Luetgert Case Compared to Berlin Sausage Scare

Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent Richard Henry Little evoked the Luetgert case on May 22, 1919, when he reported about a sausage scare in Berlin.

BY YARN SAUSAGE IS HUMAN MEAT

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of Denial Fail to Allay
Feeling

The ghost of Louis Luetgert is haunting Berlin and is adding to the already countless troubles of this unhappy community. Louisa was made into sausage meat by her husband because he got tired of having her around. Louisa's ghost should properly haunt the north side of Chicago, where the Luetgert slaughterhouse was located, but she is in Berlin.

All the Berlin newspapers this morning carried a half page advertisement published by the twelve leading sausagemakers of the city, declaring the stories which had been circulated of late by handbills saying 350 women and children had been made into sausage as most untrue.

[Next paragraph is illegible in clipping.]

How It Started.

For over a month the people of the poorer classes have insisted the sausagemakers were catching children and making them into sausage. A washerwoman for a friend of mine told him that the people living in the building with her had found in a basement of a slaughterhouse bones of women and children.

Another story was circulated that on the east side in Berlin is an old man who was found eating a child he had killed. The man had been driven insane by a starvation diet and had turned to cannibalism. The peopl eof the east side were so worked up over these stories that an extra number of troops and police were put int he district to suppress riots which appeared imminent.

The authorities say the poorer classes are in such an excited, nervous state because of malnutrition that they are extremely susceptible to believe any wild story they hear. Many children are half demented because of lack of proper food, run away from home, and cannot be returned because they forget their names and where they live. The parents at once become distracted and insist the sausagemakers have stolen the children and made them into meat to be sold to the rich.

10,000 Pounds of Sausage.

The peace terms have added to the excitement over alleged cannibalism. I heard last night another rumor current on the east side that was born apparently of the claim of the entente for thousands of horses, cows, and pigs to be delivered every month to France and Belgium. The story was that Germany must also deliver 100,000 pounds of sausage every month to the French and, there being no supply [rest of clipping is illegible].