EMPEROR WILLIAM IS CHALLENGED TO A DUEL.
from "New York Herald" (New York), June 2, 1891.
Herr Richard Goerdeler, a well-known German, who has filled many positions, and who is at present a professor of music at the Pennington Seminary in New Jersey, has leaped into sudden notoriety. It is not unusual for one man to challenge another to a duel, but it is quite unusual -in fact, unprecedented for a private person to challenge a monarch to single combat. He says he has sent a challenge to no less a personage than Emperor William II. of Germany.
The story of Goerdeler's life, as he gives it out, is quite a romance. If true, his troubles have unbalanced his mind.
In 1862 Herr Goerdeler was a lieutenant in the Prussian army, and was brought at times into contact with Bismarck. On one occasion, the story goes, he learned that the Chancellor had ordered a cargo of arms to be shipped to the Confederate soldiers in this country, and had expressed a wish that they might be satisfactorily used for the purpose of boring holes in the Federal soldiers. In some way or other Bismarck learned that the young lieutenant had discovered this secret, and from that moment began to compass his downfall.
The first step was to get Goerdeler removed from the army, and in this the Chancellor easily succeeded. The next step was to ruin him socially and financially, and in this, too, Prince Bismarck was successful. Goerdeler was engaged to a handsome young girl, and Bismarck trumped up a charge of forgery against her, and finally induced her to marry another. Goerdeler's mother interfered when his fiancée was about to be prosecuted, and then Bismarck conspired against her; but in this case her family connections, and the fact that she was the wife of a Prussian judge, rendered even his efforts nugatory. Goerdeler had some property, and even out of this the unscrupulous Chancellor succeeded in wheedling him.
At last the young man, driven to bay, determined to hit back, and the result was that he wrote a letter to the Emperor, in which he told his story, and asked for the Chancellor's arrest and trial.
To this letter he got no answer, but Bismarck was soon afterwards deprived of the Chancellorship, and Herr Goerdeler is said to be convinced that his old enemy's fall from power was the direct result of his appeal to the Emperor.
Even this amount of revenge, however, did not satisfy the ex-lieutenant. Having been obliged to give up a lucrative position in Berlin-that of representative of the Northern Pacific Railroad-he came to this country, and soon obtaining employment in the Insurance Department at Albany, set his brain to work at planning further schemes for his old enemy's ruin. He brooded long over the matter, and finally, after he had left Albany and secured a position as professor of music at the Pennington Seminary, he came to the conclusion that Bismarck and he could no longer remain in the land of the living, and that one of them must surely die.
He sent a long and imperative letter to young Kaiser Wilhelm, calmly informing him that he must either hang Bismarck or fight a duel with the writer of the letter. Full details of the proposed duel were given in the letter, and the Kaiser was made plainly to understand that Bismarck must be dead by the hangman's rope before July 18, or on that day he (Emperor William) must face Herr Goerdeler's pistol in a pleasant grove near Hamm, Westphalia. The duel is to be fought with hair triggers at eighteen paces.
No reply has yet been received from the Kaiser, and the cable has not yet announced the hanging of Prince Bismarck.
I went to Pennington and interviewed Goerdeler. He told me the challenge reached the Emperor on April 27 last, when the latter was standing alongside the bier of Field-Marshal Von Moltke. He intends sailing for Germany on June 27.
I found him in his den, a small, dingy-looking room, about eight feet by four, facing the campus of the seminary. He hailed me from the entrance to the dining-hall, and by his salutation had evidently preconceived what I was after.
"Do I look like a crank?" said he, as he ran his long, bony fingers through his thin growth of hair, and, without waiting for an answer, invited me inside to his studio, as the place is miscalled.
"Sit down and I will tell you all about it," he mildly commanded me, and, before I had a chance to take my hat off, the Professor began rattling off a series of grievances against the Emperor, Prince Bismarck, and the members of the two distinguished families.
"Don't put me down as a crank, because I am not one," said he again; "but listen to what I say, and take notes of my story carefully."
I could hardly get a word in edgeways, the Professor talked so rapidly; but at last I was permitted to ask him how long he had been in this country.
"I am a native of Germany," replied the fidgety, spare-boned man, "and have been twenty-six years in this country. I have been a citizen of the United States twenty years, having been naturalised at Danville, Boyle County, Ky. I have been only one year in this seminary."
"And your age-about sixty, I presume?" I said to him, because he looks fully that old.
"Oh, only fifty-two," said the Professor smilingly. The Professor is an ascetic-looking person, and just nervous enough to kick up a row on slight provocation, and fight it out with pistols or sabres, perhaps, if need be.
"Have you fought duels before?"
"Oh yes, I have: several while I was a student in the German university and an officer in the German army."
"How many men have you killed in your day?"
"None at all; but I have been wounded myself in the head with sabres several times. See that?" said he, as he pointed to a slight scar above his forehead; "that came from a sabre cut."
"You are a good shot, then?"
"Oh yes; pretty good. The Emperor, however, is a poor shot; but that gives him the best chance, because he is likely to fire last, and the last shot generally brings down the adversary."
"Well, what is your grievance against the Emperor?"
The Professor rattled off a long story, the substance of which has been given above. He said he was forced to resign from the Insurance Department in Albany on October 17, 1889, on the charge of having prevented the Harper's Mutual Reserve Fund from getting a permit from Berlin to do business in Germany.
"Bismarck," he continued, "had this charge preferred against me. Subsequently, Emperor William received a letter from me with a forgery enclosed, by which two Prussian judges, friends of Bismarck's boys, wanted to get my signature, in order to swindle me out of my inheritance. I requested the Emperor not to hush up this forgery as he did the one sent the imperial prosecutor, June 28, 1889, and which had cheated my sister, who is an inmate of a lunatic asylum in Germany, out of her means of support. The Emperor sent for Bismarck at once, and inquired what forgery I referred to. Bismarck told the Emperor a lie, that the forgery was my mother's; and she was the widow of a judge of the Superior Court, therefore nothing could be done.
"For casting a suspicion on my mother, I called out the Emperor; and my friends, among them being Baron Trebord, of Halle, Germany, are looking after my interests. Bismarck knows I am an energetic, ambitious man, and not intended to end my life as a music teacher. Bismarck thought I would make a rush for the Emperor, proclaim a German Republic, and announce to the world that hereafter the German people would govern themselves, and become a great and free nation. I deem it most likely that Bismarck will be placed on public trial, and the world will be the better for it."
"Your grievances seem to be more against Bismarck than the Emperor," I said. "Then why have you not challenged the Prince instead of the Emperor?"
"My answer to that is," replied the Professor, "that I deem it best to go to the head of the heap to get satisfaction. The Emperor is the responsible party, and he must fight me."
He made other charges against the Prince, among them being the comical one that he generally ate fifty eggs for his breakfast, while he would not permit a poor family to have a mouthful of meat.
The Professor seemed to be willing to talk all night about his grievances. I intimated that I had enough already to fill an entire page of the Herald, and as I was about to leave him he said "If the Emperor kills me, I will die shouting 'The German Republic for ever;' and if I die, my death will be the signal for an uprising of the German people in favour of free government such as the world has rarely witnessed. My proposition for conducting the duel is that we shall stand at a distance of nine paces; when the word of command is given, each must advance three paces, take deliberate aim, and fire."
The Professor retired to his den in a seemingly happy frame of mind. To make sure that the Herald got his side of the story, Professor Goerdeler telegraphed a long statement last night to this office.
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