Forensic investigators have found no evidence that the Dutchman Marinus van der Lubbe, beheaded by the National Socialists, had been drugged during his trial in 1933. municipality of Leipzig has published.
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Van der Lubbe is known as the arsonist of the German Reichstag building in Berlin on February 27, 1933, for which he was sentenced to death that same year. According to eyewitnesses – and later historians – the then 24-year-old Van der Lubbe made an apathetic impression in court. It was suspected that he had been drugged with scopolamine, a drug known as truth serum. To investigate this, his body was exhumed in February this year.
The toxicological examination did not show that Van der Lubbe had been drugged during the trial against him. But according to researchers, it cannot be completely ruled out that he was drugged, because it is “very difficult” to find toxicological traces 89 years after someone’s death. Evidence may not have been found by decomposition processes “because of the long period between death and exhumation,” the report said.
After his arrest, Van der Lubbe said he set the fire to wake up the German workers to the danger of National Socialism. The Nazis used the fire to declare a state of emergency and mass arrest political opponents, especially communists. On January 10, 1934, Van der Lubbe was beheaded.