During his examinations by the investigating magistrate, Weiler is said to have repeated: “I will converse with you no longer, for your conversations will end by bringing about my ruin.” The narrative published in 1860 adds that after these exchanges, not another word could be drawn from him. This protest opens an account whose judicial outcome is known, yet whose early life is pieced together solely through fragments assembled by a compiler intent on setting two temperaments in contrast.
Franz Joseph Streitmatter, whom his confederates called Weiler, was the son of a miller from Böbikon, in Switzerland. He is said to have given his age as approximately thirty-six years. The title page of the 1811 judicial compilation attributes its preparation to a court officer; the work ranks Weiler among the principal figures of Damian Hessel’s band and lists several of his aliases. The name of Weiler recurs frequently in accounts of prison stays and nocturnal expeditions. The 1860 chapter assigns no precise dates to this earlier life, recording chiefly the escapes, disguises, and audacities best suited to feed a legend.
At Zurzach, the text relates that he was arrested, only to break away by sheer force. At Schaffhausen, recaptured shortly thereafter, he succeeded once more in fleeing. Later, having been wounded during an arrest, he was conveyed to Aarau and lodged in a prison believed to be stoutly defended; yet he escaped from it nonetheless. The compiler even recounts that a Capuchin friar advised that the irons be blessed and the prisoner placed upon a rug laid in the form of a cross. One must discern here the imprint of an age wherein fear sought explanations in the supernatural; the record establishes no sorcery, but merely the powerlessness of jailers before a man skilled at turning the negligence of his guards to account.
It remains difficult to separate, in this 1860 portrait, the reported facts from the moralizing judgments with which the author envelops them. Streitmatter is credited with thefts, the plundering of churches, and raids upon mills and isolated farms. The same chapter mentions a graver accusation: the murder, in 1800, of a mistreated miller, followed by the burning of the Böbikon mill, his father’s former property. Weiler is said to have steadfastly rejected both imputations. The compiler inclines toward believing his denials, yet adduces neither a Swiss verdict nor any record of inquiry; these accusations must not, therefore, be confounded with the subsequent proceedings in Mainz.
An expedition against Longwy provides the chronicle with its clearest depiction of the band in motion. On the night of December 19 to 20—the year is nowhere stated—men reportedly raised ladders and stakes to scale the outer fortifications, hard by a guard post. The source distinguishes Weiler’s dexterity from that of the comrades tasked with gathering and carrying off the spoil. It portrays him as active during the breach, then leaving to others the labor of transporting the plunder. The exact year of this enterprise is omitted from the extract.
The chapter likewise records two abandoned designs to renounce brigandage. The first was reportedly thwarted when his belt, containing over one hundred louis d'or, was stolen while he slept. On the second occasion, he intended to reach a French manufactory to seek honest labor; halting at an inn along the road, he encountered Müller and the latter’s companion, lost his money at play, and allowed himself to be drawn into a fresh robbery. The compiler attributes Weiler’s return to banditry to these misfortunes, without presuming to lay bare his inner thoughts; money, past associations, and blind chance form the forces that bound him fast to the network.
The episode at the Mainz post-house shifts the focus from flight to succor. According to the narrative, a gunshot had struck Schön-Mayer Moses in the head. Hessel and another man allegedly abandoned him; Weiler, having already turned the street corner, retraced his steps, hoisted the wounded man upon his shoulders, and bore him away to shelter while gendarmes and watchmen followed the trail of blood. The 1811 judicial compilation likewise relates this assistance rendered to Schön-Mayer Moses, without supplying the date of the night. The solicitude thus attributed to Weiler in no way diminishes the weight of the charges brought against him; it merely forbids reducing his character to a single, unvarying line.
The prison house was to subject his keepers to yet another trial. Weiler fashioned, so the chapter states, a rope from his bed linen and attempted to lower himself from a height of over one hundred feet. A volley from the guard brought him to a halt; he seated himself upon a stone and is reported to have remarked: “It is only deferred.” The passage that follows depicts him inquiring after the jailer’s plight: would the man be indemnified for the ruined sheets? Receiving a negative reply, the prisoner reportedly offered to renounce the improved prison fare for which he paid, so that the remaining funds might compensate his warder. The narrative thus contrasts the boldness of the escape with a remarkably concrete punctilio: the debt of the linen still weighed upon the captive who had just met with defeat.
Following this failure, the text marks a turning point. Weiler, exasperated at his inability to break out of this fortress as he had from earlier holds, reportedly began to speak to the examining magistrate. The compiler notes that several disclosures were first made by word of mouth, requiring considerable time before they were formally entered into the examination protocol. The prisoner subsequently protested that this conversing would ultimately prove his undoing. A few weeks prior to the public hearings, he is said to have admitted certain facts already divulged by Hessel, while steadfastly refusing to denounce those men whose names the authorities had not yet discovered. He reportedly maintained that one of these men might yet reform, and that he would not be the instrument of his ruin.
This silence was not, however, absolute. The chapter relates that, alone with the magistrate, Streitmatter identified a confederate who had ungratefully accused him; yet he refused to name him in open court. He feared, according to the account, that his testimony might be ascribed to malice, and desired that an accusation should not merely be true, but placed above all suspicion. During the public assizes, he answered questions plainly, without seeking to incriminate those whom other depositions had not already compromised. The chronicle thus sets the admissions made in the examination chamber against the silence maintained before the public, rendering this reticence a direct counterpoint to Hessel’s demeanor.
The procedural chronology of the trial, entirely absent from the 1860 chapter, is clarified by Udo Fleck’s monograph on the Rhenish bands. The Special Court of Mainz heard the cause in 1810; an interlocutory ruling on its jurisdiction was delivered on September 29, and the final judgment was pronounced in late October. Hessel, Streitmatter, and Schmaye Nathan were condemned to death by the guillotine. The register of sentences in the 1811 compilation duly records these three names among the capital convicts.
Upon the reading of the sentence, Weiler is said to have checked Hessel, who had flown into a rage, reminding his fellow that he himself offered no complaint against the decree. The account then follows him to the foot of the scaffold: he eats and sleeps, parts from his companion with words of counsel, and declares that while he merits death, his hands have remained free of human blood. These are words attributed to Weiler by the compiler; the consulted folios record no specific date for the execution.
The law passed judgment upon Streitmatter’s complicity in the gang’s depredations; the 1860 chapter, by contrast, constructed him as a moral foil to Hessel. This literary contrast neither erases the Swiss accusations he denied nor lessens the crimes for which the three men were condemned. It leaves behind an inquiry far less accommodating than a moral homily: how is one to understand a partial confession, when the accused obstinately refuses to name those whom justice has not yet discovered?