14 August 1928

14 August 1928 is the date the book assigns to the shooting of Pussi Uhl by Edgar Beese, who was then known as von Arnim. The incident is presented not as a fully reconstructed scene but through a crime-report-like account of police questioning, criminal records, and competing claims about motive. Its significance lies in the gap between the apparently definite fact of the shooting and the uncertain, sensational story built around it.

The Date and the Shooting

The narrative specifies that the shooting took place on Tuesday, 14 August 1928, in Pussi Uhl’s apartment. Beese, identified in the account as von Arnim, fired a gun wildly there and put a bullet into Uhl’s body. The passage reports that detectives questioned him that day and describes him as the principal culprit. It does not establish the full circumstances of the shooting or give a definitive account of Uhl’s condition: the report suggests both that she may be dead and that Beese fears she might die.

Beese’s Aliases and Criminal Past

The account surrounds the shooting with a compressed history of reversals and assumed identities. During the war, Beese was shot down at 5,000 feet. After returning home, he was cheated out of his inheritance by a man impersonating an insurance-company manager. Ashamed to face his family and left without money, he began calling himself Auclaire and, the report says, turned to crime. He later served two and a half years in prison under the name Krachtowil; because he was using that false name, he was deported to Poland. Afterward, he became involved in criminal activity in Berlin with Uhl. The account says that Uhl ceremonially gave him the name von Arnim, under which he carried out his later activities.

Motive, Silence, and the Report’s Uncertainty

The people around the affair refuse to explain what happened, described as keeping silent rather than informing on one another to the police. The boxer Hein is identified as involved, but the account supplies no further detail about his part. It rejects a simple explanation of jealousy: the narrator disputes that reading and argues that, even if jealousy played a role, money was more fundamental. This remains the narrator’s assertion, not a motive confirmed by the evidence presented.

The report also challenges detectives’ claim that Beese had completely collapsed. It suggests instead that his distress comes from the prospect of police investigation and anger at having shot Uhl, alongside anxiety about what he will live on if she dies. That uncertainty is sharpened by the account’s flippant, abusive description of Uhl and its shifting references to her fate. The date therefore anchors a definite act while the narrative surrounding it remains evasive about its cause and consequences.