Richard Hauptmann

Bruno Richard Hauptmann (November 26, 1899 – April 3, 1936) was a German-born carpenter who was convicted of the abduction and murder of the 20-month-old son of Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh. The Lindbergh kidnapping became known as "The Crime of the Century". Hauptmann was executed in the electric chair at the New Jersey State Prison in 1936, proclaiming his innocence to the end.

Background

Hauptmann was born Bruno Richard Hauptmann in Kamenz, near Dresden in what was then the German Empire, the youngest of five children. Neither he nor his family and friends used the name "Bruno," although prosecutors in the Lindbergh kidnapping trial referred to him by that name. He had three brothers and a sister. At age 11, he joined the Boy Scouts (Pfadfinderbund). Hauptmann attended public school (Realschule), but quit at the age of 14. He then worked during the day while attending trade school (Gewerbeschule) at night, studying carpentry for the first year, then switching to machine building (Maschinenschlosser) for the next two years.

Hauptmann

Hauptmann is a German word usually translated as captain when it is used as an officer's rank in the German, Austrian and Swiss armies. While "haupt" in contemporary German means "main", it also has the meaning of "head", i.e. Hauptmann literally translates to "head man", which is also the etymological root of "captain" (from Latin caput head). It equates to Captain in the British and US Armies, and is rated OF-2 in NATO.

More generally, it can be used to denote the head of any hierarchically structured group of people, often as a compound word. For example, a Feuerwehrhauptmann is the captain of a fire brigade, while the word Räuberhauptmann refers to the leader of a gang of robbers.

Official Austrian/German titles incorporating the word include Landeshauptmann, Bezirkshauptmann, Burghauptmann and Berghauptmann.

In Saxony during the Weimar Republic, the titles of Kreishauptmann and Amtshauptmann were held by senior civil servants.

The word may cognate with the Swedish Hövitsman, which has the root meaning "Head man" or "the man at the head" and is closely related to the word "hövding," meaning Chieftain. Since medieval times, both titles have been used for state administrators rather than military personnel.

New Jersey

New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania, and on the southwest by Delaware. New Jersey is the fourth-smallest state, but the 11th-most populous and the most densely populated of the 50 United States. New Jersey lies entirely within the combined statistical areas of New York City and Philadelphia and is the second-wealthiest U.S. state by median household income as of 2014.

New Jersey was inhabited by Native Americans for more than 2,800 years, with historical tribes such as the Lenape along the coast. In the early 17th century, the Dutch and the Swedes made the first European settlements. The English later seized control of the region, naming it the Province of New Jersey after the largest of the Channel Islands, Jersey, and granting it as a colony to Sir George Carteret and John Berkeley, 1st Baron Berkeley of Stratton. New Jersey was the site of several decisive battles during the American Revolutionary War in the 18th century.

Bruno

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