In Berlin, on November 18, 1809, Councillor of War and Domains Eberhard departed his residence to take luncheon with Wilster, a gentleman who passed under the style of Baron von Essen. The *Pitaval* assigns the victim the fictitious name of Greiner; an editorial note explains that this pseudonym was adopted out of consideration for surviving distant kinsmen, while revealing that the councillor’s true name was Eberhard. His marriage had been contracted a mere ten weeks prior. The chronicle depicts him as a vigorous man, well pleased with his office, his fortune, and the nascent life he was establishing beside his young wife. This portrait is not corroborated by independent records, but serves rather as the backdrop against which the chronicle sets his sudden and agonizing end.
Eberhard and Wilster stood on friendly terms. On the eve of the event, according to witnesses summoned during the inquiry, Wilster had engaged a private cabinet at Dallach’s restaurant and bidden his companion to dine. The accused maintained subsequently that they had merely agreed upon a casual meeting. Eberhard’s widow recounted a different exchange: her husband had grumbled at having to break his prescribed dietary regimen, surmising that Wilster, being chronically short of funds, sought to solicit a loan. These accounts diverge as to the true origin of the appointment. The chronicle regards the invitation as an incriminating index; it does not, however, permit us to reconstruct what passed between the two men before they sat down to table.
According to the official summary, the guests partook of a glass of rum before eating beef served with potatoes, accompanied by red wine. Eberhard soon complained of sudden indisposition, rose, and quitted the room, declaring that his vision was growing dim. A waiter observed him vomiting repeatedly. He returned to the private room, astonished that such a seizure should overtake him, and then sought refuge in the chamber of Madame Dallach, whom he knew well from his long patronage of the establishment. The chronicle relates that his distress grew severe and that he was compelled to leave her room once more. It does not record that he ingested anything further there; the paroxysm had seized him almost immediately following the meal.
Wilster escorted his friend home. According to the widow’s later testimony, he entered the house with him and assisted him onto his couch. Eberhard was seized by fresh bouts of vomiting, endured violent abdominal spasms, and complained of an agonizing tightness in the chest. His wife wished to summon a physician. She swore that Wilster dissuaded her, arguing that warmth and heavy blankets would suffice. It was further alleged that he related diverting anecdotes to distract the sufferer and his household. This scene rests in part upon the recollection of the widow, examined during the investigation; it must be distinguished from the clinical observations subsequently made by the attending physician.
Professor Grapengießer arrived toward four o’clock in the afternoon. Before examining the patient, he received from Wilster an account of the day’s occurrences: Eberhard, he said, had become overheated, had eaten and drunk with undue haste, and had subsequently taken ill. The physician ascribed the symptoms to an attack of cholera induced by a chill combined with an ill-digested meal. He prescribed remedies, which Wilster undertook in part to prepare. Yet the patient’s condition declined rapidly. Eberhard could scarcely speak, could no longer raise himself, and appeared utterly spent; he expired toward six o’clock. When the physician returned an hour later, he cried out, according to the chronicle, that the man had been poisoned.
The burial was initially appointed for the following Monday. Wilster was said to have informed the friends charged with the arrangements that the corpse was decomposing with unusual rapidity and that no delay could be permitted. This assertion alarmed several persons, particularly as death had followed so swiftly upon apparent robust health. Rumor attributed the demise in turn to a fit of choler, an unforeseen apoplexy, and finally to foul play. The authorities ordered an autopsy. The physician who requisitioned the post-mortem had initially diagnosed cholera; the examination of the body and the depositions of those who had seen Eberhard prior to the luncheon shifted the inquiry decidedly toward the suspicion of poison.
The medical examiners noted severe inflammation of the stomach and lesions they deemed consistent with the ingestion of an irritant poison. The gastric contents were delivered to the chemist Klaproth. His chemical analysis yielded no trace of arsenic. This negative finding precluded material demonstration of the toxic agent, yet it did not, in the view of the physicians cited, resolve the question of poisoning in the negative: violent vomiting and purging might have evacuated the substance prior to the autopsy. A superior medical commission subsequently reviewed the expert opinions alongside the personal circumstances of the case. It concluded that while poisoning could not be affirmed with absolute certainty, it remained highly probable. The distinction is essential: the record presents a qualified medical inference, not the tangible extraction of poison from the corpse.
Another branch of the investigation led to Flittner’s apothecary shop. The apothecary stated that Wilster had purchased white arsenic on November 14, four days before the luncheon. After Eberhard’s death, Wilster returned with an opened canister, demanding a sealed box in exchange. The apothecary subsequently observed that five drachms were missing from the initial receptacle. Wilster explained that the substance was intended for the extermination of rats and mice upon his estates, disputing the dates given by the apothecary and his assistant. His initial receipt had been drafted after the fact, bearing a date at variance with the original delivery of the drug. Both shopmen further described his urgent entreaties to alter the receipt and secure a certificate of restitution. The court retained this sequence as an incriminating circumstance; the narrative, however, does not elevate it to a chemical analysis of the canister's contents.
The chronicle dwells at length upon another suspicious occurrence. A few days before the fatal event, Wilster was reported to have boiled a white substance in his landlady’s kitchen, watching over the vessel with acute attention and directing that it be stirred with extreme caution. He claimed he wished to test a sample of limestone brought from his properties. The chemist Klaproth pronounced this procedure wholly unsuited to the assaying of limestone, yet entirely consistent with the preparation of an arsenical solution in water. No forensic analysis could establish what had truly simmered in the pot: both the vessel and the wooden rod employed had vanished. The defense’s explanation of limestone was contested by the prosecution and by the author of the *Pitaval*, but the absence of chemical testing leaves this operation in the realm of disputed circumstantial indices.
The magistrates turned their attention likewise to the interest Wilster might have had in his friend’s demise. He had contracted for the purchase of landed estates, the price of which fell due shortly; witnesses deposed that he had been actively seeking an affluent bride for several months. Eberhard had just wed a lady possessed of considerable means. Following his death, the widow declared that Wilster had pressed her to place her confidence in him, proffered his protection and support, and embraced her against her will. Other witnesses confirmed having observed his precipitate attentions. Wilster denied all matrimonial designs, representing his conduct as a mere token of neighborly compassion. The chronicle discerns a motive therein; yet such behavior, taken alone, does not establish a premeditated design to kill.
Wilster’s defense applied itself to severing every link in this chain of circumstances. He contended that Eberhard might have succumbed to sporadic cholera, an apoplectic stroke, or an insidious chronic malady; he attributed his friend’s mortal agony to a preexisting condition, asserting that the material evidence was insufficient to sustain a capital charge. He even suggested that poisoned morsels laid for vermin in the tavern might inadvertently have found their way into the potatoes. The bench rejected this conjecture, which the chronicler records merely to emphasize its sheer improbability. Wilster likewise challenged the competence of the medical experts, drafting extensive memorials against their findings. The chronicle marvels at the vigor of his dialectic while portraying it as a calculated stratagem; this estimation belongs to the chronicler, not to the dry findings of the inquest.
At the close of the proceedings, the tribunal sentenced Wilster to fifteen years’ detention in a fortress—a penalty designated by the chronicle as extraordinary. The decree was affirmed upon appeal. He was conducted to Stettin to undergo his term of confinement. The text records neither a deathbed confession nor any belated discovery of arsenic within Eberhard’s remains. It leaves the reader with a conviction erected upon converging circumstantial indications, while direct chemical proof remained wanting. The repast at Dallach’s, the exchanged canister, and the mysterious kitchen pot whose contents were never assayed thus constitute the dossier transmitted by the *Pitaval*: a sequence of facts recounted, disputed, and ultimately weighed by the magistrates of the early century.