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Wilhelm & Oswald, September 1914 |
K. H. Wilhelm Bölcke was born in 1886, as the second of six
children. At that time the family lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where his father was the
President of
the German Protestant Church for six years before they moved back to
Germany. Before him, sister Luise was born and after him came brother
Heinrich. Oswald was the first to be born in Germany, before his brothers Martin and Max.
In the beginning of World War One, Wilhelm flew together with Oswald as his
observer. After Oswald had finally managed to get to the front, he flew
directly from Trier to the airfield at La Ferté where his brother was
stationed at with Fa13 (Feldfliegerabteilung). Because no observer had been
assigned to him, Wilhelm volunteered to fly with his brother. The two made
a perfect team, becoming more and more successful in the art of exploring
enemy positions from the air. But their success did not only make them
friends. Other crews envied it to them, so that tensions and
quarrels arose and the two brothers got separated by the squadron leader to
restore peace within the squadron. It is here where the historic records continue to focus on life of Oswald
and no information can be found about Wilhelm anymore, until that fateful
day in June of 1954.
Wilhelm had by then become the General Director of the Blendax Works in
Mainz, a company that still exists today, producing the very successful
Blend-a-Med toothpaste and other dental care products. He was a very popular
man and much loved by the employees of his company. He was much more of a
father figure than a tycoon, always caring for his inferiors. His great
passion was it to play at the Casino in Wiesbaden. Unlike many other wealthy
people he did not play a lot of money but limited his budget because he only
played for the fun and distraction.
Early in the morning of Whit Monday on June 5, 1954, Mr. Boelcke drove home
from the Casino in his Mercedes 300 as usual. He was a determined
anti-alcoholic and a conscientious driver but nevertheless he lost control
over his car, crashing for unknown reasons near his home at the Parkstrasse
Nr. 21. Badly injured he managed to get out of his destroyed car, going to
his house where he died two short hours later. Soon rumors and speculations
about possible reasons for the crash made round. Nobody could explain why he
lost control of his car and crashed.
The following dialogues had been translated
directly from the article published by the German magazine
"Wochenend" in 1954. If the words had really been said in that way or
if they was pure fiction of the writer cannot be verified anymore. However,
since the writer certainly interviewed the concerned persons it is not
impossible that the dialogues actually happened this way.
It was at 02.00am as General Director Boelcke left the Casino
in Wiesbaden. Porter Kübler was holding the door open for the huge man in
his dark gray flannel suit: "Good night Herr General Direktor"
he said, letting the silver coin slip into his pocket. "I thank you
very much and wish you a good rest".
"Thank you, my dear". The late guest smiles, taking then to
the right into direction of the parking lot. Only very few cars are still
waiting there. Moments later the door of the Mercedes 300 closes and the
engine starts smoothly. Carefully Wilhelm Boelcke drives his car off the
parking before he accelerates at full throttle down the tight turn that
leads from the Paulinen Strasse (*) into the Park Strasse.
(* Strasse = street)
Despite his 68 years, Wilhelm Boelcke still loves to drive fast. At a 50mph
he chases up the four serpentines of the Park Strasse. Then it are
just a 500
yards more before he'll have to turn right to reach his house at Nr. 21, a
beautiful mansion build in the stile of the early 20th century...
A woman living on the ground floor of house Nr.18 awakes with a scream. Confused,
she sits up in her bed. Did she have a bad dream? Or was the horrible noise
that woke her up really coming from the street outside? She continues to
listen for a few more seconds, then she lets herself fall back into her
pillows. She's trembling from head to foot. Getting up? "My
Goodness" she thinks, "If really something happened outside
I don't want to see it at all! I'm so scared of such horrible views".
Contrary to this, the former Silesian landowner from Grünberg, Mr. Wenzel,
who lives at Nr. 29, has stronger nerves. He, the former front officer does
not shudder at horrible views. He too had been wakened by the noise from the
street. Wearing only shirt and pants, he runs out into the summer night. "My
Volkswagen (**) !", he thinks, "I hope nothing has happened to my
Volkswagen". Then he sees the disaster. Wilhelm Boelcke's Mercedes
300 had scraped against a tree which stands on the sidewalk on the left side
of the road before it hit another Volkswagen that got thrown right
onto the Mr. Wenzel's car. Wenzel suppresses a curse and registers a total
loss. In this moment he sees a man standing at the fender. It's his neighbor from
vis-à-vis, Wilhelm Boelcke.
(** Volkswagen is not just the name of a brand
but at that time it was the common designation for the German Beetle car,
produced by the Volkswagen Company.)
The General Director takes a deep breath before he walks straight up to
Wenzel. "It happened!", he says. "Yes it happened,
but it will be regulated". Boelcke turns and crosses the street
before he slowly walks the 80 yards of the winding way that leads up to his house. Wenzel
still stands at his destroyed car. He hears the steps of his neighbor,
hears the opening and the closing of the front door and sees how the light
goes on in the men's room. Only now he comes round. His car got it really
bad, but the other one that stood right behind the tree got it even worse.
Its owner lives in sublease at Wenzel.
"I've got to wake him up", Wenzel thinks. "As a
traveling salesman, he will need his car this morning, but now he'll
have to change plans. With this car nobody can drive anymore". Lost
in thoughts, the man stares into the dull light of the street lantern. "General
Director Boelcke? How could it happen? He always drove fast but also safe.
Always in the middle of the Parkstrasse to avoid damaging any of the cars
parked along both sides of the street. Looks like nothing else happened to
him", Wenzel later recalls.
Only a little bit of blood ran from Wilhelm's nose. Was
alcohol the cause for the crash? Certainly not because Wenzel would have smelled it since
Boelcke stood very close to him. And he knows that the General Direktor did
not touch a drop of alcohol since already twenty years now. First, Boelcke himself
told Wenzel this as he worked in his garden at the time he was a
refugee, right after the end of World War II, and on the other hand this is
a known fact in the whole Parkstrasse.
Wenzel went back to his house to wake up his lodger who becomes very
upset: "What does that mean, e-v-e-r-t-h-i-n-g will be
regulated?", he grumbles, "I want to hear that from Boelcke
himself!". He dresses up in a hurry and together the two men go
over to Parkstrasse Nr.22. The light in the men's room is out.
Angrily, Wenzel's lodger presses the doorbell button for seconds, but
nothing happens! Finally, after a long waiting time, somebody opens a window
upstairs and shouts out: "What's up? Are you crazy to ring the bell like
the mad in the middle of the night?". It's Henny Poth, Boelcke's
roly-poly and aged housekeeper. She's quite upset but calms down
immediately as Wenzel shouts back: "Please hurry Miss Poth! Your
boss crashed with his car! We must talk with him!!!
With a bang she closes the window! Then the two men hear her hurrying
down the stairs. Gasping for breath, she stands before them. Nothing can be
seen of Boelcke in the lower rooms. On the smoking table in the mens room
stands a half empty bottle of Cognac. A rest of the liquid still twinkles in
the balloon glass. Finally, Henny enters the bedroom after knocking briefly
at the door. She returns immediately to tell the men that also the damage on
the second Volkswagen will be regulated off course. Calmed down, they
return back home.
Even before Wenzel left his house to go over to Boelcke, another witness
had already been at the crash site. The Police kept his name secret. It was
only known that he declared to have seen a man with hat and coat leaving the
car in a hurry, vanishing in the darkness. Later, this statement was
presented to Wenzel during the questioning by the Police. But Wenzel was
determined to say that this could never been Boelcke because he did not wear
hat nor coat as he saw him at the car. To Detective Werner van Look this
fits the fact that they found a hat and an umbrella in the back of the car,
which was two objects that Wilhelm Boelcke always carried with him.
But who was the second man? Was there a second man anyway? What happend
after Wenzel and his lodger had left the house of Wilhelm Boelcke?
Henny Poth is extremely frightened by the physical condition of Wilhelm
Boelcke, who lays in his bed and moans. Immediately she calls for a doctor,
who arrives at the mansion at 03.20a.m. Since the crash, 65 minutes has
passed. This is known because the clock inside the Mercedes stopped at
exactly 02.15am. After a brief examination, the doctor takes already his
decision. "The patient must be immediately brought to a
hospital", he orders. "He's badly injured!".
And in his own excitement he adds: "I fear for the worst!".
An ambulance brings General Director Wilhelm Boelcke to the municipal
hospital in Wiesbaden. There the doctors are hopeless. On the impact,
Boelcke broke a few ribs as his chest hit the steering column hard, plus his
heart muscle lacerated. The end was only a questions of minutes. Wilhelm
Boelcke died on June 5, 1954 at 04.10am!
Now the speculating begins. Friends and employees of the sudden deceased do
not always share the opinion of the Police - at least in the public they
don't. On Whit Monday, Detective Van Look officially denies the rumors about
Boelcke having been the victim of robbery. But does this official
declaration not stand in contradiction to the fact that the investigation of
the Police continues? If the crash of Wilhelm Boelcke really was an ordinary
accident, would then the case not have been already closed? The unanswered
questions about the death of Wilhelm Boelcke are getting loudly discussed on
the day of his cremation on June 10, 1954.
It was the funeral of a really prominent person. On the right street side of
the crematory in Mainz stood a whole lot of heavy cars and heaps of wreaths had been
unloaded. The little entry hall of the crematory could not hold all of the
flowers that had been send. Iris', tea roses, orchids, laurels and lilies of
the valley expressed how much Wilhelm Boelcke had been loved; how highly
people thought of him. The golden characters on the wreath bows in Orange,
White or Reseda-Green reveal how much that he had been mourned between
Marseille and Oslo.
A simple woman who came to say farewell to Wilhelm Boelcke casts the general
opinion in sobbing words: "I'm just a room cleaner at the
Blendax Works but I tell you: No General Director left us but a fatherly
friend". Not only the officials praised Wilhelm Boelcke. At his
factory, he had been nicknamed "Papa Boelcke". From the youngest
apprentice to the worker, technical engineer and director they all confirmed
that no unapproachable tycoon had been gone, but a warm-hearted person who
cared more about social aid to his personnel than he cared for balance
sheets.
Especially because of Wilhelm's popularity, the questions, rumors and gossip
did not stop. Wilhelm Boelcke lived in well ordered circumstances and in a
happy marriage with his 22 years younger wife Catharina. She descends from
the well known family Astor, owner of the German cosmetics brand with the
same name. Mrs. Boelcke holds a doctor degree in art history and still
lives today, being now 94 years old. As she married Wilhelm, she had been
23. The couple has a daughter named Karin who also lives in Wiesbaden. Being
married, her complete name now is Karin Gise. Since ever, the life of the
Boelcke family had been very cultivated. They enjoyed the nice things in
life and loved music, arts and literature. Even Wilhelm's hobby to play at
the Casino changed nothing on this. He was an habitué at the Casino in
Wiesbaden but it must be pointed out that he was no addicted gambler. He
always played for about two hours, sitting calmly on his place and putting
in his money in the game, level-headed and well-thought-out. He never played
more than 500.- DM (***), which
was a lot of money at that time, but still much less than other people of
his rank played at the Casino.
(*** DM = Deutsche Mark, official German
currency between 1949 and 2002. Today, 500.- DM would be equivalent to about
270 US$)
Wilhelm Boelcke was maybe less attracted by the game in itself than he was
by the distraction that he found here at the Casino. Here, the hours that he
spend at the Roulette table forced him onto a different kind of
concentration. Here he could find peace and distraction from the daily
sorrows about his company, which he could not find when he was home and read
a book. Here only other gamblers surrounded him - people he did not care for
- and there was the soft voices of the croupiers: "S'il vous plait,
faites vos jeux" and "Rien ne va plus". Contrary
to other German Casinos of that time, the croupiers at the Casino Wiesbaden
announced in French.
Many people believed that the reasons of Wilhelm's death could be found in
his passion for the game. Too many things seemed to be unclear to accept a
simple but fatal car accident for being a stroke of fate. There was the
recorded statement of the unknown witness saying that a man wearing hat and
coat ran away from the crashed Mercedes. There was the fact that Boelcke
drank only one Coca-Cola while he was at the Casino but at the hospital a
blood alcohol level of 2.7 per mille had been diagnosed. Was
this the result of Wilhelm drinking Cognac to ease the pain of his wounds
after he returned to his house? Did the level of blood alcohol match the
quantity of Cognac that he drunk? These questions had been
asked by the author of the article at the Wochenend Magazine. It
seems to be clear that the blood alcohol was the result of the quantity of
Cognac that Wilhelm drunk. And it's unlikely that somebody else could have
given him the Cognac on the way back home. It was quite impossible to drive
fast and drink Cognac. What should have been the reason behind that? There
was no bottle found in his car but the only bottle playing a role in the
case was the one that stood on the smoker's table at the men's room in
Wilhelm's house. Nothing was said if the half empty bottle had been full as
Wilhelm started to drink so nothing is known about the quantity of Cognac
that he really drunk. And off course the blood alcohol level largely depends
not only on the quantity of alcohol that had been drunken but also on weight
of a person and its drinking habits.
It was also said that Wilhelm Boelcke only had a few bank notes in the back
pocket of his flannel pants but his wallet containing 3000.- DM had been
gone. It was furthermore said, that Mr. Wenzel had been officially obliged
to keep silence about the questions that he had been asked by the Police. What
was the reason for that measure? Did the Police follow a hot trace?
Also these questions that had been thrown up by the author of the article.
Could a loss of control due to a sudden faint have been the reason for the
crash - something that was not impossible for an 68 years old man? It was
speculated that a second person in the car could have provoked the accident
to rob Wilhelm Boelcke. But if this was the case the man should have been
injured too and the Police would probably have found blood or other stains
of a second person inside of the car.
People also talked about a last statement of Wilhelm Boelcke that he made at
the hospital. He apparently told a doctor: "I had to fight! I had
been attacked!" Was these words really been said or was it just
gossip invented by busybodies? And if Wilhelm really made that statement -
did he fantasize it in the feverish pain of his wounds or was it the last
desperate attempt to prove his innocence on the accident that did so much
damage to Mr. Wenzel and his lodger? The author of the article remarked: Will
the questions ever be answered? Well, writing to the press
department of the Hessian Police unfortunately only brought negative news. I
asked if records had been kept about the Boelcke case and if I may consult
the Police archives but received the answer that such records are being
destroyed after a certain time elapsed. So there is nothing left about the
Boelcke case anymore and the result of the investigation made by Detective
Van Moors will never be known.
Links concerning this article:
www.wiesbaden.de
- the official website of the City of Wiesbaden. It contains a whole lot of
very useful tourist information regarding this attractive German town. Site
available in German and English.
www.spielbank-wiesbaden.de
- the official website of the Casino of Wiesbaden where Wilhelm Boelcke
spend his time playing at the Roulette table. Site available in German and English
www.auto-salon-singen.de
- the Auto-Salon Singen is a top address to buy exclusive cars of brands
such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Bugatti, Porsche, Aston Martin, Ferrari, to name
but a few. With many thanks to Mr. Fridolin Koltes, senior manager of the
Auto-Salon Singen AG for his kind permission to use the pictures of the
Mercedes 300 on my website.
www.blendax.de
- simple entry page to www.blend-a-med.de,
the official website of the tooth paste brand that now belongs to the
Procter & Gamble group www.procterundgamble.de.
All of these three sites are in German language.
www.volkswagen.de
- the car brand that once manufactured the famous Beetle which is nowadays
still produced under license in Bresil. Site available in German and English.
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