On Sunday, February 18, 1827, John Holzinger asked Rosina Ott to meet him for a final interview. He had told her that he wished to present her with a gift before parting from her for good. Rosina’s aunt accompanied her to the appointed place, beyond the town of Ansbach. Holzinger and Rosina embraced; he held her fast against him, declaring that she belonged to him. On their way back, he prevailed upon the aunt to leave them alone. Rosina hesitated. Her aunt, uneasy in mind, followed them at a distance.
This scene had been prepared by a series of deliberate turns. Holzinger was an innkeeper and wine merchant in Ansbach. He held some property, though several parcels were mortgaged; he had four children by his first marriage. His first wife died in June 1818, whereupon Christiana, her sister, took charge of his household. Their intimacy deepened into an illicit liaison, and Holzinger wished to wed her. Christiana, however, refused marriage, while nonetheless remaining by his side. He consulted her before taking any step, pressed her hand, and would frequently ask: “Do you love me?” She answered sometimes yes, sometimes that she did not comprehend such a question. Her reproaches, her departures, and her returns set the pace of an attachment that Holzinger sought relentlessly to keep under his dominion.
A few months later, he settled his choice upon Johanna R., a woman of some forty years whom he purposed to take to wife. This resolve did not sever his connection with Christiana. She was to remain and keep his house, returning to her own dwelling only after the ceremony; Holzinger contemplated visiting her with regularity. He made no secret of this arrangement before his kin, yet he could not endure the thought that Christiana might slip from his grasp. He suspected Carl Schulz, the nephew of his betrothed, of being his rival. On the eve of the nuptials, Christiana reviled him after he had drunk to excess. He sought to appease her, then dashed an earthenware jug to pieces and fell into a frenzy of shouts.
On the morrow, January 3, 1819, the marriage was solemnized at an early hour. The guests partook freely of arrack, beer, and wine. Holzinger seemed in good cheer, though several witnesses judged that he was already intoxicated before noon. After the repast, Christiana sat to have her hair dressed before attending a christening. Holzinger caught sight of the friseur with an arm passed around her waist. Bursting in upon them, Holzinger struck the man across the face, then went down into the cellar to fetch wine. When he returned, Christiana stood in Schulz’s company. He cast his arm about her neck and sought speech with her; she thrust him back, declaring she would speak with him no longer. A few moments later, Schulz heard a tumult upstairs and low groans. Hastening up, he came upon Holzinger in the act of assailing Christiana, who lay upon the floor. Table knife in hand, Holzinger cried out his own guilt before him. He repeated this confession to the physician, and subsequently to the officers of the law, imputing his act to jealousy and wrath.
This initial cause placed a precise question before the bench: had Holzinger premeditated Christiana’s death, or had he slain her in a sudden transport of fury? He maintained that he had been in liquor and beside himself. His advocate petitioned for a medical consultation, urging that he could not answer for his actions. The two physicians first consulted could not agree: the one discerned no sign of madness, whereas the other imputed the loss of self-command to drunkenness, jealousy, and rage. On April 20, 1819, the medical college found a derangement of the mind induced by violent passion and hereditary predispositions. The district physician, however, discovered no indubitable mark of insanity, and the practitioner who attended Holzinger acknowledged having perceived none either before or after the crime. This divergence compelled the court to weigh the medical opinion upon its merits, rather than accept it as an automatic decree.
The judges did not blindly adopt that finding. They weighed Holzinger’s conflicting statements against the observed facts. He had repaired unarmed to the room where Christiana was; the knife lay ready on the table. Schulz had seen him fall upon her immediately after an altercation, and Holzinger had proclaimed his own guilt before witnesses. The court likewise considered the circumstances that might argue a formed design: the agitation of the preceding night, the liquor he had consumed, and his determination to follow Christiana upstairs. Yet it resolved that the overt nature of the act, the lack of any prepared weapon, and his despair immediately following the deed rendered sudden violence, born of the moment, the more probable truth. The tribunal found him guilty of homicide without premeditation—manslaughter in the translation—rather than murder. The code prescribed indeterminate confinement, yet permitted a mitigation of the penalty where the victim had provoked the assault by extraordinary insults or where the act had been committed in a state of drunkenness. The court admitted both extenuating grounds and sentenced him to eight years in a house of correction.
Holzinger was discharged after six years, upon a favourable report from the governor of the fortress. He had lost the sight of one eye and had been employed in light labours within the stronghold. Confinement had not merely impaired his fortune; the record depicts him returning to Ansbach without apparent remorse. He earned his bread by driving a hired coach. He conceived an attachment for Rosina, a young woman of five-and-twenty, and lodged in her mother’s house to remain near her. Rosina being without means, Holzinger turned his attentions also toward Margaret Heimstadt, a woman of nine-and-thirty years, possessed of six hundred florins. He proposed to marry Margaret while maintaining his connection with Rosina.
Both women set their faces against this scheme. Margaret demanded that he cease seeing Rosina; Rosina’s mother forbade him her daughter’s company. Both repaired before the magistrate—the one to dissolve the match and stay the publication of the banns, the other to put an end to his visits. Holzinger pledged to Margaret that he would renounce Rosina. The dispute was adjusted through the mediation of mutual friends, and the banns proceeded. The magistrate nevertheless laid an absolute injunction upon him to hold no communication with Rosina. Holzinger set his promise at naught. Rosina’s mother again denied him her door; he presented himself nonetheless, declaring that he cared not a rush for the magistrate and would have Rosina in spite of her.
On February 18, the day of the third publication of the banns, Holzinger accordingly solicited this final interview with Rosina. Her aunt went with her. As they drew near the town, Holzinger asked for a moment alone with the young woman, that he might deliver his gift. The aunt lagged behind, yet followed their footsteps as they turned into the open fields. Presently she heard angry words, then Rosina’s cry: “Aunt, he will shoot me!” She beheld Holzinger take aim and fire. When she screamed, he turned his threats upon her also. She ran to summon help. The officers found Rosina lying upon the snow, hard by a shed beyond the outskirts. The shattered fragments of a pistol lay strewn beside her.
Holzinger quitted Ansbach and made his way to an inn at Schalkhausen. Taking a seat in a corner, he called for several pints of beer and besought a bed, saying he was spent with fatigue and the bitter cold prevented his return to town. On the following morning, the innkeeper’s daughter peered through the keyhole and saw him standing beside the window. At eleven o’clock, her father entered the chamber and discovered that his guest had laid violent hands upon himself. The innkeeper gave notice to the authorities; at Ansbach, Rosina’s aunt had already laid her testimony before the law.