Loewenstein

Stocks tumbled down on the exchanges in London, Paris, Berlin and Brussels, last week, to register a total loss of more than $50,000,000. Sole reason: uncertainty had arisen as to the whereabouts of Belgium's richest Jew, M. Le Capitaine Alfred Loewenstein.

M. Le Capitaine is the burly ogre in the fairy tale of European stock manipulation. Ogres gobble. Ogre Loewenstein boasted recently in Manhattan (TIME, May 7) that the two major holding corporations chairmaned by him* have gobbled lesser public utilities and artificial silk corporations to a total of $150,000,000.

A thoroughgoing ogre, M. Le Capitaine is of thickset, pugnacious build, has quarreled with and knocked down doormen and waiters at smart Deauville Casino. The prodigious Loewenstein retinue, male & female, have been reported to receive, in addition to highest wages, a certain amount of cuffing.

Though Edward of Wales has more than once been Captain Loewenstein's guest other members of the British Royal Family have displayed a very different attitude. Mme. Loewenstein, a young and cheerful woman of admired proportions, completes the fiscal fairy tale of Beauty and the Ogre.

Soared up last week from Croyden aerodrome, near London, one of the huge trimotored Fokker planes which Financier Loewenstein habitually described as his "flying offices." In the crew's compartment were Pilot Ronald Drew and Mechanic Robert F. Little. In the "office" flew British Stenographer Miss Edith Clarke and French Stenographer Mlle. Paule Bidalon. Also on board were Valet Frederick Baxter Backster and Secretary J. O. Hodgson. Three mighty engines thrashed the air around the plane into a 300 mile an hour gale, thrusting the Fokker across the English Channel at 100 miles per hour.

When they landed at Dunkerque, France, before proceeding to St. Ingbert, the six Loewenstein servants all said that M. Le Capitaine had been on board at the beginning of the flight and was discovered not to be on board when the plane was flying 4,000 feet above mid-Channel.

Captain Loewenstein, said his servants, had been reading a book, laid it down after carefully marking the place, took off his collar and tie, went to the washroom, vanished. The servants all professed that they felt no such rush of air as would commonly be experienced if the door of the plane, which was opposite the washroom door, had been opened and become a funnel for the suction of the 175 mile gale.

However, since real-life Ogres no longer vanish, in the fairy tale sense, the six Loewenstein servants were reduced to explaining that, although they had not felt the open door blast, still the door must have opened, and Captain Loewenstein must have leaped to voluntary or accidental death.

Down, down, down $50,000,000 plunged the Loewenstein stocks.

Mme. Loewenstein arrived at St. Ingbert from Brussels with fire in her pretty eyes. "This was due to your negligence!" she cried to Pilot Drew, "Take the plane back to Croyden and sell it. I never want to see it or you again!"

Pilot Drew flew the Fokker back to Croyden, where it was temporarily held, by order of the British Air Ministry. Pilot Drew went out on the tugboat Lady Brassy and peered at mocking Channel wavelets. Pilot Drew left the Lady Brassy and entrained for Brussels.

Meanwhile Mme. Loewenstein had flown home in another airplane to Brussels, where she was reported by servants to have gone straight to bed.

A municipal memorial service for Captain Alfred Loewenstein was announced to take place at the Church of St. Michael and St. Gudale in Brussels, then cancelled "for the reason that the fact of Death has not been established," then reannounced.

London news organs distanced all others in advancing hypotheses:

Daily Chronicle: "Somnambulism."

Daily News: "Suicide. ... he had a malignant disease."

Daily Telegraph: "Exceptional strength and iron will power--in short, a man who, finding a door that seemed to stick, might be expected to wrench it open. . . . lurching plane. . . . accidental plunge."

Daily Mail: "Either never left Croyden in the airplane ... or disappeared in a motor car when the plane landed. . . prodigious hoax. . . ."

The London Evening Standard alone eschewed guesswork, chartered a plane exactly like Loewenstein's, sent up a "burly reporter" with a rope around his waist. After several times "hurling himself at the door" the reporter reported the impossibility of opening it against the pressure of the 300 mile gale.

Dutch officials of the Fokker Aircraft Corporation said indignantly that their doors were intentionally designed so that the blast of air would make it absolutely impossible for them to be opened in flight, except by the united efforts of two very strong men.

Seemingly no one reflected that there were at least four men in the Loewenstein Fokker or attached importance to the fact that the lock on the door was found broken.

Interest centred on the fortune that could have been made, last week, by selling Loewenstein shares short; and on the hope that Ogre Loewenstein had engineered a hoax, a coup, had sold himself short and vanished with a profit of millions.

International holding shares crashed from $215 to $100; and hydro-electrics from $51 to $25. When the boards of both corporations affirmed their financial soundness, announced the death of Captain Loewenstein and scouted suicide theories, the prices of the shares recovered respectively to $145 and $35. . . .

Count Van de Ponthose, close Brussels associate of M. le Captaine, cried: "When one is of the house of Loewenstein, one does not commit suicide!" A rival ogre of finance, M. Henry Drefus, chairman of British Celanese and a ruthless combatant with Ogre Loewenstein, commented at London in three words: "I am sorry."

*Hydro-Electric Securities Corp., and International Holding & Investment Co., Ltd.