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Clark Rockefeller not the first German to try to put one over on us
By adamg on Sat, 08/18/2012 - 1:03pm
From the BPL Leslie Jones collection.
Meet Count Gustaf von Frederick zu Brandenburg, of the German ruling class, who'd chosen to settle in Boston after all that unpleasantness with the World War and those Nazis.
Only it turns out the count was no nobleman, let alone one who'd had the bad luck to have his ancestral homeland handed over to Denmark after the war and his family finances tied up by the Hitler regime.
The count's scheme unraveled in 1938, when local meat purveyor William Handschumacher, whom he'd persuaded to loan him $30,000 - allegedly to help liquidate his family's finances under a hostile Nazi regime - began demanding his money back. In November, Boston Police arrested him and he was put in the Charles Street jail when he couldn't come up with $40,000 for bail.
While Gustaf Frederick was indeed German, the Globe reported at the time, he was also a resident of a rooming house on Tremont Street in the South End. In 1930, he'd spent a few weeks working as a $15-a-week waiter at an unspecified Back Bay hotel - where he learned how the local nobs acted by closely observing them. Throw in an assumed high-class Junker German accent and the count was born.
Frederick went on trial the month after his arrest in Suffolk Superior Court. A jury found him guilty of 29 counts of larceny. Judge Francis J. Good sentenced him to 6 to 10 years in prison.
Handschumacher, himself a native German, died in 1943, aged 86.
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Comments
Handschumacher...
That name brings back memories. They used to be down in the Quincy Market area & had a large illuminated sign on top of their building & facing the Central Artery. Coming home of an evening from a visit to my grandparents in Medford, there were two of those signs I looked forward to seeing: the huge Anheuser-Busch logo on the side of the Garden & the Handschumacher sign. These were those old type of signs which used individual colored bulbs & had sections of the sign illuminating in sequence until the whole array was lit. When the Anheuser-Busch sign was lit, the eagle's wings flapped a few times before the panel went dark & the sequence began again. Handschumacher's sign spelled out in script ,letter by letter, the full name, the full name flashed a few times then held steady while a column of white lights came on from the bottom of the sign up & started branching off 5 ways to give the effect of a fountain spray.
Their hot dogs & knockwurst were very popular back in the day. Sullivan's on Castle Island, for example, served Handschumacher hotdogs. I believe Colonial eventually bought the company. They kept producing knockwurst at least under the Handschumacher name since I remember buying it as late as 1975.
BTW-- the name in German means literally "hand shoe maker" or as we would say in English, glovemaker" or "glover".
thanks for those memories
reminds me of my time as a night worker and the Hamburg Platter at Mondo's, the 24 hour Quincy Market restaurant with the 24 hour owner who never left.
You just didn't look hard enough
From the Dec. 21, 1938 edition: 6 to 10 year term for von Frederick.
The story says the "self-styled count" was found guilty of 29 counts of larceny, and was sentenced to the state prison by one Judge Francis J. Good.
You're right
Thanks! Original post corrected.
Nigerian scammers use ploy
Thanks Adam, really interesting bit of history.
Nigerian scammers use the ploy - help me get my fortune. Cons keep recycling the same schemes over and over.