DIE GLATZE FRAUEN. A bizarre cult centered in a particular house in South Milwaukee abolished in 1941 and lasting from at least 1870, possibly much earlier. Swearing allegiance to a death-cult combining aspects of Friedrich Nietzsche's writings, a particularly sinister form of Taoism, and supernatural worship of "Die Vormen Götter" or "The Pre-Human Gods," this cell of approximately 19 women and 8 men ritually shaved their heads and also made sacrifices of fingers and toes regularly in pagan rituals. In the middle, the leader of the cult holds the leather book of its rituals, written in Sütterlin handwriting and in a cipher that requires intimate knowledge of the cult to understand. German Christians in Milwaukee began complaining about the strange goings-on in the house and the "unchristlichen und abscheulichen" appearance of the cultists, particularly Mad. Schang, in the right, whose interests began to give her an inhuman appearance around the eyes. The retrieval of an infant corpse in a freshly-buried hole in the back yard, coupled with general anti-German sentiment in 1941, led to raids by police and a shootout killing most of the cultists. Five died over the course of the twentieth century; Mad. Schang is still alive in life imprisonment in Lompoc, aged 112 and unchanged in apppearance from this photograph, apparently possessing unusual youth.