At Lichtenburg Castle, no one asked the visitor to prove his name. He brought a letter. That was better still: someone of consequence answered for him. One evening in August 1613, two horsemen drew rein before the residence of the Electress Hedwig of Saxony, widowed for two years. The first was of good bearing, with a well-tended beard and dark hair; the second was his young servant. To the master of the household, August Pflugk, the traveler delivered a recommendation from a friend, Gerhard von Ranzau. The bearer was introduced as a cousin of that same name. The gates were opened.
The castle sheltered a charitable princess, and, by common report, an exceedingly wealthy one. Hedwig’s almsgiving sustained her reputation for fortune; her Danish jewels did the rest. Yet there was no garrison about her coffers: the domestic staff, the gatekeeper, Pflugk, and the master of the horse, Veit Heidekampf, sufficed for the daily watch. A hospitable house has many doors, and not all look out upon the courtyard.
The newcomer showed no haste to depart. He had traveled, possessed the art of conversation, and grew familiar with Heidekampf. He even proposed to share his bedchamber, provided the boy who slept there were sent away. The offer was refused. As for the audience he solicited with the Electress, an indisposition on her part kept him waiting. It was therefore necessary to tarry, to go about the house, to inquire. The gentleman took an interest in the kitchens. He questioned Christine, a chambermaid, regarding the jewels and the place where they were kept. To the servant charged with the plate, he promised a handsome sum if Christine could arrange a private interview with the princess.
Pflugk at last grew uneasy at such curiosity. He instructed a servant, Drandorf, to observe their guest. Drandorf returned with a discovery almost comical: the handsome black hair was false. Beneath the locks, a linen coif covered a balding crown. A periwig proved no crime; yet for Pflugk, who was ill-acquainted with such contrivances, it sufficed to render the man thoroughly suspect. He resolved to give him to understand, with the deference due to the name he bore, that his stay had lasted long enough.
Yet the visitor was now indisposed. How could one turn a sick gentleman out of doors? He was also awaiting papers, he protested, and had sent his boy to fetch them. The servant had indeed ridden off. He did not return. Mere courtesy still detained within the castle walls the very man of whom the master wished to be rid.
Here, the early chronicle confesses to a lacuna in the judicial records upon which it draws. It resumes after a knife attack upon Heidekampf, who survived the blow. The false knight then attempted to take his own life in the churchyard; Drandorf prevented him and secured his arrest. On August 30, the interrogation abruptly changed its methods. The prisoner was threatened with the rack. He begged for mercy and promised to speak. The official report asserts that he was not tortured, yet proceeds to describe his being bound upon the ladder and the application of an instrument of compression to his leg. These two assertions must be weighed together: the confessions that follow are not those of a man left free to keep his silence.
He declared his name to be Klaus Horn. His design, he confessed, was to poison the Electress with a substance called “mercury,” and thereafter seize her treasure. He had attempted to approach her food in the kitchens; failing that, he had sought a private audience. Heidekampf possessed the key to a door that would have permitted the admittance of three confederates into the castle. The boy had been dispatched to fetch them. Nothing in the subsequent course of the chronicle reveals what became of them. As for the poison, Horn swore he had cast it into the Elbe.
To this confession was joined the narrative of an entire career. The Der neue Pitaval, which recounted it long afterward, relied largely upon what the prisoner related of himself. His travels must therefore be read as recorded statements, with all their omissions, and not as an itinerary verified at every stage. Horn claimed to have been born in 1582, the son of a man who had left an estate to be divided among several heirs. His first performance, at the age of twelve, was said to have been that of a demoniac, enacted at the court of Heidelberg. He had been cast into irons; a kinsman had secured his release.
The craft had not been abandoned on that account. Before his examiners, Horn offered to demonstrate how he had deceived those who believed the devil had taken possession of his body. He fell to the floor, contorted his limbs, altered his voice, and gave vent to animal cries. The spectators had been forewarned; the minutes nevertheless describe them as terrified. An impostor had been asked for an explanation; he had delivered a performance.
Then came the name of Ranzau. It was familiar, respected, and easily turned to account far from those who might dispute it. Horn explained that he had assumed it to command greater regard. In Denmark, a promise of marriage was said to have unsealed the purse of Katharine Krabe’s father. In Norway, another betrothal secured him costly chains; the rings offered to the new bride-to-be came from the previous borrowing. Gifts thus traveled across Europe swifter than husbands. When jilted women caused their suitor to be pursued, he was arrested, only to escape through the bribed assistance of an innkeeper.
The mechanism became singularly plain in the Bavarian episode. In Augsburg, the goldsmith Matthias Wolbaum possessed a volume on the Ranzau lineage. The client knew enough of it to withstand scrutiny. He obtained silver plate on credit, then presented a portion of it to the wife of Councillor Lorenz von Wehnsin. These gifts assured him the hospitality of that esteemed household. In Augsburg, his lodging beneath the roof of an honorable man enhanced his credit. He was thus enabled to borrow more, bestow more, and appear each day more worthy of trust. The merchants paid for the very generosity whose author they were subsequently invited to admire.
It was the courteous breeding of a friend that overturned the scheme. Horn announced the arrival of traveling companions in Augsburg and set forth to meet them. Wehnsin sent a messenger to bid them all welcome beneath his roof. The messenger found neither the companions nor Horn. Frau Wolbaum took fright, raised the hue and cry, and brought about his arrest. The affair might have ended there. Yet a merchant credited his explanations, stood surety for him, and restored him to liberty. Before the return of the man dispatched to verify his alleged estates in Holstein, Horn was already far away.
Not everything in his depositions was mere theater. He recounted having accompanied a band through the Lüneburg Heath during four murderous assaults. He denied having dealt the fatal blows himself, though acknowledging a share of the plunder. The contrast with the bestowed jewels did nothing to exonerate him: on these occasions, travelers had been slain. The sentence pronounced against him took into account these confessions, the plot against Hedwig, the assault on Heidekampf, the frauds, and even the feigned possessions, which were accounted religious outrages.
The court at Jena condemned Klaus Horn to the wheel. The sentence was executed at Lichtenburg on January 4, 1614. Before his death, he requested the attendance of a deacon. The letter of recommendation, the estates forever expected from Holstein, and the noble kinship availed him no longer. For years, by his own account, he had purchased the necessary time by promising the return of a messenger. At Lichtenburg, the boy had departed; Horn, this time, had remained.