Major Rathbone's accomodation in Hannover

[calebj123]

(07-01-2013 06:35 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  There’s some time left for me now for a closer look at and comment on the article.
Most of the 1979 main article is about Pegge Hlavacek, a journalist from the “Sun Newspaper” from Ohama, Nebraska, who came to Hannover in order to write a book about Major Rathbone (did she? Does a book by her exist?) and about two Germans who assisted with her research.
The most interesting passage therein is a quote from the “Hanoversche Courier” saying that after his atrocity Rathbone stated and was convinced someone had tried to abduct his children and that he had been injured while fighting the kidnapper.
The clipping on the left from Dec 24, 1883 tells that Rathbone came to Germany to recover from the depressions he had been suffering from since Lincoln’s assassination. He had been in a good mood during the days before the deed and had been shopping for Christmas presents for the kids toghether with Clara.
In the early morning of Christmas Eve he tried to enter his children’s bedroom, but the governess, suspicious of him due to his talking, didn’t let him in. Clara meanwhile had woken up and managed to get him into the living room. Rathbone locked the door behind them and then it happened. When the neighbours smashed the door, Clara had already been dead and the Major laid next to her, seriously wounded. In his pockets such an amount of ammunition was found that it was supposed he had intented to kill the whole family.
PS: Have a great holiday on Thursday, all of you!!

Eva, thanks so much for translating this. I've done searches for Rathbone books through the Library of Congress, Archives and all other normal search sources. There are no books about the couple, other than Thomas Mallon's "Henry and Clara" which we all know takes a lot of liberties and must fill in the holes with fiction. It seems as though my book about the couple will be the first non-fiction book.

This is a great article and there are even more details of the murder that are both shocking and gruesome. It was a very bloody and prolonged ordeal. The whole early morning of Christmas Eve in 1883 when Henry killed Clara is very sad and moving.