Elsässer Street clothing-store robbery

The Elsässer Street clothing-store robbery is a small-scale burglary staged through conversation rather than force at the outset. Three men exploit the nightwatchman’s presence at the shop, draw him into an arrangement, and then make him part of a false account of the crime. The episode’s turn comes when the watchman, left bound and unable to see clearly, tries to reach the entrance; the noise wakes the proprietor before the robbers’ plan can remain undisturbed.

Setting and Opportunity

The robbery takes place at a clothing shop on Elsasser Strasse, at three in the morning. The men know that the shop contains goods worth taking: men’s clothing, including coats. They also recognize the risk of a burglary in a time when customers may carry guns and a caught thief could be shot. Rather than treat the nightwatchman simply as an obstacle, they turn his presence into an opportunity to obtain access and reduce the appearance of a straightforward break-in.

The surrounding city appears elsewhere as a place continually being opened up and reorganized. At Alexanderplatz, streets are torn up for underground construction, pedestrians cross on planks, and tramcars pass between Alexanderstrasse and Münzstrasse. A pile driver’s repeated blows draw a crowd of onlookers. That urban background does not cause the burglary, but it gives the episode a precise setting in a city where work, movement, commerce, and spectacle crowd together. The robbery, by contrast, unfolds in a shop after hours, through a private arrangement made with the person charged with watching it.

The Arrangement with the Watchman

The wheelwright takes the lead in approaching the nightwatchman. In the conversation outside the shop, the men present themselves as reluctant to cause trouble, while asking whether anything inside is worth having. The watchman is drawn into a proposal to take part rather than report them. They offer him a share of the proceeds: an initial figure of 100 marks is raised to 200, and the men agree to divide the money later. The bargain is made before they go upstairs, but the evidence does not establish that the promised payment is ever delivered.

The group then gathers in the upstairs office. The wheelwright continues to manage the conversation, telling the watchman that he can avoid trouble by pretending not to see anything. He proposes that the men tie him up so he can claim to have been attacked, framing the restraint as protection from suspicion rather than as a betrayal. The watchman hesitates, then goes along with the arrangement. This is the hinge of the plan: the burglars seek both his cooperation and a credible explanation for his presence when the theft is discovered.

The group’s preparations are practical as well as improvised. They finish their coffee, discuss how to divide the proceeds, and arrange transport. The tinsmith makes a telephone call, and a Soren car arrives within half an hour. The men have turned a night’s work into a sequence of negotiated roles, a vehicle, and an agreed division, though the agreement remains only a promise at this point.

The Theft and the Reversal

Once the car is ready, the men take clothing from the shop. The account specifies two pairs of boys’ trousers and a coarse summer coat among the items they collect. The wheelwright ties the watchman to an armchair with the stolen clothes, after first binding him with wire. When the watchman objects, the men continue the deception, cover his head with the coat, and secure a towel across his chest. They load the goods into the car. The restraints and covering are not merely incidental to the theft: they are meant to support the story that the watchman was attacked while the burglars carried out their plan.

The robbery’s control begins to unravel when the watchman is left alone. He is frightened and angry, and worries that the open doors leave the shop vulnerable to further theft. He manages to loosen the wire around his legs, but his arms remain fastened and the coat still obstructs his vision. Unable to free himself in the usual way, he moves through the office with the armchair on his back and tries to get through the entrance-hall door. When he cannot pass, he repeatedly pushes the chair against it. The movement makes enough noise to alert the proprietor.

In less than two minutes, the proprietor is awake and people come downstairs. The watchman, still bound and covered, collapses unconscious beside the chair. The account ends with the alarm and discovery of the apparent break-in; it does not say whether the three men are caught, whether the watchman receives the promised money, or how the stolen clothes are eventually recovered. Those outcomes should therefore remain open rather than be inferred from the scene.

Narrative Form and Significance

The episode builds its comic surface from bargaining, coffee, and the men’s confidence in their own practical cleverness, then shifts into the watchman’s increasingly desperate attempt to navigate the room. The gap between the plan and its result is concrete: the men arrange a staged attack, but the man they have immobilized creates the noise that wakes the proprietor. The narrative gives the robbery no polished escape or final accounting; it ends at the point where their control over the scene fails.

The detail of the promised share also complicates the apparent cooperation. The watchman is offered a specific sum and initially participates in the arrangement, yet the men subsequently bind and cover him, leaving him to struggle alone. The episode records both sides of that transaction without claiming that the bargain was honored. Its central reversal is not a sudden change of location or a new accomplice, but the collapse of the robbers’ assumption that a staged victim can be left safely out of view.