One of the oldest, most frequent and most successful devices of the hoaxer
is imposture, the acquiring of undeserved prestige by which to make easier
the attainment of his ends. Wear the proper clothes, assume the correct
a?airs,a? and your awestricken victims will not detect the joke,
swindle, or fraud.
As a master of bluff none ever excelled Wilhelm Voigt, a cobbler remembered
by the sobriquet of Captain von KA¶penick (after the small suburb of
Berlin where, October 17, 1906, he executed his famous coup).
Masquerading in the uniform of a Prussian army captain, Voigt, an
ex-convict, placed himself at the head of a detachment of grenadiers,
marched to the town hall, arrested the burgomaster, examined the municipal
accounts, seized ready cash to the sum of A£200, commandeered
telephone and telegraph services a?for state business,a? and sent
the burgomaster in custody to Berlin military headquarters.
When, nine days later, Voigt was arrested and, within six weeks, sentenced
to four yearsa? imprisonment, the attention of the entire world was
directed to alleged abuses in the German prison system. Either because of
the tremendous public opinion which was aroused or, as some say, because of
being amused, Kaiser Wilhelm pardoned Voigt by imperial edict despite the
impostora?s record of twenty-seven years in prison for petty offenses.
Six years later, according to an Associated Press dispatch which appeared
in the Atlanta
Constitution
, German newspapers received
notices of Voigta?s death. In orthodox fashion they reviewed his
life and unwittingly gave valuable publicity to a vaudeville company to
which [the quite alive] Captain von KA¶penick belonged. In 1932 a
motion picture,
Der Hauptmann von KA¶penick
, starring Max
Adalbert, was based on Voigta?s escapade.
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Excerpted from
Hoaxes
by Curtis D. MacDougall, Dover Publications
1958.
Alas, this wonderful book is currently out-of-print.
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