Eric Muenter

Eric Muenter (1871–1915), also known as Erich Münter, Erich Muenter, Erich Holt or Frank Holt, was a German-American activist and would-be assassin whose secret attacks on America on behalf of Germany foreshadowed future terrorist attacks. Although employed as a German professor at elite American universities, he was actually a spy and a "fanatic in the clandestine service of the Imperial German government". As a professor at Harvard University, he poisoned and killed his wife. He appeared again as Cornell University professor Frank Holt who contacted the German spy network which engaged to sabotage US aid to the war in Europe against Germany. In 1915, he planted a bomb which exploded in the US Capitol, shot Jack Morgan, son of financier J.P. Morgan in his home, and predicted the bombing of a steamship bound for England before committing suicide under custody of police. His activities along with those of other Germans were played up by the press as "Hun barbarity" anti-German feelings rose in the years as America eventually entered the war with Germany.

While teaching German at Harvard University in 1906 he poisoned his pregnant wife. Leona Muenter died April 16, 1906 of arsenic poisoning. On April 27, 1906, Cambridge Massachusetts police issue a warrant for the arrest of Erich Muenter. On June 5, 1906 Muenter mailed a pamphlet entitled “Protest” to his wife’s family from New Orleans. He vowed that he would “annihilate” Chicago and Cambridge" in one blow if he could for accusing him of poisoning his wife, and claimed that he actually feared the punishment inflicted on Christian Scientists who refused medical treatment. He fled before this was discovered, and spent the next decade in various places in the United States under assumed identities. He was a committed German nationalist and opposed the US policy of selling arms to Great Britain and France, Germany's enemies in World War I.

Muenter went underground in Mexico for a period before emerging again in Texas under a new identity and marrying a new wife. He got jobs in colleges working his way up to Ivy League as German professor Frank Holt at Cornell University. In 1915, Muenter was inspired by the book The War and America by Hugo Münsterberg, another German sympathizer. He became involved with the secret German spy intelligence unit Abteilung IIIb which was sabotaging arms-carrying vessels departing from U.S. ports with small chemical timer incendiary bombs which would explode at sea after a couple of days. Throughout his attacks on shipping, the Capitol Building and J.P. Morgan, Jr. he maintained he was just an angry peace activist acting on his own. German networks were later alleged to have supported his attacks. Muenter clearly had connections to the German network and taunted authorities with veiled statements about Abteilung IIIB’s ship sabotage efforts

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