Buddha of the Murder Squad - Alexanderplatz
Where the pink Alexa mall now stands rose the Rote Burg, the block sized red brick Polizeipraesidium of 1890, from whose first floor the 120 kilo Kriminalkommissar Ernst Gennat, nicknamed Buddha, invented the modern homicide squad in 1926 and hunted Berlin's serial killers.
À propos de ce lieu
The Alexa shopping centre, opened on 12 September 2007, occupies the ground of the Polizeipraesidium Alexanderplatz, a red brick fortress of 1890 that Berliners called the Rote Burg. It stretched 196 metres along Alexanderstrasse, held a prison for 422 inmates and was the largest building in the city after the Royal Palace and the Reichstag. On its first floor sat Ernst Gennat, a detective of enormous girth and appetite whose colleagues called him Buddha and whose office mixed a plush sofa with murder weapons and a skull used as a cigarette dispenser. On 1 January 1926 he founded the Zentrale Mordinspektion, Germany's first dedicated homicide squad, with rules that every police force later copied: untouched crime scenes, a central index of killings, patient interrogation without violence, and the Mordauto, a Benz limousine fitted out as the world's first mobile crime scene unit. His squad handled the serial killer Carl Grossmann, arrested on 21 August 1921 with a victim's body in his flat, and Gennat coined the word Serienmoerder in a 1930 essay on Peter Kuerten. On 9 August 1931 his detectives identified the two communists who had shot police captains Paul Anlauf and Franz Lenck on Buelowplatz; one of them, Erich Mielke, later ran the Stasi and was finally convicted of the murders in Berlin on 26 October 1993. Gennat died on 21 August 1939 credited with 298 solved murders. The Rote Burg burnt out in the Second World War, its ruins were cleared in 1957, and today only a memorial plaque on Grunerstrasse marks the site.
À retenir
- 1926 year — On 1 January 1926 Ernst Gennat founded the Zentrale Mordinspektion here, Germany's first dedicated homicide squad, and unveiled the Mordauto, the world's first mobile crime scene unit.
- 298 solved murders — The number of homicide cases credited to Gennat over his career; in 1931 alone his squad cleared 108 of 114 murders in Berlin.
- 62 years — The time between the Buelowplatz police murders of 9 August 1931, investigated from this building, and the conviction of former Stasi chief Erich Mielke for them on 26 October 1993.
📍 Alexanderstraße, 10179, Berlin