The Mysterious Deaths That Brought Down a Detective a Century Ahead of Her Time

It’s a perfect summer day, one that brings tourists from the mainland to the small island of Pellworm off the German coast. Two women move across the grassy marshland. But they are so far away from Pellworm’s cafés and swimming spots that nobody would mistake them for tourists. Instead of bathing costumes, they wear their formal city clothes — long dark skirts, tight-fitting jackets, heavy shoes — out of place on a holiday island. They carry overnight bags in their hands, yet they are heading for the island’s most remote corner, where neither hotels nor ferries await them. There is something about the way they hold themselves. Something is not quite right.

Apart from a herd of sheep nearby and the seagulls above, they are alone. The sea stretches ahead of them, a calm blue. For the women, this is the perfect place to leave the intrigues, the fights, the accusations and the whispers behind. To forget about those they loved and those they hated. To end their story.

The taller of the two turns to her companion. She seeks out her hand, and their fingers intertwine. Together they lay down on the salt-crusted grass.

“The female inspector Dopfer and the female senior police officer Fischer, two unusually diligent officials, had left their place of work last week and, in a letter to deputy police president Dr Schlanbusch, announced that they planned to commit suicide on the North Sea island of Pellworm.”

—Article in the Vossische Newspaper, July 10, 1931

By the time the first blades of grass had grown on the hastily dug graves of Maria Fischer and Therese Dopfer, something far larger than them had ended. The deaths of these two women set off a dark swirl of cover-ups, accusations and intrigue that spread from harbor bars and backstreets all the way to the highest offices in the country.

In 1927, four years before their bodies would be found on the shores of Pellworm, Therese Dopfer and Maria Fischer arrived in Hamburg to join a new kind of police force. They were in their 30s; both were experienced social workers, both had recently received police training. For years, they had worked with children, young people and women in difficult circumstances, and a newly established female police division in Hamburg promised them a chance to put their skills to good use.

Dopfer and Fischer had met and become lovers six years earlier. They had been inseparable since, living and working together. Where one went, the other followed. Now they had moved to Hamburg, drawn there by the same person: Josephine Erkens.

Erkens had only just arrived in Hamburg herself after declining a job offer in Berlin. For years, she had been pushing for the creation of a female police force in Germany, frustrated by the limited roles available to women. Until now, women could assist male officers in routine tasks or were folded into departments as social workers, separate from the core of police work. Erkens, however, had another vision. She came to Hamburg to establish a female police division under female leadership, designed to protect vulnerable women and children, to prevent exploitation and to rehabilitate rather than penalize. She was convinced that the punitive methods of the all-male police force led to unnecessary suffering for women and children, especially in crimes involving sexual assault.

Erkens envisioned nothing less than a radical overhaul of policing methods and structures.

She wanted female police officers to be involved in all aspects of a case, even interviewing male suspects and witnesses. Men, too, would be part of the unit, but they would be trained in psychology and social work, not just enforcement. She believed that only in this way could she prevent more women and children from becoming victims, not only of their circumstances and perpetrators, but of the police system itself.

As the historian Ursula Nienhaus reported in her book, Not Suitable for A Leadership Position, Erkens had always felt drawn to social reform. Born into a lower-middle-class family in 1889, she first trained as a housekeeper. Her father had strictly opposed any further education for her, especially anything he associated with feminist or reformist work. After his death, she retrained as a social worker, a new field shaped by feminist reform movements, and worked as an assistant at a police welfare office.

For a decade, Erkens had corresponded with policewomen in Britain and learned from their work. She spoke publicly, represented Germany at a League of Nations conference on women and published a book on penal reform and policing. In 1926, she became the first woman in Germany to pass the exam to become a Kriminalkommissar, or detective. In the west German city of Cologne, she had already laid the groundwork, setting standards for female policing and leading a unit that combined social work with police duties. However, resistance from within the police and a lack of political will to fund the project brought her work to an end.

Hamburg would be her chance to start over. Its senate had just approved the creation of a female police force. Politicians and officials, already familiar with Erkens’ reputation and work, had invited her to build this force in line with her theories and ideals. The city, with its progressive government and reputation for liberal social welfare, was the perfect testing ground for her ideas.

Her first walk through Hamburg on her way to police headquarters showed her just how much her work was needed. The Great War had been over for nearly a decade, yet Hamburg still carried its scars. Wounded veterans lingered on street corners, many missing a leg, hands outstretched, begging for a few coins or some bread. The economic crisis and the 1923 hyperinflation had only swelled the number of beggars. Former workers now stood beside the veterans, watching with desperation as men in flat caps and worn overalls hurried toward the few factory and harbor jobs still left. Men in brown uniforms, followers of the National Socialist party, lingered on corners, spoiling for a fight with the communists. Election posters were plastered on advertising columns. “Help! Economy in Danger,” screamed one over the image of a sinking ship. On another poster, “Vote for Freedom and Bread” was written beneath a swastika.

Erkens walked with purpose. Her dark hair was pulled tightly back, her appearance austere, almost severe. Her large eyes set deep in their sockets gave her a watchful expression that others often read as harsh. She kept her gaze forward, though she noticed the patrols of the Schutzpolizei, the moral police. Two officers stood against a wall, cocky in their blue‑black uniforms, their high‑collared tunics and peaked caps, long batons by their side. She saw them observe a young woman hastening through the streets. Her clothes were too bright for a factory girl, and smudges of coal ran around her eyes. Underneath her light-blue coat, she looked fragile, the veins showing beneath the skin. The police officers tensed. Erkens knew what would come next. They would arrest the girl on suspicion of being a prostitute and force her to undergo gynecological exams for signs that she carried a venereal disease. In theory, the police could pick up any woman at any time. Only a few years earlier, Anita Augspurg, a respected lawyer, had been arrested on suspicion of prostitution for nothing more than carrying herself with confidence in the street.

Erkens suppressed the urge to intervene. It would be useless. For now, the officers acted within their rights. But she would change this. The division she was about to lead would not punish women or subject them to humiliation. It would offer those who needed it a way out, a chance to begin again. Erkens hurried. The head of the Hamburg criminal police division, Friedrich Schlanbusch, waited for her.

“Almost every woman who takes up a profession previously held by men deprives another woman of the opportunity to fulfill what is considered her true role: that of wife and mother.”

—Article in the German Police Magazine discussing the establishment of a female police force, February 25, 1927

Schlanbusch’s office lay within the Stadthaus, the sprawling police headquarters that dominated an entire city block. Its yellow stone facade was elaborately carved, grand enough to belong to a ministry or a minor prince. Inside, corridors stretched on in every direction, lined with identical doors, hazy with cigarette smoke. Erkens made her way through, guided from one hallway to the next, until at last she was shown into Schlanbusch’s office.

He was not the imposing figure she expected. The man who got up from his desk to greet her was slight, somewhere in his 40s, maybe a few years older than her. A narrow mustache sat neatly on his upper lip, but it did little to distract from the pale scars on his cheeks. Erkens knew at once what these scars meant. They were the mark of a Burschenschaft, a student fraternity. Their members gave each other scars on their cheeks with dueling swords as a lifelong badge of membership and honor. These fraternities were typically nationalist, conservative and anti-democratic in their views. Boys’ clubs. The scars told her much about this man, even before he had opened his mouth.

They exchanged formalities and quickly moved to the matter at hand: Erkens’ new police unit and the increasing presence of prostitution on Hamburg’s streets, which was becoming impossible to overlook.

“Police work today should be more than just giving orders or prohibiting,” Erkens said, thinking about the girl in the light-blue coat. “It should take the path of humanizing. Instead of repression, police should work in a preventive and protective manner. A female patrol on the streets will make all the difference.”

Schlanbusch gave a curt laugh.

“A female street patrol is out of the question. A female police officer would be no match in a fight with our pimps in Hamburg.”

Erkens ignored his tone. She knew Schlanbusch was against her reform project. His writings and speeches over the last few years had made it clear that he didn’t want women “meddling” in his police work. But this wasn’t the first man she’d encountered who was skeptical of her ideas.

“A patrol will be necessary,” she asserted. “I see my main task in preventing women and girls from further descending into prostitution and crime, first through aid and second through police protection. We have the same starting points and goals, only our means diverge.”

Something in her tone must have irked Schlanbusch. When he spoke again, there was a note of command in his voice.

“I will be in charge of the female unit, and no male police officers will be part of this new division. This is how I see it: If I have a case that I think is suitable for you, I will give it to you, and after you work on it, it will directly go back into my hands.”

“You’ve said as much in your interview a few days ago,” Erkens replied curtly. She had no intention to follow his vision. He might be her supervisor, for now, but she had been called to Hamburg by its political leadership and had the support of the highest police chief.

“And you’ve made your positions abundantly clear in your writings and speeches,” he replied

in a tone of finality. “We will see how you will unite theory and practice.”

They looked at each other silently. For now, everything had been said between them.

“The idea of ​​infusing police work with a feminine, maternal spirit is theoretically very appealing from the standpoint of a layman and idealist. In practice, unfortunately, things look quite different.”

—Anonymous police officer quoted in an article in Police Officials’ Journal, February 21, 1930

Only two days after its inception, the female police division began to grow under Erkens’ direction. She had started with three officers, among them Therese Dopfer and Maria Fischer. Within a month, six more policewomen and two male officers had joined, along with a secretary.

Unlike similar female units in other cities, the Hamburg division worked independently of the male police. They handled cases from their inception until they were handed over to the public prosecutor’s office. The unit took their work seriously. In their first year alone, the division worked on more than 1,000 cases dealing with the sexual abuse of children, rape, prostitution and incest. Their reputation grew. Local papers called the unit “a blessing for Hamburg.” Denmark and Switzerland sent delegations to Hamburg to train their female officers. Erkens quickly rose through the ranks, gaining influence not only in matters concerning women in the police, but across criminal investigations more broadly.

But below the surface, there were personal problems. According to police files, Therese Dopfer tried to build a friendship with Erkens. Rumors began to spread that she had romantic feelings for her superior. Later on, an inquest would report that during a work trip, Dopfer had tried to enter Erkens’ bed and “demanded caresses.” Erkens reportedly rebuked her harshly, stating that there were neither the “mental nor human prerequisites” for a friendship between them. Dopfer, the reports said, was not deterred. She persisted and even sent flowers to Erkens, which angered Maria Fischer, who had been in a romantic and professional relationship with Dopfer for years.

The true extent of the interpersonal conflicts is difficult to reconstruct in hindsight. Fischer and Dopfer were definitely involved in a volatile romantic relationship that complicated their work. Dopfer’s character was the more forceful one, shifting between bursts of drive and possessiveness toward Fischer and episodes of depression. She sought closer ties with Erkens, but it’s impossible to say if this was out of romantic interest or merely ambition. What is clear is that she was rebuffed, and this had serious consequences for her behavior thereafter.

From then on, Dopfer counted herself among Erkens’ many enemies. Not all members of the female unit supported Erkens’ reformist approach, and some formally complained to Schlanbusch, criticizing her strong feminist agenda and the heavy workload she imposed. Tensions escalated, eventually splitting the unit into two opposing factions: one aligned with Erkens’ leadership, and another in open resistance. Fischer and Dopfer were among the founding members of the latter group, mobilizing colleagues against what they perceived as an excessive ideological framing of the work.

Unlike their superior, Fischer and Dopfer had never publicly advocated for women’s rights or engaged with feminist interpretations of their work. Their focus lay elsewhere: on being together, on doing their jobs. They would have happily kept ideology out of their lives.

Schlanbusch was aware of the situation. He knew about the strained relationships and the conflicts within the unit, but he chose not to intervene. He may have seen the growing tensions as a way to weaken the female division. His own relationship with Erkens also became more strained. When Erkens requested that she and her officers be issued firearms for their protection, he refused. When she obtained a weapon while he was on vacation, he reprimanded her in front of her staff and made her return it. He repeatedly interfered with her unit’s work. In one case, a male officer was removed against her wishes from her unit because he was homosexual, and Schlanbusch considered it unsuitable for his “health” to remain in a female division.

Schlanbusch was not the only member of the police force who was hostile toward Erkens. In police papers, policemen voiced their anger toward the “inappropriate feminism” of the female officers, as well as their “arrogance.”

Hamburg’s police force was mostly anti-democratic, highly militarized, politically repressive and violent in its nature. However, political leadership lay in the hands of police senators who were largely liberal and reform-oriented. This central-left oversight clashed with the right-wing leanings of many leading officers. Erkens’ female police force was supported by politicians but rejected by a majority within the police force.

From 1930 onward, however, the political climate became more radical and hostile. That year’s federal election transformed the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, Hitler’s party, from a fringe movement into the second-largest party in the Reichstag. In the Hamburg election of 1931, the party achieved a landslide victory. The streets reflected the change, with strikes, protests and political violence increasing and the presence of Nazi supporters becoming ever more pronounced. Erkens was about to lose her political support; her standing among her male colleagues had become precarious, and the professional and private conflicts within her unit were escalating.

On a hot July day in 1931, Erkens entered her office to find smashed flower vases, petals and glass scattered across the floor, mingling with murky water. A few days earlier, some of her staff had filled the room with flowers as a welcome-back gift after her leave. Now she stood among the broken vases, wondering who had destroyed them.

Her absence had not been voluntary. Her conflicts with Schlanbusch had come to a head. She had refused to continue working with him and was placed on leave. An investigation eventually concluded with a formal settlement between the two, after which she returned to her post.

Her return, she suspected, had been a particular blow to Therese Dopfer, who had grown increasingly open in her refusal to work with her. Was it she who had destroyed the vases?

As Erkens nudged the glass fragments with her foot, she reflected on Dopfer and Fischer. She was no stranger to conflict herself, but the two women were just too volatile. Dopfer was unpredictable, at one moment full of energy and drive, at the next withdrawn and brooding. Fischer, by contrast, was insecure and fragile, constantly watchful, often jealous of her partner and unable to leave her personal conflicts at home.

Yet both were competent, highly trained policewomen. They had spent long hours together in the Stadthaus, poring over witness statements, piecing together cases and trying to steer vulnerable young women away from danger. Still, it was clear that the three of them could no longer work together. Either she or they had to go.

Erkens stooped and began collecting the broken glass. Unbeknownst to her, Dopfer and Fischer were already on their way to Pellworm.

“This tragedy is a heavy blow for the idea of a female police force as a whole, because what happened in Hamburg is by no means an isolated incident. It goes deeper into the realm of female policing altogether.”

—Article in the Vossische Newspaper, July 11, 1931

For the rest of the summer of 1931, the papers were filled with reports of Fischer and Dopfer’s deaths. Suicide in the North Sea. Two young women dead. Scandal in the police force!

But the papers couldn’t even agree on the date their bodies were discovered, let alone the circumstances of their deaths. They published outlandish, contradictory reports.

“They walked into the ocean and let the waves take them,” claimed one. “No gunshot wounds were found on them, so we are sure they must have taken poison,” said another. And a third: “They shot each other through the head.”

It is unlikely they shot themselves; female police officers did not carry weapons, despite Erkens’ attempts to change that. Drowning, too, seems improbable because the two women were found lying side by side on the shore, white handkerchiefs placed over their faces. Poison is the most plausible cause, but had they taken it willingly, or had they been forced?

This wasn’t a question that occupied the police force. No autopsy was conducted. Instead of bringing the bodies back to Hamburg, Fischer and Dopfer were hastily buried in unmarked graves on Pellworm. Inconsistencies — such as the fact that a police officer had taken five days to find the bodies on a small island of 40 square kilometers — and contradicting eyewitness accounts were brushed aside.

One of the central mysteries was barely addressed in the press: the suicide note. Schlanbusch claimed he had received a suicide note from the women, sent when they were on their way to Pellworm, telling him of their plan, stating that their reason was the impossible work climate that Erkens had created. Yet the note was typed and unsigned. It could have been written by anyone. It was, in many ways, a convenient document, placing responsibility on Erkens and offering Schlanbusch a justification to dismantle the female unit. Did he fabricate the letter to bring Erkens down?

More troubling still, the note read, “We are going to the Halligen, and we don’t intend to return.” The Halligen are a scattered group of islands in the North Sea, and Pellworm is only one of them.

Fischer and Dopfer had left on a Friday; the letter reached Schlanbusch the following day. He later claimed he immediately dispatched officers to Pellworm to prevent the suicide. If the letter mentioned no specific island, how did he know exactly where to send his men?

No reports, either from the press or the police, discuss the possibility that the deaths could be anything but suicide, despite the many inconsistencies. How Dopfer and Fischer died mattered less than how their deaths could be used.

On the day of their funeral, a slow procession moved through the grassland on Pellworm. Two simple, wooden carts, the kind used to carry milk churns or tourist luggage, bore the coffins of Therese Dopfer and Maria Fischer. Only a small group followed them, including four female detectives sent as a delegation from Hamburg.

The small procession made its way from the poorhouse, where the bodies had lain for two days, heading to the “Cemetery of the Nameless,” the final resting place of the drowned who were found on the shores of Pellworm. A forlorn place, far away from the village cemetery by the new church. The perfect spot to bury secrets.

The simple, rectangular gravestones of the two women lie apart, separated for eternity. No names are engraved on them, just a simple cross and a date. July 4, 1931.

In the weeks that followed, Erkens became embroiled in a dispute with her superiors, but she was not fighting for justice for her colleagues or for answers about what had happened on Pellworm. Her focus was on keeping her groundbreaking unit alive.

“There are sources that demonstrate that Frau Erkens suffers from boundless arrogance and that her presumptuous character led to conflicts with her staff and superiors.”

—Article in the Hamburger People’s Daily, May 14, 1932

Politicians and police officials treated what had happened in Hamburg not as an isolated incident but as proof that women were unfit for police work. Less than two weeks after Dopfer and Fischer’s bodies were found on Pellworm, the executive committee of police inspectors, among them Schlanbusch, called for a nationwide inquiry into the usefulness of women in the police.

Newspapers sensationalized the deaths, breathlessly writing about love triangles, strained relationships and internal conflicts within the female police unit. They claimed that Erkens had been jealous of the relationship between Fischer and Dopfer and wanted to “participate in it,” that she, a single woman, felt lonely. That this loneliness led her to place unreasonable demands on her unit.

Others wrote that after the deaths of her colleagues, Erkens seemed light and unconcerned, even happy, painting her as a callous person only interested in her work. The level of detail, some of it deeply personal, that appeared in the papers suggests a source within the police, but it’s impossible to say how much of it was true and how much was fabrication. What is clear is that Erkens, a symbol of female police work, was caught in the crossfire.

One day in March of 1932, winds carried the distant sounds of shouting into Erkens’ bedroom. Was it the press gathered outside her house, clashing once more with the police posted there? Or just another protest, echoing through the streets as they now did almost daily? This winter had felt cursed. She wondered if she’d be here to see the spring.

Seven months had passed since Dopfer and Fischer had died. Erkens was lying in her bed, underneath thick covers to fight the cold that had settled under her skin. Her front door opened and closed quietly. Footsteps on the landing. She closed her eyes. Unbidden, the words in her police file appeared in front of her:

“Erkens is unsuitable for a leadership position.”

Apparently, she didn’t know when to step back, wasn’t objective and wasn’t disciplined enough. She almost laughed at that. Discipline had been the foundation of everything she had built. The success of her unit had proven it. But now, none of it seemed to matter. They had disbanded her unit.

She felt her strength dwindling since she had intensified her hunger strike, refusing not only food but also water. What other options did she have? The press had slandered her, telling the most outrageous lies. She never got a public hearing, a chance to clear her name. This was her only option to be heard.

The footsteps came closer. Someone sat on the edge of her bed. She opened her eyes.

“If you’re not careful, you will be the third victim in this tragedy.” The doctor looked at her reproachfully while she gripped her hand and checked her pulse. “You’re getting weaker by the day. At least have some water.”

Erkens shook her head. Her mouth felt too dry to speak.

Frustrated, the doctor looked around. Her eyes fell onto a stack of papers next to the bed. She frowned.

“I saw your interview in the Hamburg People’s Paper. It won’t help your case if you align yourself with the communists.”

A few days earlier, Erkens had written a long open letter, detailing everything that had happened to her in the last few months, all the intrigues and injustices, for the local communist paper. She had ended her defense by announcing her hunger strike, swearing not to eat anything until all police proceedings against her had been made public, until she had a chance to clear her name and lay bare the conspiracy within the police force that wanted to push her out.

“Every other paper has slandered me.” It was difficult to speak, but she had to make herself understood, and for now, this doctor was the only person who was allowed to see her. “Schlanbusch fed them the most sordid details. It had to be him. He has the insights to do so. And he has an agenda. He was always against me. The things they wrote about me…”

She stopped. All the words they wrote about her came back to her.

After her return from vacation, Dr. Erkens was beaten up by Dopfer and Fischer in her own police office. The fight escalated, leaving the furniture destroyed.

Lies. Nobody had beaten her up. The flower vases in her office had been smashed, but by then the two women were already on their way to Pellworm.

Perhaps the whole thing had been staged by someone who knew exactly what would follow in the days ahead.

“Frau Erkens!” The doctor gripped her arm and forced her to focus on her. “Listen to me. Your kidneys will give up. We have to get you to a hospital.”

She knew she didn’t have long. With difficulty, she nodded.

“I have my papers in order. They are locked in a secure place. I’ve written down everything about my case. I’ve made my will.”

“It won’t have to come to that if you’d just drink some water.”

She wouldn’t. She would never give in. Not before justice was served. Erkens tried to sit up.

“Don’t put me in a public hospital. I don’t want the state to keep me alive against my will.”

She closed her eyes again, unwilling to see if the doctor’s gaze held pity, contempt or maybe the faintest trace of awe.

Erkens survived her hunger strike and got her hearing. Officially, she was cleared in the death of Dopfer and Fischer, but the hearing also concluded that she had been “arrogant, stubborn and unteachable.” In their verdict, the disciplinary chamber stated that she “objectively was not fit to be a servant of the state.”

With this, Erkens’ career was over. She was forced into retirement and largely disappeared from public life. Her adversary, Schlanbusch, went on to a successful career under the new Nazi government and later in West Germany.

Erkens’ unit had done good work. Problems within the division were most likely not more or less severe than those in male units. Why then was it so quickly dismantled? Part of the answer lay in the shifting political climate. The economic downturn of the Great Depression, increasing polarization and anti-democratic and fascist sentiments had begun to reshape Germany. Support for reform projects like Erkens’ was slipping away. Her uncompromising leadership style made her vulnerable. Without her political backers, those who had opposed Erkens from the beginning, such as Schlanbusch, felt emboldened to act, and the deaths of the two policewomen gave them the perfect ammunition to do so.

After assuming power in 1933, the National Socialists reorganized the role of women in the police force. Under the Nazis, female officers took on drastically different roles, including using racial ideology to target so-called “asocials” — Sinti, Roma and Jews — through persecution and surveillance. They also guarded concentration camps and assisted in deportations.

Erkens’ bold ideal of an emphatic female police force that served its community died on that July day on Pellworm. There has never been a real investigation of Therese Dopfer and Maria Fischer’s deaths.

Christin Bohnke is a writer based in Berlin, Germany. She is the author of two nonfiction books for children and loves writing about absurd stories and strange historical figures. Find her at christin-bohnke.com

Brendan Spiegel is Narratively’s co-founder and editorial director.

Claire Wyman is a Brooklyn-based illustrator. She likes to pet dogs and bake too much banana bread.

Thanks so much to our paid subscribers for helping Narratively tell deeply reported stories like this one! Check out more of our Hidden History stories here.