TODAY IN BERLIN: ENTER THE HAUPTMANN

How a poor cobbler from East Prussia robbed the city of Köpenick and got away with it

A postcard - almost a comic strip - telling the story of the Köpenickiade: Voigt’s successful robbing of the local city hall.

On this day, October 16th, 1906 one Wilhelm Voigt, an impoverished cobbler and ex-convict from Tilsit in East Prussia (now Russian Sowetsk), pulled a legendary trick on the local authorities in the then still independent city of Köpenick.