Return of a Native

Shortly after the conclusion of the Franco-Prussian War (1871), 17-year-old Charles Leopold Hartmann left his native village of Nordheim, Alsace, and emigrated to the U. S. Of French sympathies, he did not wish to live in Alsace under German rule. At Hollister and Bakersfield, Calif, his affairs prospered so that he could make a trip back to his home town and see if he could find anyone who remembered him. Last month he set foot in Nordheim for the first time in 58 years, but everyone seemed to know who he was. Everybody he went to call on cursed him, slammed the door in his face.

Charles Hartmann, puzzled, went to call on the mayor. The mayor arrested him on the charge of having betrayed France during the War.

Taken to Paris, Charles Hartmann was told that he had gone to the U. S. in 1914 to spread German propaganda, that he had returned through England in 1915, that he had then busied himself in the German espionage service in Switzerland. In 1919 France had condemned Charles Hartmann to death by a firing squad, in absentia.

Last week the U. S. Embassy was able to lay before a French military tribunal clear proof that Charles Hartmann of Hollister, Calif, had never left the U. S. since his entrance in 1872, had never been a French citizen. Obviously some rogue had taken advantage of his absence to use his name. Elaborately the tribunal apologized. The accused was free to return to Nordheim where, however, far fewer remembered Hartmann the Californian, than Hartmann the spy.

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