Améry view of torture comes from a place of uneasiness (22). He discusses in his book At The Mind’s Limits, about the torture that he underwent while a prisoner in Auschwitz. In his chapter titled “Torture”, he goes into deep description of not only the torture he endured, but also how that torture never leaves a person. Améry goes to great lengths to make sure that the torture he speaks of is accurate and as he says on page 22, not exaggerated.
...ed and they have been degraded to a sub-human level which is often associated with qualities that are considered inferior to humans such as the lack of self-control, unintelligence and immorality. The prisoners have also been compared to the animal sheep, trying of hide themselves, when they are in a vulnerable situation. Sheep is known for the universal symbol of innocence and goodness, however since the tone of the passage is tinted with despair and fear, it reminds readers that sheep often need the protection and supervision of a shepherd and thus highlights the feeling of vulnerability. The Germans consider the prisoners of different species to them; “This something in front of me belongs to a species which it is obvious opportune to suppress”, they also use the word “fressen” to describe the prisoner’s way of eating, which is “the way of eating of animals”.
Vampires are known as mythical beings with white pale glittery skin that drain the essence of life known as blood. As unbelievable as it sounds they actually did exist centuries ago. They weren’t anything like the vampires we see in movies, shows, books, and video games today. A vampire or something analogous to it can be found in most culture and folklores going back to the beginning of time, but it is a mistake to think they have familiar attributes of Count Dracula. The term “vampire” appeared in literature since the 18th century. Vampires might be viewed as either blood-sucking creatures or sexy ones, but they represent much more than that. Vampires represent fear and contempt of people with different beliefs.