In Weitersburg, a young girl was discovered wedged between the door of a closed wardrobe and the carcass of the piece itself. Katharina Zisgen was seven years old. Her head, her neck, and her left shoulder were caught within the narrow aperture; the remainder of her body lay outside, folded double upon itself. The medico-legal report concluded that death had ensued by slow asphyxiation. The problem that engrossed the investigators, and later the jurors of Neuwied, was strictly mechanical: could the child have brought herself into such a position unaided, or had another hand thrust her there?
The chronicle entitled Der neue Pitaval, published in 1870, records that Katharina lived with her father Jakob, a mason and day laborer, her two brothers Peter and Matthias, aged twelve and ten, and her stepmother Anna Barbara, née Eich. Her mother had died some five years earlier. In the spring of 1855, Jakob had married Anna Barbara, who was childless. The chronicle alternates between the variants Ziegen and Zisgen for the father’s surname; it refers most often to the little girl as Katharina Zisgen. Such variances in OCR and spelling do not obscure the family’s identity, but they serve as a reminder not to take every typographical variation for an incontrovertible civil record.
On November 28, 1855, between one and two o’clock in the afternoon, the father and the boys were away at labor. Anna Barbara and Katharina remained alone in the house, according to the judicial narrative. The apples and walnuts stored within the wardrobe afforded the stepmother a ready explanation: the child, she said, had sought to fetch some, had forced her head through the ajar door, and had then proved unable to extricate herself. This version was repeated throughout the preliminary examination. It was not inherently implausible in its pretext; it was the shape of the aperture, the posture of the corpse, and the physical force required to produce it that would put the claim to the test.
Toward half past one, Peter Hahn, a nine-year-old lad, arrived at the house. Anna Barbara bade him tell Katharina that she was to go and tend the stove. Peter found her wedged against the wardrobe. He alerted the stepmother, who raised the alarm among the neighbors. The wife of Jakob Hahn entered in turn and pulled the child from the opening; life was already extinct. The chapter emphasizes that Anna Barbara did not draw her out with her own hands. It records, too, varying explanations for her hesitation: that she was seized with terror, that she dreaded her husband’s accusations, or that she wished a witness to be present. These are narratives noted down and interpreted after the fact, not a transparent window into her mind at that hour.
The news ran through the village even before Jakob’s return. Yet the investigation did not rest solely on the stepmother’s conduct upon the discovery. It probed back into the domestic life of the household. Several witnesses described a dwelling torn by bickering and a husband harsh with his wife and children alike. Witnesses recounted that Anna Barbara had complained of the boys and had said of Katharina that she wished God would take her back. The chronicle construes these remarks as tokens of longstanding malice; their true weight demanded sober appraisal, for reported words proved neither an overt act nor a homicidal intent.
Other depositions further darkened the accusatory portrait. A lodger, Frau Schmidt, recounted that Anna Barbara had once prepared a soup in which she noticed a dark substance of peculiar taste or smell; the nature of this matter was never determined. A neighbor spoke of quicklime mixed into milk intended for the child. Here again, the chronicler connects these episodes to Katharina’s death as earlier attempts to do her harm, yet no chemical analysis presented in the chapter demonstrates poisoning. The defense challenged the credibility of these tales, and the animosities among the witnesses were hotly debated at the bar.
On the very day of the tragedy, several neighbors had seen Anna Barbara with the child without observing any overt altercation. Frau Drees, who came to the house shortly before the discovery, testified that she had seen them together. Johann Zeizheim likewise passed through the dwelling. Another neighbor, Frau Kehr, claimed to have heard Katharina crying or whimpering and the stepmother addressing her. Her deposition gave rise to sharp contention: the exact moment remained uncertain, the words were not equally distinct, and other persons present reported no such occurrence. The Pitaval attaches great weight to it; testimony and interpretation, however, must remain distinct.
The wardrobe became the pivotal exhibit of the trial. Anna Barbara maintained that the girl could have slipped inside while reaching for the fruit. She contended as well that the door was stubborn to open and that the key had vanished. The magistrates sought to establish what had become of the lock and whether the piece of furniture had altered between the day of the tragedy and the assizes. The chronicle traces the removals of the wardrobe, the rooms in which it had been stored, and the atmospheric conditions of its keeping; the craftsmen concluded that no material shrinkage had made it easier to open. Indeed, repeated experiments, they maintained, had loosened the lock, making the subsequent opening easier than it had been on the day in question.
In open court, the matter was put to the test of physical trial. Peter Hahn, older and sturdier than Katharina, could draw the bottom of the door only a few inches from the frame; another lad of her age and stature likewise failed to open it wide enough to admit his head. The physician who had conducted the autopsy tried in his turn, and could not keep his head within the space without pain. The experts pointed out, moreover, that the gap narrowed toward the lock. Had the child forced her head, neck, and shoulder through, the resistance of the joinery and the wedge-like taper of the fissure mattered as much as her diminutive frame.
The medical men who had signed the initial report did not all share this reading of the experiments. The forensic physicians who had performed the autopsy considered that Katharina might have wedged herself within while reaching for the apples. They pointed to her arm, found in an attitude they deemed consistent with such an effort, the marks upon the head, and the absence of neck trauma, signs of strangulation, or tokens of a violent struggle. In their view, the physical signs upon the body could be explained by the sheer pressure of the door and the stiles; no evidence inexorably required the intervention of a second party.
Dr. Schild, summoned as an expert to the trial, maintained the contrary hypothesis. He argued that the child could neither have placed herself in that opening nor forced herself further inward to reach the fruit. The contusions above the ears and across the cranium appeared to him consistent with an initial entrapment followed by a fresh exertion to thrust the body home. He envisaged that an assailant had sought to chastise or abuse the child by crushing her against the wardrobe, without necessarily having contemplated her death beforehand. The cabinetmaker Better and Councilor Stephan concurred with him on the practical impossibility of self-entrapment. Yet the post-mortem examiners’ stance did not vanish: one of them stood firmly by his original opinion in court, denying that the new testimonies undermined his initial findings.
The argument thus turned not only on who had done the deed, but on what had been intended. The public prosecutor pressed the jury to find intentional homicide without premeditation. The defense rested upon the want of direct proof, the hypothesis of an accident, and the findings of the examining physicians. Even if the jurors accepted human intervention, another boundary remained to be drawn: had Anna Barbara intended to slay Katharina, or had she inflicted a violent chastisement that had proved fatal in its consequence? The account in the Pitaval does not presume to read her soul; it reconstructs the two alternatives from the depositions, the injuries, and the scene.
The assize trial before the Neuwied court opened on March 10, 1856, and concluded on the following day. Twenty-six witnesses and four experts were examined, according to the chapter. By the tally recorded in the Pitaval, the jury answered in the negative, by eight votes to four, to the question of intentional homicide without premeditation, and then returned an affirmative verdict, unanimously, to the subsidiary question: had Anna Barbara willfully inflicted bodily harm upon her stepdaughter, which abuse had brought about her death? Extenuating circumstances were refused by seven votes to five, and subsequently denied by the court. This succession of verdicts did not amount to an acquittal: it drew a strict line between homicidal intent, which was rejected, and willful violence causing death, which was sustained.
The sentence was fifteen years in the Zuchthaus, pursuant to Article 194 of the penal code cited in the proceedings. Upon the reading of the judgment, Anna Barbara sank to the floor and had to be assisted from the chamber. The Pitaval characterizes this swoon as feigned, noting that she subsequently protested the injustice of the ruling. Some days later, she requested the attendance of a priest, declaring that she would submit to the judgment, forgo any appeal, and strive to earn the royal clemency through her conduct in prison. The chronicler observes that whatever was confided to the priest remained sealed by the confessional. There is thus no warrant for discerning a confession therein.
The German narrator concludes by extolling the virtue of oral proceedings, which, he claims, dispelled the misgivings of the investigating magistrate and overthrew the authority of the first medical report. This conclusion is his own gloss, not a component of the verdict. The case reveals rather a clean judicial distinction: the jurors found no design to take life, but they affirmed an act of violence whose issue was fatal. The wardrobe yielded no simple answer. It compelled witnesses, physicians, and jurors to confront physical possibility, conflicting testimony, and the far darker riddle of intent.