The mayor of a town on New Zealand’s North Island, Charles Mackay, was exiled because of his homosexuality. As a newspaper correspondent in Berlin, the man with the walrus moustache found freedom – and a tragic death. Though Mackay’s story is nearly 100 years old, it is one that many modern Berliners will be able to relate to.
Just before midnight on May 3, 1929, a taxi headed down Neukölln’s Hermannstraße. At the corner of Herrfurthstraße, a barricade spanned across the street, made of wood taken from the construction site for the subway line now called the U8. The entire Kiez had been cordoned off by police, who had declared a state of emergency after three days of rioting. Everything was pitch black: street lights had been smashed and shutters closed. Occasional gunshots rang out in the distance.
On Herrfurthstraße, 53-year-old Charles Mackay exited the taxi and asked police if he could pass the barricade. When they told him to get lost, he strolled around the block, ending up where he started, at the site of today’s Werbellin pharmacy, which was then Hirschowitz’s clothing shop. All of a sudden, the police started yelling “Straße frei!” (“clear the street”). Maybe Mackay didn’t understand the commands in German or he simply didn’t react quickly enough. Bullets cracked through the display window behind him, and the man with the impressive moustache fell over with a gaping wound on his lower back where a bullet had exited. By the time medical help arrived, all they could do was determine he was dead.
The body was taken to today’s Vivantes Klinikum Neukölln. Richard Schmincke, a doctor who worked for the district council, recalled at a public hearing that the autopsy was “especially interesting”: a bullet had entered through the pubic bone and cut through an artery, causing Mackay to bleed out quickly. Even more interesting than the cause of his death, however, was the course of his life. What had led a lawyer and ex-mayor from New Zealand’s North Island all the way to North Neukölln?
Read the full article on The Berliner here.
