Mehr Amokläufe: More Rampages

Germany again! What is the central problem? One event appears to be triggering others - it is the copycat effect on steroids.

Over the weekend, there have been Mehr Amokläufe (more rampages) in Deutschland.

Europe was rocked on 14 July 2016, Bastille Day, on the "Promenade des Anglais: 84 Dead in Nice," France. The location, Promenade des Anglais means "Avenue of the English."

Then the series of German Amokläufe (plural of Amokläuf, rampages) began.

18 July 2016: A 17-year-old Afghan refugee [Riaz Khan Ahmadzai (also known as Muhammad Riyad)] injured four people seriously, two critically, with a knife and hatchet on a train near Würzburg in Germany. See "Amoklauf Würzburg Axe Attack."

22 July 2016: On the the 5th anniversary of the Norway: 7.22.11 Breivik Attacks, a mass shooting took place at the Olympia Mall's McDonald's in Munich, Germany. Ten were killed (including the gunman) and 35 injured. Ali David Sonboly (Persian: علی داوید سنبلی‎‎; called David S. by the police) was identified as the assailant. He was an 18-year-old Iranian-German with dual nationality. Police in Munich said the gunman had Amok Im Kopf a German translation of a book on mass school shootings, along with materials related to the 2009 Winnenden school shooting in Germany and the bomb-and-gun attacks in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people. See also "Amoklauf Munich Olympia Mall: Nine Dead."

24 July 2016: A Syrian asylum seeker armed with a knife attacked pedestrians in Reutlingen, Germany, killing a pregnant woman and wounding two other people.

24 July 2016: Twelve people were injured, three seriously, in a suicide bombing outside a wine bar. At 22:12 CEST (20:12 UTC), a bomb exploded outside Eugene's Wine Bar (German: Eugens Weinstube) in Ansbach, Germany. The bomber, the only fatality, was a 27-year-old Syrian man who had been denied asylum. The actual target of the bombing may have been the Ansbach Open music festival with around 2,500 people in attendance. The explosion occurred near the entrance to the festival. The suicide bomber, known to police after trying to die by suicide twice prior to the bombing, carried a backpack filled with screws, nails, and miscellaneous metal parts used in wood manufacturing and was denied entry into the music festival due to the lack of a ticket shortly before the blast. German authorities have found a video showing the bomber pledging allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on his phone. Joachim Herrmann, the Bavarian interior minister, said "it is unquestionable that it is a terror attack with corresponding Islamist convictions of the perpetrator."

Thus, from the 18th through the 24th, there have been four Amoklauf events in Germany. More is expected.

Enki King observes:

Batman: The Killing Joke will be shown in theaters across the country [only] on July 25 [and July 26, 2016]. It is based on a graphic novel by occultist Alan Moore.

As we enter the week and a half period bookmarked by the appearance of Joker films in cinemas, it is worth recalling that the Joker's appearance was based on German actor Conrad Veidt's portrayal of Gwynplaine in the expressionist film The Man Who Laughs.

The end date, August 5, 2016, is capped by the first appearance of the Suicide Squad and its new Joker.

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In the early morning hours of July 25, 2016, there was a shooting at the closing hour of a nightclub in Florida, giving people flashbacks to the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting of June 12, 2016.

25 July 2016: A shooting occurred inside the Club Blu Bar and Grill nightclub in Fort Myers, Florida. Preliminary reports indicate at least two individuals, both teenagers, are dead with 20 injured. The deceased have been identified as 14-year-old Sean Archilles and 18-year-old Stefan Strawder. Two suspects and a person of interest have been detained in connection with the shooting. The venue was reportedly hosting an all ages event for teenagers and ID was not required. The shooters apparently involved not teenagers, but those who were there to pick up the adolescents at closing.

Known for The Werewolf of Ansbach, Killing Spree Visits Area

A suspect has been caught by police after allegedly shooting to death two people in a killing spree in Ansbach in northern Bavaria, Germany, on Friday morning, July 10, 2010.

The area is known as the site of famed werewolf account, in many ways, a German version of the Beast of Gévaudan (La Bête Du Gévaudan).

Coat of Arms of Anspach.

The name of the town was originally Onolzbach, meaning "On'z Brook". It was also formerly known as Anspach.

The Wolf of Ansbach was a man-eating wolf that attacked and killed an unknown number of people in the Principality of Ansbach in 1685, then a part of the Holy Roman Empire. Initially a nuisance preying on livestock, the wolf soon began attacking women and children. The citizens of Ansbach believed the animal to be a werewolf, a reincarnation of their late and cruel Bürgermeister, whose recent death had gone unlamented. During an organized hunt the locals succeeded in driving the wolf from a nearby forest and chasing it down with dogs until it leaped into an uncovered well for protection. Trapped, the wolf was slain, and its carcass paraded through the city marketplace. It was dressed in a man's clothing and, after severing its muzzle, the crowd placed a mask, wig, and beard upon its head, giving it the appearance of the former Bürgermeister. The wolf's body was then hanged from a gibbet for all to see until it underwent preservation for permanent display at a local museum. (See also, The Book of Werewolves by Sabine Baring-Gould, and The Werewolf by Montague Summers).

Franz Ritter von Kobell and other writers wrote poems about the wolf and its actions.

The man arrested in conjunction with the July 10, 2015, Ansbach shooting is thought to be around 47 years old, is alleged to have driven in a silver Mercedes convertible to the village of Tiefenthal, where he stopped and had a brief exchange of words with an 82-year-old woman before shooting her dead.

Tuefebthal literally translates as "the deep valley." The municipality lies in a small hollow with northern slopes between the Eisbach and Eckbach valleys in the Palatinate. Tiefenthal belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Hettenleidelheim, whose seat is in the like-named municipality. Until 1969, the municipality belonged to the now abolished district of Frankenthal.

The German blazon reads: In Rot ein goldenes Tatzenkreuz. (A golden cross in red.)
Tiefenthal’s arms might in English heraldic language be described thus: Gules a cross pattée humetty Or. The arms were approved by the now defunct Regierungsbezirk administration in Neustadt and date from a 1724 seal. They are borrowed from the arms once borne by the Counts of Leiningen-Westerburg, to whom Tiefenthal belonged.

The suspect fled the scene before shooting and killing a 72-year-old male cyclist 5km away in Rammersdorf.

Another man was threatened with a gun, and shortly afterwards a tractor driver was shot at, but was unhurt, police said.

Two mechanics working at a petrol station in Bad Windsheim overpowered the man after he entered the shop and threatened employees with a gun, police said.

Police said the man, named as Bernd G, was not previously known to the authorities.

Gerhard Neuhof, a senior public prosecutor in Ansbach, said there was no indication the gunman knew his victims and the incident appeared to have been a random killing spree.

The mayor of Leutershausen, Siegfried Hess, said he was shocked by the attack, according to the newspaper the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Crime scene investigators in Leutershausen, near Ansbach (EPA)

Hess told the Süddeutsche Zeitung that he was "totally shocked".

Hess described the killings as "probably the worst crime in the history of the town." He said he had already sent his condolences to the family of the 82-year-old victim, and said he believed the suspect did not know the woman.

Apparently Herr Hess is unaware of the werewolf history of Ansbach!

Enigmas of Ansbach

A Bavarian town famous for its werewolf and site of the death of the mysterious Kaspar Hauser has been hit by a school attack.


Kaspar Hauser

An 18-year-old student armed with an ax, knives and Molotov cocktails wounded eight fellow students and a teacher at his high school in the Bavarian town of Ansbach on Thursday, September 17, 2009, the German police said. The police arrived at the scene minutes after the rampage began, opening fire on the attacker, who was not identified, and arresting him.

Two children were seriously wounded, as was the 18-year-old attacker. Seven other children were slightly wounded.

Ralf Koch, a spokesman for the Bavarian police, said between 600 and 700 students attend the school, which includes grades seven through 13. The attacker was in the 13th grade.

Police said they received an emergency call at 8:35 a.m. (2:35 a.m. ET). When they got to the school, they immediately smelled smoke in the building, and they then encountered the attacker in a hallway.

The teenager had lobbed two Molotov cocktails into classrooms, one of which caused a fire, said Udo Dreher of the local police. He had also attacked several students with the ax and knives.

Police shot the teenager several times because he threatened the police officers, said Joachim Herrmann, the minister of the interior for the state of Bavaria, where Ansbach is located. The siege ended at 8:46 a.m.

The attacker suffered life-threatening wounds and is now being treated at a hospital.

(See here for Todd Campbell's straightforward take on this event.)

Apocalypse Today

Ansbach State Prosecutor Juergen Krach said the attacker remained hospitalized after he was shot by police during his arrest. Doctors plan to bring him out of a medically induced coma on Friday, September 18, 2009.

Krach said a search of the student's home turned up the calendar on which he had marked September 17, 2009, with the words "apocalypse today," and a handwritten will.

State Prosecutor Gudrun Lehnberger said the will was dated September 11, 2009. She added that the search turned up no threats against specific students or people. The attacker's motive remains unclear.

"I can confirm that the perpetrator was undergoing psychotherapeutic treatment," Lehnberger said. The teenager's name has not been released because of German privacy laws. Krach said police have questioned the student's parents.

The episode was the second attack at a German school in less than a year.

In March 2009, 17-year-old Tim Kretschmer fatally shot 12 people (mostly females) at his former school in the southwestern town of Winnenden, a town near Stuttgart, Germany. He fled the building and killed three more people before turning the gun on himself.

Ansbach: A place of strange wonders

The Wolf of Ansbach was a man-eating wolf that attacked and killed an unknown number of people in the Principality of Ansbach in 1685, then a part of the Holy Roman Empire. Initially a nuisance preying on livestock, the wolf soon began attacking women and children.



The citizens of Ansbach believed the animal to be a werewolf. After it was killed, a human mask was placed on the carcass. The wolf's body was then hanged from a gibbet for all to see until it underwent preservation for permanent display at a local museum.

Kaspar Hauser (30 April 1812? – 17 December 1833) was a mysterious "lost child" found in 19th century Germany famous for his claim to have grown up in the total isolation of a darkened cell, raised like a half-wild human, in the tradition of feral or wolf children. Hauser's stories, and his likewise mysterious death by stabbing, sparked much debate and controversy. Hauser lived in Ansbach from 1830 to 1833. He was murdered in the palace gardens there.



Hauser was buried in a country graveyard; his headstone reads, in Latin, "Here lies Kaspar Hauser, riddle of his time. His birth was unknown, his death mysterious." A monument to him was later erected in the Court Garden which reads Hic occultus occulto occisus est: "Here a mysterious one was killed in a mysterious manner."

Forteans have been interested in the mystery of Kaspar Hauser for some time. Fortean Society member and famed science fiction author Eric Frank Russell, in his 1943 novel Sinister Barrier, described Kaspar Hauser as a person who originated from a non-human laboratory. Robert A. Heinlein, in his 1963 Glory Road, referred to "Kaspar Hausers" as an analogue to persons popping in and out of metaphysical planes.

In the 1966 film Fahrenheit 451, the protagonist Guy Montag discreetly puts a copy of a book entitled Gaspard Hauser into his bag before the rest of the books in that residence are torched.

In the American TV series "Smallville," (2001) Clark Kent finds a boy who does not to remember who he was or where he came from, except his name. Chloe refers to the boy as a "modern day Kasper Hauser."

In the Japanese horror movie Marebito (2004), the lead character Masuoka refers to a girl he found chained up underground as his "little Kaspar Hauser."

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser



In 1974, the German filmmaker Werner Herzog made Hauser's story into the film, Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle (Every Man for Himself and God Against All). In English the film has become known by that translation, or by the title The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser.

The bizarre nature of the movie is a metaphor for the human condition, the mystery of the Hauser melodrama, and, as it turns out, the strange things that still happen in Ansbach.