In 1909 the army of Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was shaken to the core by a murder scandal. Richard Mader, a k. u. k. sergeant, received an unusual package in the mail, which, according to the enclosed letter, contained pills “to fortify virility.” The sergeant tried the health supplement and was found dead by his aide later that day. The police found out that a number of freshly promoted officers have received similar packages, which turned out to contain cyanide pills. Eventually the police arrested Adolf Hofrichter, first lieutenant of the Fourteenth Linz Infantry, who was subsequently sentenced by the military court on June 25, 1910.The Hofrichter Case is especially illuminating for various reasons. Until these homicide attempts against officers in the k. u. k. army, there had been no precedents for premeditated murder of soldiers of rank by a fellow officer. Regardless of its unusual nature, the murder case reveals the internal and external pressures exerted upon the officers during their career in the k. u. k. army.At the same time, it also shows the widening chasm between the military and civil society, which became the leitmotif of the ensuing media discourse.Based on these two aspects of the story, the study examines available sources to discover the attitudes of the various actors towards the attack on staff officers and towards the army of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in general: the civilian public informed about the case through modern journalism on one hand, and the three protagonists of the case—First Lieutenant Hofrichter, Military Prosecutor Kunz and the attorney of the defence, Richard Pressburger—on the other.

The paper examines the main features of the image of queer subculture in the first half of the twentieth century based on police and press discourses. Queer subculture in the modern metropolis was a very diverse and complex phenomenon at the time, with a number of various sub-types. This complexity is not only observed by historians of queer culture but was also evident for contemporary analysts like police officers and journalists. As indicated in the title, the discourse about male homosexuality in this period is characterized by a gradual medicalisation. After the 1900s homosexuality began to be interpreted as a disease and a perversion that can be cured and healed.The primary sources of the study are police documents, books published by police officers and articles in Budapest newspapers. In addition to the daily press Perényi examines books of urban reportage first appearing in Budapest in the 1900s, which are closely linked to the discourse in the press. The joint works of reporter Kornél Tábori and head of the police press office Vladimir Székely give an especially sharp insight into urban queer culture of Budapest.The analysis of police and press discourses of same-sex sexuality supports the thesis that from the 1900s until the end of the Horthy era, regardless of the political system, attitudes toward queer culture were generally tolerant, which can be largely attributed to the fact that non-normative forms of sexual behavior were interpreted in a medicalised way.