Berlin Letter: Germans never question a man in uniform - a national character trait a petty thief named Wilhelm Voigt exploited to world acclaim 100 years ago.
Voigt became Germany's first world star when he decided to steal Kaiser Wilhelm's fortune dressed as an army captain. He went to prison for his efforts, but received a royal pardon and spent the rest of his life living off his own legend.
Wilhelm Voigt was born in 1849 in the east Prussian town of Tilsit, today Sowjetsk in Russia, to a Russian mother and a German father who was a cobbler by trade.
Young Wilhelm turned to crime early on and was picked up by police for theft aged just 14 and sent to prison for two weeks. At 18 he landed behind bars again, this time serving 12 years for forging documents. All in all, he would spend 30 years of his life behind bars, on the last occasion for the scam that would make him a star.
After several failed attempts to work as a cobbler he moved to his sister in Berlin, a military capital city filled with soldiers, where a uniform would get you the best table in a restaurant or the best seats in the theatre.
Noticing this, Voigt visited several junk shops in Berlin and Potsdam and soon had pieced together a shabby captain's outfit, including a peaked cap and greatcoat.
On October 16th, 1906, he travelled through the city in uniform, continuing until he spotted a group of off-duty soldiers returning to their barracks. "I told the party that they weren't permitted to march back to the barracks but, through a higher order, were to be commandeered by me for another task," wrote Voigt later.
The soldiers immediately fell into line and followed him to the nearby train station. The "captain" explained that he hadn't time to requisition a transport vehicle and, after buying tickets for each of the 10 officers, got them on the train. After changing trains once, the group arrived in the town of Köpenick, southeast of Berlin, and headed for the town hall, where Voigt had heard the kaiser kept more than two million marks in the safe.
With his men standing guard, he marched into the office of the mayor, Georg Langerhans, and told him he was under arrest because of "irregularities in the sewage works fund". After fruitless demands for the kaiser's fortune, he settled for the town treasury of 3,557 marks and 45 pfennig. The "captain" vanished with the money, abandoned his officers and his uniform, and was being fitted for expensive suits in the centre of Berlin by the time the first police reports were sent out. Despite his new disguise he was arrested 10 days later, betrayed by a fellow crook he had once told of the plan. By that time Voigt's story had been spread by the new mass media and journalists from around the world descended on Berlin for his trial.
On December 1st, 1906, Wilhelm Voigt - by now known around the world as the "captain of Köpenick" - was sentenced to four years in prison. Appeals for clemency arrived from around the world, including from the mayor of San Francisco. Even the kaiser was reported to be highly amused by the story and signed a pardon in August 1908.
By the time he left prison, Voigt was a huge star. He published his autobiography and went on tour, first solo and then with the Barnum and Bailey circus, telling audiences increasingly embellished versions of his tale.
A popular playwright wrote a comic play based on the story, which has been filmed four times since then.
Voigt's fame diminished with the passing years and inflation had eaten up his fortune by the time he died in Luxembourg on January 3rd, 1922, where he had lived since 1909.
As the funeral procession passed through the city, a French captain asked a mourner who had died. The famous Capitaine de Köpenick, came the answer. Hearing that, and believing that an important local military man had died, he ordered his men to salute the coffin. And so the captain from Köpenick was buried with full military honours.
