Carl Hau
German criminal, jurist and actor (1881-1926)
Carl Hau (or Karl Hau; 3 February 1881 – 5 February 1926) was a German lawyer found guilty of murdering his mother-in-law. His sensational trial in 1907 sparked the Hau Riot, the biggest street riot of its kind in German history.
Life
Hau was born on 3 February 1881 in Grosslittgen near Wittlich in south-west Germany close to the Luxembourg border. His father Johan Baptist Hau was a bank director. Carl's mother died when he was three. He was educated in Trier.
He was studying Law at the University of Freiburg when in 1901 he contracted tuberculosis which was widespread in Europe at that time. He went to the Mediterranean island of Corsica to recover in the Spring of 1901, taking rooms in the pretty town of Ajaccio on the island's west coast. During this stay he met a widow, Josephina Molitor (née Stadelhofer), a mother of seven children, who was there with her two youngest daughters, Lina (25) and Olga (19). The group started going for walks together and both daughters liked Hau, who was very polite.
The public source identifies “Carl Hau” as german criminal, jurist and actor (1881-1926). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Carl, German and criminal.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1038623. VIAF identifies the subject as 13311786. The Library of Congress control number is n89614112. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1881, 1926, 1907 and 1901.
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This entry incorporates text from “Carl Hau” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.