At fifteen years of age, Jakob Reithaler began to whisper into the ears of his foster parents a tale of princely origins: he claimed to be the clandestine son of a reigning duke. To sustain this fabrication, he conjured the spectre of an assassinated heir, an officer charged with his protection, confidential dispatches, and the imminent arrival of a vast fortune. Yet the youth soon to be styled “the Baron von Scherer” was merely a child placed, in 1812, into the keeping of a retired Nuremberg assessor. The chapter of the Neue Pitaval, preserved in the edition of 1871, recounts how this spurious identity enabled an adolescent to compass the financial ruin of his benefactors, before casting insidious suspicion upon several upright citizens of the town.
The retrospective chronicle traces the genesis of the affair to the Russian campaign. In 1812, a Bavarian lieutenant-colonel named von Scherer marched away with the armies of Napoleon and was never seen again. Prior to his departure, he had committed his infant son, Jakob, to the care of his friend, the pensioned assessor von Waldstromer, and the latter’s wife. The child’s mother, Barbara Reithaler, had perished shortly after his birth at Landshut in 1809. The father’s ultimate fate was never determined. The boy thus grew to manhood beneath a roof that owed him neither name nor patrimony, but where he was nonetheless cherished as an own son.
The chronicle does not define the legal nature of this wardship. Jakob was addressed familiarly as “Jacques,” then came to be designated as Scherer, and ultimately as a baron. The mistress of the house, so the chronicle affirms, indulged him beyond all measure; her husband, aged and self-effacing, rarely intervened. The couple’s two legitimate offspring were already grown and lived apart from the household. These particulars derive from the pen-portrait drawn by the chroniclers: they illuminate the domestic milieu as depicted in the narrative, without permitting a definitive reconstruction of the inner life of each actor.
The discordance between formal instruments and popular rumour became the mainspring of the drama. Abroad in the town, Jakob caused himself to be addressed as “Herr Baron von Scherer”; within the Waldstromer mansion, his debts were punctually discharged by his foster mother. The Pitaval depicts him haunting the taverns, consorting with coachmen and shopkeepers, scattering coin with a lavish hand, and accumulating reckless purchases. Alarmed kin are said to have cautioned the baronne, who replied, according to the chronicle, that Jacques came of princely stock and commanded inexhaustible wealth.
In the summer of 1825, Reithaler imparted a more definite shape to these pretensions. Having initially hinted at a count for a father, he revealed to his “mamma” that he was in truth the issue of the reigning Duke of “C.”, a name the chroniclers deliberately shrouded in cipher. Lieutenant-Colonel von Scherer, he asserted, had not been his parent, but a faithful guardian selected by the prince. A prior heir having been removed by poison, the newborn infant had been placed in concealment to preserve his life. An officer named von Hautding had allegedly been privy to the secret and had imparted it to the lad.
The chronicle lays bare a singularly ingenious mechanism: Reithaler alone received the dispatches purporting to emanate from the ducal court. He brought them forth, read them aloud to his foster parents, and accounted for every delay in their execution. Letters attributed to the sovereign expressed boundless gratitude to the couple, heralded an impending visit, or promised a draft of ten thousand ducats. On other occasions, the fictitious prince pleaded diplomatic journeys or state visits that prevented the transmission of funds. The chapter observes that the sovereign houses named bore no documented connection to the Waldstromers. The entire correspondence, as recorded, remained under the boy’s absolute dominion.
To this fiction he soon annexed a betrothed. A marriage with a maiden of the Haller family, one of Nuremberg’s most illustrious patrician lineages, was declared to be in train. The Waldstromers’ legitimate son was to be affianced to this heiress, while the clandestine claimant remained the object of delicate dynastic negotiations. No real betrothal is established by the text, which treats the engagement as a pure figment of Reithaler’s invention. To guard against discovery, he bound his foster parents to inviolable silence and interposed his own explanations between them and their distant children. The chronicler adds that he intercepted family correspondence and forged replies in the hand of the absent relations.
Every advance in this imaginary ascent demanded substantive sacrifices. A marriage bond of ten thousand florins was declared indispensable; the duke was ostensibly to furnish the greater portion, yet the foster parents advanced a preliminary thousand. The baronne then proceeded to sell her furniture and her estate of Schwaig, persuaded that the bride’s father would repurchase the property as part of the dowry. Reithaler next solicited further funds by alleging that his foster brother, Lieutenant von Waldstromer—the couple’s legitimate son—had been arrested upon suspicion of demagogic machinations. The Pitaval records this arrest as yet another falsehood devised to obtain bail money; it does not stand as an historical fact. The narrative treats these demands solely as elements of a sustained swindle, not as events having ever compromised the Hallers or the ducal court.
Reithaler distributed gifts of apparel, trinkets, and wine; the chronicler relates that he occasionally flung coins from his window into the street. While the fortune remained wholly imaginary, the household was systematically stripped of its possessions. When the baronne exhibited anxiety, he is said to have produced an inventory wherein the alienated estate and the uncollected ducats were audaciously entered as solvent assets. These tableaux are drawn from the Pitaval and have not been collated against the judicial archives.
The unraveling of the deception arose from an instrument far more pedestrian than a princely missive. In late December 1825, a coachman named Kolb demanded payment of some seventy florins in outstanding fares. Reithaler presented him with a bill of exchange for 450 florins, seemingly bearing the signature of Advocate Lorsch. Kolb found the signature and format outwardly plausible, yet doubted that a jurist of Lorsch’s standing would subscribe such an obligation on behalf of a youth. On 5 January 1826, Lorsch formally appeared before the tribunal to repudiate the note and demand an inquiry for forgery. On 11 January, the magistrates executed a search of Reithaler’s quarters and committed him to custody.
The Baronne von Waldstromer endeavoured to stay the investigation into the thefts she had suffered, declaring her willingness to indemnify all other aggrieved parties. However, the prosecution was no longer confined to private depredations: the forged instrument was now pursued at public law. Reithaler thereupon made full confession. He acknowledged manufacturing the bill and unfolded a catalogue of thefts, embezzlements, and forged documents. The text dwells upon the minute particulars of his answers, though these reflect the redaction of the chronicler, who professes to draw in part upon the records of Anselm von Feuerbach and further intelligence from Nuremberg.
The inquest subsequently took an ominous course. Reithaler accused the merchant Rang, the innkeeper Albrecht, and the Jewish trader Cowositz of having instigated and facilitated various forgeries. He assigned them roles in the fabrication of negotiable paper, the circulation of stolen goods, and even an attempt at poisoning. The men were arrested and their dwellings ransacked. The chronicle relates that the objects denounced as counterfeit proved entirely genuine, that none of the alleged bills were ever discovered, and that the supposed poison was found to be nothing more than oil of cloves and turpentine. The chroniclers record that all three men, together with four other individuals, were wholly cleared of suspicion before the close of Reithaler’s preliminary examination.
Regarding the character of Rang, the two accounts intertwined within the chapter do not fully accord. Feuerbach portrays him in an unfavourable light, whereas a second Nuremberg informant vigorously defends his trade and character, asserting that he had inspected the documents and examined the witnesses. This second witness rejects the moral censure of Feuerbach and emphasizes that Rang’s commercial dealings with Reithaler did not commence until the lad was already well launched upon his extravagant career. This internal contradiction precludes treating the merchant’s portrait as an established fact. The narrow historical reality remains that the accusations of complicity brought by Reithaler were uncorroborated by the material evidence sought by the court, and the prisoners were accordingly set at liberty.
Reithaler subsequently recanted his testimony, declaring that he had invented the charges out of petty malice: Rang, he claimed, had overcharged him for merchandise; Albrecht had billed him double for refreshments; others had mocked him or incurred his displeasure. The narrative records that his explanations shifted under successive interrogations before he ultimately confessed that his accusations against Rang were pure fabrication. He had also alleged that the merchant had seduced him into his excesses, a version which he likewise withdrew. This sequence of accusations and retractions could not undo the injuries suffered by the arrested men, but the chapter supplies neither civil judgment nor measure of restitution to evaluate the ultimate consequences.
On 26 September 1826, the Bavarian Court of Appeal, sitting as a criminal court of first instance, found Jakob Reithaler guilty of the forgery of private documents, theft, embezzlement, and repeated fraud. The optical character recognition text breaks off an additional head of indictment, which is not here conjecturally restored. The chronicle records a sentence of eight years’ confinement in a house of correction, aggravated by twenty-five strokes of the rod upon admission, together with fourteen days of reduced rations annually, warm food being served only one day in three. It further notes a judicial order that he receive instruction and moral rehabilitation. Reithaler died within the penitentiary at Munich in 1828, while still an adolescent, according to the same authority.
The chronicle illustrates how an imposture, maintained by a youth who controlled every avenue of communication, commanded belief within his domestic circle, and how he subsequently transformed casual acquaintances into imaginary confederates. The Pitaval reflects with anxiety upon the perils of judicial error in an inquisitorial system conducted without public oral proceedings. This is not to suggest that an innocent man was condemned: the accused tradesmen were discharged, while Reithaler’s sentence rested upon the forgeries and misappropriations he had freely admitted. This distinction exposes both the moralizing constraints of retrospective historiography and the tangible devastation wrought by fabricated accusations.