Death in the Rubble

Richard Bodek is a professor of history at the College of Charleston.

“In 1949, a nurse named Elisabeth Kusian murdered two people in Berlin she barely knew on no pretext at all, each killing as cold-blooded as it was banal. Kusian’s misdeeds, undertaken so lightly, remind the reader of the easy brutality into which German society slipped in the era of the world wars – and how long it lingered into the tense, twilit years of the post-war.” - Monica Black, Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, University of Tennessee, Knoxville “From the ruins of post-war Berlin, Richard Bodek has recovered a revelatory story of desperation, manipulation, and psychotic brutality. Be ready: once you start reading Death in the Rubble, you won’t be able to stop until you’ve reached its final page.” - Kevin Boyle, author of Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age “Richard Bodek’s new book combines a story of true crime and a police procedural with the brutal narrative of a serial murder carried out by a serial liar inventing her own reality, which is all placed in the context of a divided post-war Berlin in1949. While police search for clues to put together the identities and stories of two dismembered bodies, the sites of the city still glow with the horrors of the recent but quickly fading past. Richard Bodek puts a lifetime of research and teaching into delivering this vivid and informative book of history.” - Peter C. Caldwell, Samuel G. McCann Professor of History, Rice University “Death in the Rubble is a riveting reconstruction of a true crime murder case in post-war Berlin – compelling, fascinating, and full of psychological and historical insights.” - Joel F. Harrington, author of The Faithful Executioner “In Death in the Rubble, Richard Bodek tells a fascinating story about a ruthless killer in early Cold War Berlin – a city whose people were wrestling all at once with the legacies of Nazism, the destruction and rebirth of their neighbourhoods, and the coming of the Cold War. Bodek has turned up a lot of intriguing new information and presents it with great narrative skill. It’s an absorbing read for any lovers of Cold War history or detective stories.” - Benjamin Carter Hett, author of The Death of Democracy: Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic “Richard Bodek’s book provides an atmospheric reconstruction of a politically divided and rubble strewn Berlin, highlighting the precarious lives of many Germans during the foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic. Using the case of the murderer Elisabeth Kusian, Richard Bodek provides a tangible sense not just of Berlin’s growing bureaucratic and Cold War tensions but of the Third Reich’s unacknowledged and unresolved legacies. Death in the Rubble is a fascinating read for those interested in Germany’s twentieth-century history.” - Heather Wolffram, Associate Professor of Modern European History, University of Canterbury and author of Forensic Psychology in Germany: Witnessing Crime, 1880–1939

• Table of Berlin Police RanksList of Figures, Images, and MapsAcknowledgmentsPrologue 1. Who Was Elisabeth Kusian?2. The Seidelmann Case3. The Murder of Doris Merten4. Building the Case: Berlin’s Police Departments Investigate Elisabeth Kusian5. Finalizing the Case: Berlin’s Police Departments Finish with Elisabeth Kusian6. The Trial of Elisabeth KusianConclusionBibliography