W. F. Baumann had already affixed his signature as future duke and count before setting eyes upon the smallest acre of land. The tailor, whose fingers were accustomed to guiding the needle, had set his hand to solemn covenants intended for a monarch he had never met. In his own mind, this was no idle pastime: he was preparing to come into possession of houses, lands, and noble titles. A young seamstress in his workshop had convinced him that an opulent Russian benefactor was arranging his fortune.
Wilhelmine Friederike Krauß entered Master Tailor Baumann’s employ in June 1852. She was sixteen years of age, slight and delicate in frame, with a pale countenance, according to the portrait left by the chronicler. Baumann, too, was small of stature and of frail constitution. An intimate acquaintance grew between them; the record observes that it remains uncertain whether they ever spoke of marriage or a lifelong pledge. This close association afforded the young workgirl access to her master’s confidence, yet it alone could hardly account for the singular credulity with which he was to receive her tales.
In December, she related that she was acquainted with an immensely wealthy Russian nobleman, Count Briloff. Every evening, so she said, she attended him to count great bags of specie. There was such an abundance of money that he would light his pipe with banknotes of one or five thalers. Wilhelmine added that she had described Baumann’s indigent circumstances to the count, who had pledged to come to his assistance.
This aid was initially to take the shape of an obscure investment. Baumann was to remit ten silbergroschen each day to Wilhelmine; the sum would be added to the bag of coins that Briloff filled on a daily basis. Thus would small change beget more, and Baumann’s share would swell with the passage of time. He consented to the arrangement and daily delivered the requested coin. The promise rested neither upon a contract with the alleged count nor upon a written receipt from his hand; everything hung upon Wilhelmine’s word alone.
At Christmas, another mark of favor lent an air of public consequence to this unseen wealth. Wilhelmine recounted that in the marketplace, the Prince of Prussia had overheard an address delivered by the count, had invited him into his carriage, and had subsequently conveyed the young girl to the royal palace. There, he was said to have presented her with a diamond ring, on the strict condition that she display it to no living soul. Baumann had no means of verifying the gift, since the very prohibition against seeing it accounted for its concealment.
The young girl presently asserted that Briloff held title to thirty-four houses in Berlin, and that he intended to convey six of them to Baumann. An estate agent would merely require each conveyance to be entered into the rolls of the Kammergericht. Every file necessitated a stamp duty of fifteen silbergroschen; this outlay, she maintained, ought not to be imposed upon their noble benefactor. Baumann duly disbursed the fees. The bounties multiplied: according to Wilhelmine’s recitals, he was eventually to receive as many as fifteen houses, which he could neither inspect nor occupy, but of which he already deemed himself the master.
The estate of Neustadt-Eberswalde was vaster still. Briloff, she explained, lacked the capacity to manage the domain and wished to deliver it over to Baumann. Certain legal encumbrances remained to be unraveled; the President of the Ministry, von Manteuffel, Councillors of State, and the municipal court would all be set in motion. Telegraphic dispatches would fly between Berlin and Neustadt. Every detail borrowed the vocabulary and costs of actual administration, and the very existence of the Ministry provided the falsehood with a backdrop that the impoverished tailor had no means of questioning.
Wilhelmine added that she had obtained an audience with von Manteuffel in person, receiving from him ordinary tokens of regard, such as a vial of scent, a clothing strap, and a toy fashioned in the likeness of a locomotive. These trifles, which Baumann could behold with his own eyes, seemed to lend substance to interviews he could never verify. In January 1853, the fabrications reached their zenith: the girl affirmed that she had dined with the King himself, and that His Majesty was possessed of seven hundred and ten houses in Berlin. The Sovereign had resolved to bestow them upon Baumann, together with twenty-three morgens of land, and to elevate him to the peerage. He had even proposed several noble appellations, foremost among them the name of Hohenzollern.
The matter was no longer one of ten silbergroschen a day. Duty stamps were costly, and Wilhelmine maintained that matters of state entailed heavy disbursements. Baumann is reported to have disbursed one hundred thalers for stamps alone; he was compelled to borrow an equal sum. Acquaintances endeavored to disabuse him, but he turned them away. The chronicle records that he wrote to his brother with the rapturous zeal of a man who believed he had left penury behind to enter the ranks of the nobility.
The contrivance unraveled when Baumann sought to ascertain the progress of the transaction. The account of the interview with the President of the Ministry, placed at the opening of the original chapter, is presented by the chronicler as a popular anecdote rather than a matter of judicial record. The firm foundation of the file lies in the dual inquiry instituted after Baumann made known his losses: the one to determine whether he had been defrauded, the other to fix Wilhelmine’s culpability. The magistrates directed an examination of Baumann’s capacity to comprehend and administer his affairs. They concluded that, notwithstanding his extraordinary credulity in this instance, he remained in general possession of his faculties.
Krauß made prompt admission of the principal facts. At the bar of the Berlin Criminal Court, on 10 May 1853, she began by answering with nods of the head, before speaking more freely. She did not dispute the sums she had received. She could not say how the notion had first entered her head, but acknowledged that she had taken Baumann’s money with the intent to enrich herself. She confessed to having squandered the sums designated for stamp duties upon cakes, sweetmeats, and toys.
Baumann was examined as the principal witness. The assurances had appeared credible to him, he explained, because the manifestations of Briloff’s wealth had been depicted to him with almost fabulous magnificence. The supposed count had even dispatched a bar of solid gold; it had failed to arrive, however, because the coachman’s horse had taken fright on the road. Baumann likewise produced the covenants he had signed in advance, accepting duchies and counties, and pledging fidelity to his future vassals. The bench was thus presented not merely with a record of payments, but with the slow workings of deceit upon the victim’s mind: the magnitude of the promised gifts had expanded each time a fresh expense rendered it more painful to abandon the preceding ones.
The prisoner’s mother testified that from childhood her daughter had been addicted to falsehood. This maternal observation did not constitute legal proof of each distinct charge. The material evidence was of simpler character: the sums entrusted, the recitals of estates and royal intimacies, the stamps supposedly required, and the confession of the accused that she had applied the monies to her own use. The chronicler reports that the public prosecutor demanded a term of imprisonment, while conceding that Baumann’s excessive credulity constituted a mitigating circumstance in favor of the accused.
The tribunal sentenced Wilhelmine to four months’ imprisonment and a fine of one hundred thalers; in default of payment, two additional months of confinement were to be served. The penalty appeared trifling when set against the houses and domains she had dangled before him, but those properties had never existed in Baumann’s hands. That which had truly changed owners was confined to the daily coins, the stamp duties, and the funds borrowed to pursue an imaginary conveyance.
The House of Hohenzollern had signed nothing. No register of the Kammergericht had power to transmute Baumann’s signatures into a muniment of title. The dossier closed upon wasted disbursements, a confession, and four months in a cell, while the man who had already fancied himself a duke was returned to the meager weight of his remaining pence. The promise of an inheritance had remained solid in his grasp only so long as he refrained from putting it to the test.
Archival Note: The narrative is drawn from the retrospective chapter “Wilhelmine Krautz” in the Neue Pitaval, detailing the Berlin trial of 10 May 1853. The chapter title uses the spelling “Krautz,” whereas the OCR text also displays “Krauß” and “Kraus.” The present account adopts “Krauß” as a narrative convention, without asserting the definitive orthography of the name in the absence of facsimile collation. The author specifies that the opening anecdote concerning the audience with von Manteuffel is derived from popular rumor, not from the trial transcripts; it is accordingly not presented as established fact. The promises of Count Briloff, the Prince, and the King are reported solely as Wilhelmine’s assertions, not as historical occurrences.