Justizmord vagy megalapozott ítélet? A katonai bíróság és a nyilvánosság viszonya az 1909-es Hofrichter-ügy kapcsán
A Miscarriage of Justice or Judgment Well Founded?: The Relationship between Military Court and the Public in the Context of the 1909 Hofrichter Case

Summary/Abstract: In 1909 the army of Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was shaken to the core by a murder scandal. Richard Mader, a k. u. k. sergeant, received an unusual package in the mail, which, according to the enclosed letter, contained pills “to fortify virility.” The sergeant tried the health supplement and was found dead by his aide later that day. The police found out that a number of freshly promoted officers have received similar packages, which turned out to contain cyanide pills. Eventually the police arrested Adolf Hofrichter, first lieutenant of the Fourteenth Linz Infantry, who was subsequently sentenced by the military court on June 25, 1910.The Hofrichter Case is especially illuminating for various reasons. Until these homicide attempts against officers in the k. u. k. army, there had been no precedents for premeditated murder of soldiers of rank by a fellow officer. Regardless of its unusual nature, the murder case reveals the internal and external pressures exerted upon the officers during their career in the k. u. k. army.At the same time, it also shows the widening chasm between the military and civil society, which became the leitmotif of the ensuing media discourse.Based on these two aspects of the story, the study examines available sources to discover the attitudes of the various actors towards the attack on staff officers and towards the army of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in general: the civilian public informed about the case through modern journalism on one hand, and the three protagonists of the case—First Lieutenant Hofrichter, Military Prosecutor Kunz and the attorney of the defence, Richard Pressburger—on the other.

• Details
• Contents