The Vampire of Düsseldorf: Peter Kürten's Reign of Terror

A Murder Spree Begins

Peter Kürten plunged Düsseldorf into unprecedented terror between November 1929 and May 1930. The killer, born May 26, 1883, murdered at least nine people—small children, teenagers, and adult women. He stabbed, strangled, or bludgeoned his victims to death with a hammer, and in several cases drank their blood directly from their wounds. This macabre method earned him the nickname "The Vampire of Düsseldorf."

The first known victim was five-year-old Maria Wilhelm, whom Kürten killed on November 8, 1929, in the Flehe district with 36 stab wounds. On February 13, 1930, 34-year-old Else Schüller followed, stabbed to death with scissors on Kurfürstenstrasse. Fifteen-month-old Maria Schultze was murdered on May 9, 1930, in Reisholz—her throat was slit and her body buried in a courtyard. The brutality escalated: on August 25, 1930, Kürten killed five-year-old Marie-Luise Lenzen and seriously wounded her 13-year-old sister Gertrud.

A City in Panic

The murder series triggered unprecedented hysteria in Düsseldorf. Lord Mayor Robert Lehr imposed a curfew for children after 6 PM in 1929. Women were afraid to go out at night, and schoolchildren were picked up by armed parents. Authorities offered a reward of 10,000 Reichsmarks—the highest ever posted in Germany.

More than 1,000 newspaper articles were written about the case. The "Kölnische Zeitung" and "Frankfurter Zeitung" reported on May 25, 1930, about the "terrible crime" and the "murderer from Flehe." Prosecutor Adolf Köthe explained during the trial on April 24, 1931: "The crimes put the entire population in fear and terror." The atmosphere from these months would later inspire Fritz Lang's expressionist masterpiece.