Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957), Saturday 15 October 1932, page 23


Cruel Hoax.

Dead Soldier's Parents Deceived.

BERLIN. Oct. 13.

Although "Oscar Daubmann", who was supposed to have returned from the grave, was feted as a hero when he arrived in Endingen, he has now been arrested as Karl Hummel, a tailor with an unedifying police record. Hummel was confessed to the de-ception, and admitted having told the story with the object of securing a free journe from Italy.

The affair recalls the noted Tichborne case, because Hummel was accepted as a son by Daubmann's parents, and his old regimental colleagues unhesitatingly identi-fied him as Daubmann.

The impostor has been on lecture tour throughout Germany.

[In last May the parents of Oscar Daub- mann, a German soldier, who was listed as missing during the fightning on the Somme in 1916, received a message stating that their son had arrived at Naples on the way home from Africa. He said that he had been wounded during the fighting, and captured by the French. In attemping to escapte from a prison camp he killed a guard, and was sentenced to imprisonment for 20 years in a French penal settlement in Africa. Eventually he escaped, and walked 3000 miles along the coast to a spot from which he boarded a streamer for Italy. The Tichborn case was one in which Artuhr Orton, a butcher, of Wagga,

Australia, claimed to be Roger Charles Tichborne, the heir to the baronetcy and estates worth 24000 pound a year. Orton was accepted by the Dowager Lady Tichborne as her son, but by no other member of the family. Orton was later tried and con- victed for perjury and forgery, and was sentenced to imprisonment for 14 years. The proceedings lasted from 1871 to 1874.]