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Hermann Führ‏‎, sometimes referred to as Fritz Weindler, is a writer and the product of Petr Čapek and Franz Bonaparta's reading circle. He authored The Sleeping Monster (not to be confused with the story made up during Johan's time in Kinderheim 511), Dorn of the Darkness, and The Awakening Monster.

He is the main antagonist of Another Monster.

Personality[]

Very little is known about Führ's personality, though one of his editors described him as an oddball who never allowed his picture to be taken. He also hated talking about his private life and was very selective about whom he would associate himself with.

Biography[]

Führ‏‎ was born in the 1950s and attended the reading seminars held at the Red Rose Mansion as a young boy. As described by Jaromír Lipský, the ideal pupil would be a child who would not only understand and believe the stories, but could also create their own. Führ‏‎ is the only known "superior pupil", or student who met all aforementioned criteria. 

Later in life, he worked as a government official during the old regime in Czechoslovakia, but eventually ran away from the organization and "that monster". When Bonaparta published Das Ruhenheim in 1989, he thought that meant he was finally free and wrote Dorn of the Darkness under the pen name Fritz Weindler. However, that very same year Petr Čapek fled to Germany and started going through lists of Czech refugees to see if he could dig up any information about Führ‏. His pursuit did not cease after three years, so in 1992 "Fritz Weindler" faked his own death after allegedly being hit by a car.

His story Dorn of the Darkness was said to have been Johan's favorite book. Johan, however, was not his only fan. Gustav Kottman became infatuated with the tale and frequently sent Führ‏‎ "fan letters". In 1995, Kottmann began killing people, but made a critical mistake four years later in a location not too far out of Mayerling, Austria. Führ‏‎ rescued him from police apprehension and took him in for a year.

Exploiting Kottman's obsession with Dorn of the Darkness, Führ‏‎ used the man by giving him a "mission" like the main character of his book. While Führ‏‎ shot and killed one of his former colleagues, Eugen Molke, in November 2000, Kottmann killed three people at the hospital where Molke worked then committed suicide. It was because of this that Werner Weber started investigating the Johan case in the first place, as he was hoping to find some sort of connection between the two.

During Weber's phone call with Führ‏ in the last chapter of Another Monster, everything began to fall into place for both the reporter and audience alike. Führ‏‎ killed Molke, but it wasn't because he was being pursued; it was simply because Molke was the last person alive who knew of his existence. What motivated him to attain that twisted sense of freedom was an encounter he had in 1997 at the Red Rose Mansion. For reasons unknown even to himself, he went back to that wretched building, only to find Johan setting it ablaze whilst murmuring, “The end…in the Landscape of the End, there will be only he and I.” Führ‏ was finally set free and could paint his picture books in peace... only if Molke -- the last person who knew who he was -- were to disappear, that is.

Führ‏ told Weber he was in the room adjacent to his, then the two of them vanished. The only contents that remained were Weber's report, Führ's manuscript for The Awakening Monster, and a scribbled sketch of a figure resembling Johan.

In the finale of Another Monster, Takashi Nagasaki came across some Helmuth Voss sketches being sold by someone under the name "Werner Weber", but missed his opportunity at purchasing them. When he finally caught up with "Weber" -- who turned out to be a shady book dealer, not the missing reporter -- the man told him that the sketches were burned and gone, per his client's request. "Weber" also revealed that the buyer was a man sitting next to one of the world's most powerful political leaders; they planned to recreate Bonaparta's experiments and get into contact with Führ, claiming him to be the next generation Voss. Whether or not any of these plans followed through remains unknown, as the Monster series does not extend beyond this date.

Abilities[]

Hermann is shown to be a master of manipulation and planning, when he orchestrated the murder of Eugen Molke and 3 hospital employees with Gustav Kottman and escape in the chaos. According to Wolfgang Grimmer's notes, his writing style is similar to Franz Bonaparta's.

Another Monster[]

Another Monster was, for the most part, written for the purposes of discovering who Hermann Führ is and his relation to Kottman's "Demon Axe-Murders", Bonaparta, and Johan.

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Found at the site of Weber's disappearance was the following sketch. The identity of the individual in the illustration is unknown (though he does have the same facial characteristics as Johan Liebert), but it is known that directly before he went missing, Weber was on the phone with Führ, who said he was in the hotel room next to his. Any speculation from there is not confirmed.

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