Mr. & Mrs.

In the columns of the Berlin Kurier last week, a middle-aged German named Hans Hirthammer waxed reminiscent over his schooldays in Bavaria's Landshut. They were not happy days. The school's rector was a harsh man who used to set his bullying son to spy on and punish the pupils. Called a born criminal by his father, the boy delighted in dreaming up ingenious punishments. Sometimes he forced the students to empty huge garbage cans and then refill them piece by piece with their bare hands. One day the students rebelled and jammed the rector's son head-first into an empty can. An investigation followed. The rector was dismissed and Student Hirthammer lost sight of him.

But the son was not so easily forgotten. By 1945 he had grown to be one of the most infamous spies and bullies of all time. When finally faced with trial and punishment himself, he took poison (TIME, June 4, 1945). His name: Heinrich Himmler.

"I'm proud of him," said Heinrich Himmler's granite-hard wife Margarete soon after he killed himself. Last week from Germany came reports that three times she had tried the same trick herself. But Margarete lacked Heinrich's skill. Wanted in Bavaria for trial as a Nazi, she was locked in a lunatic asylum at Bielefeld in the British zone, "a physical and moral wreck."

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