The Bergdoll Boys, page 44
In closing his brazen missive, Grover commanded the Schmidts, “Do not force Friedl; Leave her to have her way! I love and worship Friedl’s nature and her soul, not her body, although she is very beautiful. It may seem very strange to you, but I assure you, it is the only honest and honorable way!” He signed off, Grover Bergdoll, Hotel Krone-Post, Eberbach/Baden.
Grover’s persistence was rewarded, and the parents soon relented. Grover and Friedel became engaged on Christmas Day 1922, with press reports in the United States citing a “letter” from Grover in St. Gall, Switzerland, to an Eberbach relative claiming that the couple was married on January 4, 1923. In it, Grover also claimed that he wished to become a Swiss resident and wait there for amnesty for “political and military offenses” committed in the United States.
The letter from Switzerland and the declaration were found to be false, however. Grover sent a message saying they were only engaged, not married.2 It undermined Emma’s misinformation, too, when she answered the telephone at the Wynnefield mansion in January 1923 and replied to a reporter from the Wilmington, Delaware, Evening Journal that Grover “was married in Switzerland to Friedel Schmidt. Good-bye.” Emma then hung up the telephone receiver on the reporter.
The relationship between Grover and Friedel Schmidt, born on January 10, 1910, in Alexandria, Egypt, to German parents and raised in Budapest before moving to Heidelberg in 1922, continued with the parents’ approval. Court testimony recited almost verbatim in a German newspaper indicated that Grover and Friedel traveled in his Benz automobile through the Black Forest of Baden and into Switzerland for eight days when she was on Easter holiday from school in 1923.3
Grover had read about the American novelist Mark Twain and his travels through the Schwarzwald in July 1878 and made several trips into southern Germany. While driving his Benz through the more profound and taller western mountains of the former Grand Duchy of Baden, few other vehicles were on the roads, no one knew Grover and Friedel, and they could pass for a married couple on holiday. They collected rocks and frolicked around mineral springs. They gazed at the stars through Grover’s telescope at night. The young lovers (ages 14 and 29) stayed in romantic inns around the Titisee for several nights, dining in restaurants and picnicking in the woods along cool water streams teeming with trout.4
On this Easter 1923 road trip and other times, Grover is accused of seducing the young girl. He denied it. Later that summer, the difference in age between Grover and Friedel may have taken its toll. Grover cast her aside when he discovered she was also interested in a German boy from her school. He broke off the engagement in August 1923, citing Friedel’s “flirtations with a male student at Heidelberg.” Documents from court testimony indicate that Friedel and her mother tried convincing Grover to reconsider, but he refused.
Grover later testified that he heard of a Fräulein Schmidt’s death in 1925, and, thinking it was Friedel, he went to Heidelberg to pay his respects by visiting her grave. There he discovered the death on March 15, 1925, was that of Friedel’s sister, Else.5 Friedel was still alive and susceptible to the influence of American bounty hunters who were still trying to get Grover, despite two failed kidnappings.
While in Heidelberg, Grover tried to rekindle the relationship with Friedel but was rejected. From that point onward, he tried to put the Schmidts out of his mind.6
***
The seduction and morality case against Grover would never have risen to court had it not been for the investigative efforts of a highly nationalistic and wealthy German-American, Robert Paul Sachs, born in Frankfurt, Hesse, who became a naturalized American citizen and considered Philadelphia his home.
Arriving in the United States at 11 with his mother, Elise, and seven siblings from three to 16, Sachs quickly adopted American culture but remained German. He later lived in Oakland, and Fair Oaks, California. As an adult, Sachs made enough money as an advertising salesman and public relations artist for Coast Tire and Rubber Company of Oakland to retire at a young age.7
Sachs was an amateur aviator and highly nationalistic for American politics and patriotism. He used his wealth to travel to Europe and pursue Bergdoll.
After the war and his lucrative advertising campaigns, such as signing the African-American celebrity pilot, Bessie Coleman, to fly promotional events for Coast Tire, Sachs set his sights on returning Grover to the United States to face trial. Sachs’ passport applications indicate he first traveled to Europe in 1920 to explore business opportunities for the William A. Sachs electrical and automobile parts supply company in the Germantown community of Philadelphia, from where he would have been well versed on the Bergdoll legal and family drama.
Then, Sachs made another trip to Europe in 1923 to investigate Grover’s secret life in Germany. Sachs presented himself in Europe as a detective with the Alameda County, California sheriff’s department, chairman of the League of Friends of Peace in New York and Chicago, and secretary of the American Society for Truth in New York and California.8 He gathered enough information on Grover and the teenage Friedel Schmidt to convince a prosecutor in Baden to file charges against Grover in February 1926.9 However, even then, the prosecutor warned the public that he would “proceed cautiously” because the charges were brought by people trying to deport Grover to a country that would extradite him to the United States for trial on the draft-dodging charges.10
Grover was arrested at a hotel room in Huffenhardt, Emma’s childhood hometown, and formally charged with seduction, corrupting the morals of a child, and passport forgery, and sent to the district jail in Mosbach.11 But, the description of the multiple allegations by Sachs was much more salacious than the formal charges that were filed. As a committee of the Bar Association of the State of Baden later described it, Grover feared his “economic and moral ruin, deportation to another country, and extradition to America, and possible conviction for desertion, and confiscation of his property.” But first, he faced up to 10 years in prison in Germany.
With his mother and other family fixers out of reach, Grover retained his Eberbach lawyer, Karl Zeiss, and a second lawyer from Karlsruhe, Dr. Ludwig Marum, a notable Jewish member of the Reichstag and the liberal Social Democratic Party of Germany. Grover boldly promised to pay them a lot to save his hide.12 They agreed. It was a wise choice for Grover but a mistake for the attorneys.
The trial was held in a Mosbach courtroom which Grover found very familiar because he’d been involved in two prior trials for his attempted kidnappings. Frau Katharina Schmidt convinced the presiding judge to close the gallery to spectators because of the sensitive sexual details concerning Grover and her young daughter. Still, it was covered extensively by the European and American press. Many witnesses and spectators traveled from Heidelberg and Eberbach to Mosbach by train through the lush farmland of the Neckar River valley.
In the old Mosbach district courthouse surrounded by towering linden trees, Grover’s adversary, Sachs, did not attend because he was already back in the United States telling any reporter who would listen that he sent the infamous draft-dodging Bergdoll to trial for molesting a young German girl.
Sachs also claimed that he met with Grover in the Mosbach jail and that Grover told him his hidden loot was the “size of ten cases containing more than $250,000 in gold.” Sachs boasted that Grover showed him a chart of the location of the gold, hidden so well that it could only be found using the chart. Sachs also claimed that Grover told him he was a Bolshevist and interested in their movement in Russia, which had peaked with the Russian Revolution in 1922–1923, at the same time when Grover was alleged to have committed his immoral acts on Friedel Schmidt.
“When I saw Bergdoll, he seemed depressed,” Sachs told a reporter. “But he maintained his brazen attitude. He’s hired famous lawyers to defend him.” Sachs said the trial would be heard by the same judge who tried Sperber, Griffis, Nelson, and Prince Gagarin for attempting to kidnap Grover in 1923, hinting that a fix was in. Sachs complained that Grover had comfortable quarters at the Mosbach jail, where the growth of a mustache changed his appearance, and he could roam about the garden with food from a local restaurant. But, he was sure Grover would get six to eight years in prison and then be deported from Germany after serving his sentence. Once deported, Sachs speculated, Grover could be tried for escape and war desertion in the United States.
Sachs could not have been more wrong about Bergdoll’s fate.
Grover was indignant when he led the testimony on the witness stand. As reported by the Associated Press, Grover was “nervous, and with perspiration streaming down his forehead, [and] bitterly attacked the private detective, Sachs, who had preferred the charges, but who was not present in court.” Grover had several relatives and friends testify to his good moral behavior. The prosecutors, however, promised that the court would hear “sensational disclosures by girls ranging in age from 15 to 18 years.” It was implied that Grover had been molesting several German girls. However, the teen girl witnesses never appeared.
Grover’s defense attorneys spent considerable money on private investigators who claimed that Sachs became friendly with the Schmidt family and convinced them to file the charges, in part because Grover rebuffed Sachs’ demands that he return with him to the United States where Sachs would be the hero detective who captured Bergdoll.13
One issue was the timeline of the alleged seduction of Schmidt. Was the alleged violation before or after the engagement? A psychiatric expert, Professor Hans Gruhle from the University of Heidelberg, testified that Friedel Schmidt was “subnormal mentally and untrustworthy.” Friedel, described as “16¼ years old” at the trial, testified with her mother, Katharina. Friedel testified that she was sexually violated in an Eberbach hotel room before the couple’s approved engagement. Katharina Schmidt appeared confused and testified that the violation occurred after the couple’s engagement.14
Grover later told his son Alfred that Friedel sat quietly during the trial and “wagged her bob” while Frau Schmidt sobbed, trying to gain sympathy. However, their story was poorly presented in court. Appearing last on the witness stand, Friedel’s testimony was hopeless when she contradicted her mother’s story.
Although the trial took eight hours, including a lunch break, Grover was acquitted after the judge and two associates deliberated for 10 minutes. The Baden bar association assessment of the prosecution said Grover “owes a great deal of gratitude for his acquittal to the energetic, aim-conscious and untiring activity” of his attorneys.
Grover told an Associated Press reporter in Mosbach, “I’m through with Americans. I have lost all respect for Americans because they have hounded me and, by underhand methods, such as the employment of Sachs, have tried to throw me in jail.”
Grover bought beer and wine for the many German trial spectators, police, and court officials at a Mosbach saloon. While celebrating with a glass of Pinot Gris in one hand and Pils in the other, Grover bragged that he would sue Sachs, but he never followed through on the threat, perhaps because his lawyers wouldn’t do it. He failed to pay them the promised bonus fees of $10,000 each.15
Several years later, the attorneys sued Grover, trying to collect their fees. Their court filings revealed they were as determined as bounty hunters to find him in Germany. At the same time, Grover followed his tried-and-true evasion methods, disappearing in his luxury automobile and living lavishly off his steady stream of cash from the United States, courtesy of Emma.
In his 1926 morality trial court filings, Grover claimed that his American assets were worth $1.4 million and that he was due to receive more money from his father’s estate and his mother. His German attorneys took notice. They agreed that if their defense cleared Grover of all charges, including legal work for his effort to become a German citizen and legal issues over his use and possession of a Stendawerke pocket pistol, he would pay them extra. Despite the celebration over winning the morality case, Grover’s relationship with the attorneys quickly soured.16
While Zeiss was Grover’s primary and long-time German attorney, Dr. Marum was also a key figure in Grover’s winning defense in the Schmidt criminal charges. Marum was one of the few Jews in the German parliament and an extremely liberal socialist. In 1926, the newly labeled Third Reich was taking notice of the publicity surrounding the controversial German-American draft dodger, Bergdoll, hiding among them and drawing unwanted international attention to what many in Germany (at the time) considered a pending revolution. Grover, who told friends that he liked and respected the German Nazi party, told others that he hated the Nazi totalitarian racism movement but that they represented a path away from the imposed financial restraints of France, Belgium, and England from the European war. It was a classic Grover Cleveland Bergdoll trait.
When the morality acquittal celebration in Mosbach ended, and it ended when Grover stopped paying the saloon tab, attorneys Zeiss and Marum (with Marum’s law partner Albert Nachmann) mailed invoices to Grover to collect their fees. However, the invoices were returned from Huffenhardt and Weinsberg with notations that Grover no longer lived at those addresses. Grover was traveling again, and, despite letters and postcards from various locations in Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands to Zeiss promising payment of the remaining legal fees plus interest, the attorneys received nothing more in compensation. In Marum’s law firm cash book, a clerk recorded that Grover owed Marum about $5,000 and Zeiss about $6,000, with interest compounding.
Collecting their outstanding legal fees proved impossible for Zeiss and Marum as it was for anyone chasing down Grover. With a stack of unpaid invoices, Marum even drove his car to Eberbach, Mosbach, and Obrighaem in the warm summer of 1927 after hearing that Bergdoll might be hiding there. He didn’t find him. With tips that Grover drove a black Maybach sedan with the license plate III D 1218 registered in Berta’s father’s name, Herr Franck, Nachmann and Zeiss spent two days in September 1927 traveling by car to the villages around Mosbach but did not find Grover either.17 They sent invoice letters to Herr Franck and Berta Bergdoll in Weinsberg and Emma in Philadelphia but received only a brief correspondence from Herr Franck that Grover “was traveling.” They continued their collection efforts, including demands through the German courts. Dr. Marum was especially vigilant, sending Grover a personal letter offering a settlement of the fees. “How this is to be done and in what amount—this I would prefer to discuss with you personally,” he wrote. “Call me here at Karlsruhe, or we meet at some other place agreeable.” Marum never got the call or a meeting with Grover. And he never got the chance to pursue collecting his fees. Finally, in 1932, the lawyers who so expertly extricated Grover from a dire legal situation submitted to a German court to withdraw their active debt collection efforts but, wisely, kept the case open because of an eight percent interest agreement signed by Grover.
It’s a good thing they kept their legal options. Much later, in 1940 and 1941, after Grover returned to the United States, he was convicted again of desertion and sentenced to prison. With new collection efforts filed with the Supreme Court of the State of New York, the real reason for the attorneys’ debt collection abandonment in 1932 was revealed. They realized what was happening in Germany, and Marum was on the front line of challenging the growing strength of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, the Nazis. The Marum lawyer partners always kept a Bergdoll file in their Karlsruhe office, not because the long-past criminal case was still pending but because the tab had not been fully paid. A similar, nearly duplicate Bergdoll file for attorney Zeiss was kept in his office in Eberbach. They weren’t about to let Grover escape without paying his tab.
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1 In Grover’s November 17, 1922 letter to Mr. Schmidt, he wrote in English, spelling Friedel’s name as Friedl: “I can better express my meanings than if I wrote in German.” Letter on file at the German Society of Pennsylvania.
2 The contents of the Switzerland “letter” may have been invented by the press to replicate a letter that Grover sent to Emma in Philadelphia informing her that he was engaged to be married.
3 The alleged victim of Grover’s seduction was interchangeably identified by different news services as Liesel Schmidt and Friedel Schmidt. One of Friedel’s middle names was Elise, a variant of Liesel. It appears that Friedel Schmidt and her mother were convinced by others to go public with moral allegations against Grover.
4 Although viewed as deplorable today, it was not unusual in 1923 for parents of a young teen girl to approve marriage to a much older man.
5 Else Schmidt died in Heidelberg at age 17 on March 15, 1925.
6 Court records and research through German ancestry on Ancestry.com and MyHeritage.com revealed the identification of Friedel and Else Schmidt. Details were confirmed by the Robert Paul Sachs investigation documents.
7 Robert Paul Sachs’ life journey was relatively easy to follow. He had one of the most unusual signatures ever portrayed on state and federal documents.
8 Neither of these truth and peace organizations are found in historical records.
9 Sachs told The New York Times he posed as a chemistry research student at the University of Heidelberg where Friedel Schmidt studied chemistry.
10 German extradition policies were long tangled in the lopsided orders of the Treaty of Versailles. Plus, Grover lived in Germany without proper identification and on a fake passport.
11 Even in custody, German laws protected Grover from extradition and deportation. The local townspeople and police continued protecting him from bounty hunters and the press.
12 It was later determined that Grover promised a fee of 5,000 reichsmarks for each attorney and a special bonus of $10,000 cash for each.
13 Sachs claimed he was working on behalf of Emma Bergdoll to get Grover back to the United States.
