Motive Monday: Peter Kürten, “The Vampire of Düsseldorf"
In 1929, Düsseldorf’s streets had become a place of whispers. Someone was attacking without pattern or warning, leaving survivors bloodied and witnesses terrified. The man behind it, Peter Kürten, would later admit he hunted for the thrill of it, choosing victims on impulse and feeding an appetite that had been growing since childhood.
Background
Peter Kürten was born May 26, 1883, in Mülheim am Rhein near Cologne, the third of thirteen children in a violently abusive, impoverished family. His father, an alcoholic, beat the family and was imprisoned for molesting Kürten’s 13-year-old sister.
Early accounts describe attempted drownings of playmates in childhood, repeated running away, and early immersion in petty crime. These conditions formed the scaffold for a pattern of cruelty and sexual sadism that appears in the contemporary case literature and later analyses.
Modus operandi
Kürten’s crimes combined sexual assault with stabbing, strangulation, bludgeoning, and post-attack mutilation. He sometimes attempted to drink blood from victims’ wounds, which helped cement the press moniker “Vampire of Düsseldorf.”
He also set fires and committed numerous nonlethal attacks. The clinical synthesis by Karl Berg, the court-appointed psychiatrist who interviewed Kürten at length, frames the pattern as classic Lustmord, with arousal tied to violence and blood.
Why Blood?
According to court psychiatrist Karl Berg, Kürten’s obsession with blood was not born from a single event, but from years of reinforcement. As a child, he tortured and killed animals, often by slitting their throats. He reported to Berg that watching the blood flow would bring him to orgasm. These early experiences hardwired the link between sexual gratification and the act of wounding.
Kürten’s sexual development was shaped by coercion, violence, and secrecy. By adolescence, the sight of blood had become more potent to him than sexual contact itself. In his own words, stabbing a victim and watching the blood spill was “more satisfying than intercourse.” When he turned to killing humans, the act of drawing blood was both the goal and the climax, making his choice of weapons (scissors, knives, hammers) tools for arousal as much as for murder.
Victim Selection and Attack Pattern
Kürten’s victim choice was opportunistic rather than targeted. Court records and Karl Berg’s case study describe him wandering Düsseldorf’s streets, parks, and public spaces until he encountered someone alone and vulnerable. His victims ranged from small children to middle-aged adults, both male and female, which suggests that his selection was driven by circumstance and accessibility, not a fixed demographic preference.
The variety in ages and genders also reflects his primary motive: sexual sadism tied to the sight of blood, not a personal vendetta against a specific type of person. He admitted in interrogations that he sometimes set out intending to kill, but would instead commit nonfatal attacks if the opportunity for murder did not present itself without risk of immediate capture.
Kürten’s high number of failed or nonfatal attacks can be explained by several factors documented in police reports:
Many assaults occurred in public or semi-public areas where passersby interrupted him.
Some victims fought back effectively or managed to flee after initial blows or stab wounds.
He often used small or improvised weapons, such as scissors or a hammer, which did not always cause instant incapacitation.
In some cases, he lost interest after inflicting wounds and achieving sexual arousal, leaving victims alive.
Rather than a single continuous rampage, his spree was a series of short, sharp bursts of violence over months. He would attack, then blend back into the city, sometimes even speaking with police or returning to crime scenes.
This combination of random targeting, variable lethality, and intermittent cooling-off periods made him harder to track, but also meant his victim count included many survivors who became key witnesses against him.
Victims and timeframes
1913: Kürten confessed to murdering 9-year-old Christine Klein in Mülheim and attempting to murder 17-year-old Gertrud Franken in Düsseldorf. After 1913 he served time for other crimes, then reemerged in Düsseldorf years later.
Main spree, February to November 1929, Düsseldorf: Multiple fatal and nonfatal attacks across the city and environs. Confirmed homicide victims include Rosa Ohliger, Maria Hahn, and 5-year-old Gertrud Albermann.
Numerous surviving victims reported knife, scissors, hammer, and strangulation assaults in public spaces, parks, and streets. Courts ultimately convicted him of nine murders and seven attempted murders, consistent with the pattern documented in contemporary records and later scholarship.
Capture, trial, and outcome
Kürten was identified in May 1930 after a surviving victim’s letter drew police attention to his address. He confessed to his wife and urged her to claim the reward, after which he was arrested. He freely admitted the Düsseldorf crimes and linked himself to the 1913 Mülheim cases.
Tried in April 1931 on nine counts of murder and seven of attempted murder, he was found legally sane and sentenced to death. He was executed by guillotine on July 2, 1931, in Cologne.
Motive analysis
Two strands dominate credible sources.
Sexual sadism: Berg’s primary-source clinical study, based on direct examinations and interviews, describes arousal contingent on blood, domination, and the victim’s suffering. This is consistent with Lustmord, or murder for pleasure, a framework echoed by later overviews.
Retaliatory mindset: In statements to authorities and to Berg, Kürten framed his violence as a personal settling of scores against a world that had humiliated and punished him. Courts and experts rejected an insanity plea and characterized him as a sexually sadistic offender who understood his actions.
Bottom line
Kürten’s case is not a mystery of motive. It is a documented convergence of sexual sadism, compulsive violence, and an offender narrative that cast society as the enemy.
The childhood abuse and later carceral experiences are context, not excuses. The core driver, supported by the best primary source on the case, is paraphilic sadism with blood as a central stimulus, expressed through escalating attacks that culminated in a brief but intense spree in 1929, followed by arrest, conviction, and execution in 1931.
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