Cemetery John by Robert Zorn

Author:Robert Zorn [ZORN, ROBERT]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: TRU000000, TRU004000, TRU002000, HIS036060
ISBN: 9781468301939
Publisher: ABRAMS, Inc. (Ignition)
Published: 2012-03-17T00:00:00+00:00

John and Lilly Knoll (seated in the back left) at the gala dinner aboard the SS Manhattan.

Billed as the “Largest Ship Ever Built in America,” the Manhattan, whose orchestral program included such numbers as The Washington Post March and The Champagne Waltz, supplied a romantic atmosphere. An attentive observer, however, would have suspected that the Knolls’ relationship had gone adrift.

Lilly embraced the style of the day with her bobbed brunette hair and willowy, five-foot-ten frame draped in a black crepe dress. With the addition of a small pair of gold chandelier earrings and a sparkly sequined collar, her refinement rose to the evening’s occasion. As the photographer focused his shot, Lilly turned to gaze at her husband, her expression a mixture of bewilderment and fear. A year and a half later, she would be on another ship to Germany, this time with her child in apparent flight from an abusive husband.

Coming ten years after his immigration to America, this voyage appears to have been the only trip back to Germany John Knoll would ever take.6 He departed right before the Hauptmann trial, and would return shortly after Hauptmann’s conviction. His first-class passage cost about five times the amount of his yearly rent in the Bronx—and probably not much less than a deli clerk’s annual wages during the Depression. As Knoll looks straight into the camera, his eyes are cold and impassive, his lips clamped. He appears indifferent to his bride and out of his element.

The fastest cabin steamer afloat, the three-year-old Manhattan clipped along at twenty knots en route from New York to its final destination of Hamburg. In 1936, the ship would carry the U.S. Olympic team to Germany for the games hosted by Hitler in Berlin. Among the American athletes aboard the ship was long-distance runner Louis Zamperini. “Sailing on the SS Manhattan was a mind-blowing experience,” recalled Zamperini. “It was like a floating city. The food was my gold medal: I gained twelve pounds on the way to Germany!”7

As the vacationing deli clerk John Knoll chose among such entrees as lobster à la Newburg, breaded veal chop viennoise, lamb chops en papillote, and mallard duckling with bread sauce, Bruno Hauptmann applied a paper spoon to his portion of liver pudding and paced the bullpen connected to his cramped jail cell.8 The start of his murder trial in Flemington was but three and a half weeks away.

The Manhattan cruised up the Elbe, and the Knolls disembarked in Hamburg during the second week of December. From there, Knoll returned to Herxheimweyher and his two-story boyhood home at Hauptstraße 27. The story is still told within the family about his next stop, the small Catholic church across the street. Knoll entered Sankt Antonius-Kirche, walked to the rear of the sanctuary, and tugged on the ropes dangling from the three bronze bells high above the organ. In many European villages, the tolling of church bells was an alarm for fire. But on this occasion, the citizens who spilled into the Hauptstraße

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