WWI Encounter

On the timeline, you will note that there is one entry made during WWI in 1914.

August 1914 - During WWI, two Bavarian soldiers captured a Jewish-looking man in Alsace.  During the all-night interrogation, the prisoner of war stubbornly refused to give his name. Suddenly, in the early hours of the morning, the unidentified Frenchman got very irritable and started to rant about the futility of the war. He told his captors, "Throw down your guns! The war will end in 1918 with defeat for the German nation and her allies!" One of the soldiers, Andreas Rill, laughed at the prisoner's words. He thought that the man was merely expressing the hopes of every Frenchman, but he was intrigued by the prisoner's other prophecies..."Everyone will be a millionaire after the war! There will be so much money in circulation, people will throw it from windows and no one will bother to pick it up. You will need to carry it around in wheelbarrows to buy a loaf!" the Frenchman predicted. Was he referring to the rampant inflation of post-WWI Germany? The soldiers scoffed at the prediction. They let the prophet ramble on. He gave them more future-history lessons: "After the confetti money will come the Antichrist. A tyrant from the lower classes who will wear an ancient symbol. He will lead Germany into another global war in 1939, but will be defeated six years on after doing inhuman, unspeakable things. The Frenchman then started to become incoherent. He started to sing, then began to sob. Thinking he was mad, the soldiers decided to let him go, and he disappeared back into obscurity. His identity is still unknown.

 Let's pull some information from this - which I should mention comes from Tom Slemen's book Strange, But True.

• Bavarian soldiers - one named Andreas Rill.
• Alsace, France
• Predictions of the near future

Who is Andreas Rill?
In an article called "Mystery of Andreas Rill: Was He A Time Traveler, Holy Man Or An Unidentified Prophet In Disguise?" we have a platform to start from.  I want to make note that this article isn't the best resource, but it does provide some options to start better research.

• In August 1914, Andreas Rill, a carpenter from Bavaria, Germany wrote two letters to his family. Rill was on active service in Alsace, in the north-east corner of France.  CHECK MILITARY RECORDS.
• Criminology experts of the Freiburg Institute for Border Areas of Psychology and Mental Hygiene testified that the two letters of Andreas Rill were authentic and no even a detail in them was altered after they were written. They contained true words of the unidentified French prisoner, but no one was able to establish the true identity of the mysterious prophet, whose prediction began to be fulfilled one after another.  CHECK FOR THESE EXPERTS.
• It took some years of hard efforts to uncover the visionary man. Andreas Rill’s sons suggested that the mysterious prophet once captured by their father, was a very rich man who belonged to a Freemason’s Lodge in Colmar, Alsace, France and decided to give away all his possessions to join a monastery in Alsace. CHECK FREEMASON LODGE IN COLMAR.
• Finally, the search for the identity of the mysterious man led to an old Capuchin monastery at Sigolsheim, Alsace, France, built in the 1600s and located only 10 km (6 miles) from Colmar, the seat of a Freemason’s Lodge. CHECK CAPUCHIN MONASTERY.
• A man whose name was Frater Laicus Tertiarius, lived as a guest there and died in 1917. Andreas Rill who had captured the French prophet in 1914 and later in 1918, apparently tried to contact the former prisoner, but was told he had died. CHECK FRATER LAICUS TERTIARUS.  THE NAME TRANSLATES TO "Tertiary Lay Brother".

Through Ancestry.com I have found Andreas Rill listed in a Bavarian WWI personnel roster.

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