The Note from Brotterode
On the morning of September 15, 1847, a stranger appeared at the home of Jeremias Rosenblatt, a Jewish merchant of Barchfeld, and handed his wife an unsealed letter. He read it aloud. A certain Simon Lesser, of Brotterode, professed a desire to sell a cow and requested Rosenblatt to come alone, as early as six o’clock the following morning, to conclude the bargain before his departure for the Frankfurt fair. The messenger insisted: no companion, no delay. The summons was fabricated. Yet it drew Rosenblatt onto a forest track where he was slain and plundered.
Rosenblatt set out before four o'clock on September 16, carrying the funds at his disposal, some twenty to twenty-three thalers. The path crossed the Bergwiese, a clearing near the Lautenberg, three-quarters of an hour from Brotterode. Between six and seven o'clock, a gunshot was heard. His body was discovered not far from the path, his pockets emptied and the letter still in his breast pocket. The forensic physicians noted wounds inflicted by gunfire, blunt force, and a blade. The finding was unequivocal on one point: the death could not have been a suicide.
The letter opened the inquest. Simon Lesser denied having written it, asserting that he had contemplated no sale of cattle nor appointed any meeting. The reddish paper and pale ink resembled those an innkeeper from Liebenstein had seen in the possession of Johann Valentin Jüng. Handwriting experts attributed the note to Jüng. A witness, Joseph Lazarus Schwarz, declared he had met him on the road to Barchfeld and read the letter; others had heard him asking where Rosenblatt resided. The widow and the young son recognized him as the messenger.
Jüng eventually admitted to having written a letter on the morning of September 15 in the inn of Kaspar Reich, in Liebenstein. He had folded it without sealing it, then departed toward Barchfeld. Reich supplied samples of paper and ink: the dimensions, the reddish hue, and the pale ink matched the forged note. The comparison thus did not rest solely on the wife’s memory; the paper and script tied the message to a precise stage in Jüng's journey.
Jüng initially denied ever entering Rosenblatt's home. Confronted with the witnesses, he conceded having been there, but claimed a carter had dispatched him to inquire about a cow. This explanation accounted neither for the false name of Lesser nor for the repeated demands that Rosenblatt come alone. The inquiry also turned toward the preceding days. Jüng had wandered between several villages, frequently near the clearing and the very path Rosenblatt was to travel. He asserted he had been seeking tobacco or inquiring about livestock; several of his versions were contradicted.
The investigators discovered that Rosenblatt might not have been his first quarry. On September 13, Jüng had reportedly asked acquaintances to summon Abraham Wolfermann, another Barchfeld merchant, to Brotterode, on the pretext of cows being sold there. The man had made the journey the following day, accompanied by others, and Jüng had arrived too late to meet him. On the 14th, he had reportedly asked Simon Lesser to convey an invitation to Rosenblatt; Lesser did not deliver it. Only on the following day did Jüng write the forged note himself and carry it to the house. These prior attempts lent a more sinister coherence to his movements: the morning encounter had not arisen from a chance occasion, but had been orchestrated after two aborted appointments.
The question of money proved pivotal. Jüng had departed from his home in early September virtually destitute. He had borrowed a few groschen to travel, then pawned his garments and sack to secure a small loan. He owed nearly one hundred thalers and had promised a creditor to pay by September 15 or 18. Upon his return home, shortly after seven o’clock on the morning of the murder, he was suddenly in possession of about twenty-two and a half thalers. The sum included three double-thalers, ten florin pieces, and a kronenthaler—denominations corresponding to those Rosenblatt had taken with him.
Jüng immediately paid lodging debts and taxes, purchased grain, and repaid his lender the following day. When he was arrested upon his return, he retained but a single thaler. The investigators juxtaposed these disbursements with the missing funds. The coincidence strengthened the prosecution, though it did not amount to direct identification: no one had witnessed the murder nor the transfer of the money.
Jüng's movements through the night and into the early morning hours added further contradictions. He had passed through Brotterode the previous evening without returning home, explaining later that he had slept in a barn and inspected his fields. Upon his return, he had avoided the most direct route and appeared hurried. He told one witness he was arriving from the Inselsberg, then told his wife he came from Tabarz. He maintained he had washed his shoes. Traces of blood remained upon his clothes, particularly upon a coat he had carried over his shoulder rather than worn, as well as within the groove of a knife. He first sought to explain the stains by his trade as a butcher, before retracting certain of his assertions.
The investigation likewise examined the potential weapons. Several persons had seen Jüng carrying a weapon wrapped in cloth in the days preceding the death. At his home, gunpowder was discovered. He also carried a heavy cudgel and a knife; he initially denied having taken the cudgel, then admitted his first account was false. These items corresponded to the wounds described by the physicians. The firearm itself was never recovered. The body of evidence was thus assembled through convergence: the forged note, Jüng's presence on the roads, his prior penury, the sudden influx of coin, the traces upon his clothing, and the weapons he had held.
On December 10, 1849, following a trial by jury, Jüng was found guilty of murder with robbery and sentenced by the court of Rotenburg to hard labor for life, a sentence affirmed on final appeal. The jury deemed the circumstantial evidence sufficient to establish his guilt, notwithstanding his explanations regarding his journeys, the money, and his garments. The chronicle notes that capital punishment could not then be imposed in Hesse without a confession or direct eyewitness testimony; it also suggests, with measured caution, that the German Fundamental Rights, which had abolished it, might still have been considered applicable at the time of the verdict. It thus offers no single explanation for the sentence chosen. Jüng was transferred to the house of correction in Marburg.
Eleven years after the letter, on September 15, 1858—the exact anniversary of the day he had delivered it to Rosenblatt’s home—Jüng received the sacrament of communion in prison. Before several witnesses, he declared: “Yes, I did it.” On October 28, stricken by illness, he gave a detailed confession before the court. He admitted to writing and delivering the letter, waiting for Rosenblatt near the Bergwiese, and then attacking and robbing him. He recounted the blows struck and the theft of approximately twenty-three thalers. This belated admission confirmed the prosecution’s case, but it did not reopen the trial: under the rules of procedure then prevailing, it did not warrant a revision of the sentence.
The letter had drawn Rosenblatt from his hearth to a secluded clearing at the hour chosen by his murderer. For two years, this slip of paper, the stray coins, and Jüng’s falsehoods had sustained a conviction without an admission. Then, when the confession finally came, the judicial apparatus could no longer turn it into a fresh judgment. Justice had fixed the penalty; the belated confession could never undo the path he had forced his victim to walk.