At four o’clock in the afternoon, Bernhard Gottschalk had before him a cup of coffee that was nearly full. He had just remarked to his neighbor that the draught had a sickening taste, that it turned his stomach; yet, upstairs, another cup awaited him. His wife, seated by the window, kept her knitting in hand. The barber was still to rise, make his way to the kitchen, and then collapse into a malady so swift that, by that very evening, the physicians would no longer be able to revive him.
Death came at Jena on May 15, 1860. Bernhard, a barber-surgeon of twenty-eight years, had labored throughout the morning and appeared in good health. His wife Pauline had prepared the midday meal: eggs and salad from the garden, of whose cloying, sweetish taste her husband had complained. He had then taken his coffee. A few hours later, he was sweating profusely, vomiting, racked by violent abdominal pains, and shivering with ague. Dr. Schillbach at first suspected severe indigestion. He prescribed an emetic; the sufferer’s strength continued to ebb. Toward nine o’clock that night, he expired.
Pauline’s conduct had seemed that of a devoted wife. She had summoned the physician, supported her husband, and wiped his brow. On the morrow, when her father came to her bedside, she explained that Bernhard had likely caught a chill in his feet a week earlier. The town, however, was already connecting this sudden demise with another tale: the couple’s domestic quarrels, Pauline’s visits to Gottfried and Christiane, and her liaison with Eduard, their son.
Two years earlier, the house of Gottfried and Christiane had become that of the Gottschalks. Bernhard had purchased it from this couple, who resided on the first floor with their son Eduard, a twenty-nine-year-old surgeon. The two households thus shared the same entrance, the same staircase, and frequent occasions for encounter. When the Gottschalks took up residence, Eduard drew closer to his former comrade and to Pauline. The compiler records that their liaison was quickly formed; several neighbors came to know of it.
Yet the marriage of Bernhard and Pauline had begun without scandal. They had wed in March 1858, and a daughter was born the following year. Discords deepened over the infant: Bernhard bore her crying poorly, and his wife’s parents eventually took the child into their own home. In April 1860, an altercation erupted upon the stairs with Eduard’s parents. Eduard seized Bernhard by the throat; his parents struck him, while Pauline scarcely intervened. She subsequently abandoned her husband for Leipzig, escorted as far as Apolda by Eduard, only to return a few days later. The separation had been brief, but suspicions and rancor lingered.
On May 15, Bernhard called upon his uncle Gengelbach, a butcher, who had at last reconciled with him. He departed in high spirits, carrying pastries for Pauline. At home, he changed his attire, lit a cigar, and joined the Pillings, neighbors on the second floor, with whom he often took his coffee. He spoke of the midday meal and the salad. When the house bell rang, Pauline went down to attend the door. She returned to announce that a patron was waiting for her husband to be shaved. Bernhard took leave of the Pillings before even touching their coffee.
The customer was the town executioner’s assistant. Having shaved him, Bernhard abandoned the thought of returning upstairs to his neighbors and sat down in his own lodgings before the coffee his wife had prepared for him. He dozed upon the sofa. His face grew flushed, and beads of sweat stood upon his skin. A short while later, Frau Pilling noticed the cup, which remained virtually untouched. Bernhard told her the beverage tasted “sickening and flat” and made him ill; at the Pillings’, he added, the coffee had a far better flavor. Pauline held her peace, her own cup set before her.
Pauline’s mother soon arrived with little Anna and a kinswoman. Bernhard moved back and forth between the room and the kitchen, vomiting and suffering from violent diarrhea. Pauline served him an infusion of wormwood. She sent for help and ministered to him, assisted by her mother and Frau Pilling. Dr. Schillbach was unable to arrest the disorder. As rumors began to circulate, his own observation of the symptoms prompted him to alert the authorities: so abrupt an end, in the absence of any known infirmity, struck him as unnatural.
On May 17, the judicial inquiry began within the house. The magistrates interrogated the tenants, ordered an examination of the body, and placed Pauline and Eduard under police custody. In Eduard’s quarters, a letter was discovered, dated May 7 and penned by Pauline. In it, she protested her passionate love and implored him not to doubt her devotion. This letter altered the weight of every denial. The pair had disavowed any illicit bond; Pauline, confronted with the missive, blushed, acknowledged it, and promised a full confession.
The autopsy revealed an intense inflammation of the stomach and bowels. The chemists detected arsenic within the viscera, and the physicians concluded that poisoning was the cause of death. The quantity recovered did not allow for the exact dose to be reconstructed: the experts considered that a portion of the poison might have been voided or remained in organs that had not undergone chemical analysis. Certainty existed regarding the arsenic and the death it had wrought; it did not yet point to the hand that had administered it.
Pauline initially offered an account that cast blame upon Eduard’s parents. She alleged that Eduard and his mother had urged her to rid herself of her husband, that she had been shown rat poison, and that Christiane had slipped the powder into Bernhard’s cup during an absence. Later, she altered her story: she now claimed to have scattered the poison into the cup with her own hand, while Eduard added hot milk and instructed her on how to proceed. She maintained that she had wavered, only to yield to her lover’s entreaties. During a joint interrogation, Eduard at first denied everything, but subsequently admitted to the liaison, the discussions, and the poison; he insisted, however, that his mother was ignorant of the purpose for which it was intended.
Even their confessions failed to resolve every detail. Pauline stated she had poured the powder directly into the cup. After the verdict, Eduard claimed the poison had been introduced into the pot kept warm by the hearth, from which Bernhard had served himself. The narrative notes that the foul taste reported by the victim and the quantity of arsenic retrieved rendered the explanation of a single doctored cup problematic. The two accused were at one regarding their criminal design and Pauline’s complicity, yet their shifting accounts left in doubt the precise manner in which the poison had been concocted and served.
The plot had matured by degrees. Eduard wished to marry Pauline, but no advocate could find lawful grounds to dissolve her marriage. According to their depositions, he thereupon proposed to make away with Bernhard. Pauline claimed to have resisted, then hesitated, and at last consented. Eduard had delivered to her the arsenic kept in his parents’ lodgings; she was to mingle it with the coffee or the meal. The pair had at first contemplated having Bernhard die while on a journey, so that his passing might be mistaken for an ordinary illness. On May 15, they acted within the very house, at a moment when domestic harmony seemed restored. The charge of premeditation rested upon these preparations; the parents’ defense contested all foreknowledge of the plot.
The trial opened on September 14 and 15, 1860, before the assize court of Sondershausen. Pauline and Eduard stood by their confessions. Gottfried and Christiane persisted in their denials. The jurors pronounced Pauline guilty by ten votes to two, and Eduard by unanimous voice. The father was convicted of having failed to prevent the crime and was sentenced to five months’ imprisonment. His wife was sentenced to fifteen years’ penal servitude for participation, though the jury did not impute to her the same degree of guilt as to her son.
Pauline and Eduard were condemned to death by decapitation. Following the decree, each petitioned for clemency on the condition that the other be spared. Pauline refused to outlive Eduard; he made the selfsame plea. On October 21, the court notified them of the sovereign’s determination: Pauline’s sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, in consideration of her youth and the sway exercised over her by her lover. For Eduard, the capital sentence was affirmed.
At daybreak on October 23, the courthouse was ringed with soldiers, and the place of execution was erected in the courtyard. The record relates that Eduard walked to the scaffold, knelt in prayer, and rose again. The blade fell before a minute had elapsed. Pauline departed for prison under a sentence she had initially refused to accept without him. Bernhard’s final cup of coffee had remained almost untouched before him; the confessions explained the poison, but never with a single voice the exact path it had taken to reach his cup.