Michael Rieger had sent word to the gendarmes. That was precisely the charge brought against him. Seated beside Mathias Kneissl before the Augsburg Court of Assizes, the peasant had to answer for a singular accusation: that in calling upon the men charged with apprehending the brigand, he had deliberately lured them into a trap. Two of their number lay dead. The law now sought to determine whether the house that received them was a sanctuary, a mousetrap, or merely the threshold where a terrified man had sought to rid himself of a perilous guest.
Kneissl scarcely possessed the presence promised by his renown. The chronicler Hugo Friedländer depicts him as gaunt, pale, still bearing the marks of a prolonged confinement in the infirmary. With chains binding his hands and feet, flanked by two gendarmes, he awaited his questioning. The armed bicyclist who had roved the Bavarian countryside had dwindled into a body hard to move about. Yet the precautions taken around the courthouse bore witness to what this man had cost those who hunted him.
He sprang from a lineage whose name preceded his every deed. His father had known the law's severity; his mother had been convicted; a kinsman, Pascolini, had already passed into the folklore of Bavarian brigandage. At the hearing, the presiding judge dwelt upon this inheritance as though it were an explanation. Kneissl disputed or diminished it. A former schoolmate testified that the children of that house had been subjected to ceaseless humiliation on account of their kin. Such an inquiry did not suffice to absolve him, yet it cast an altered light upon the glances he had endured since youth.
Following an initial long sentence, he had sought honest employment as a joiner. His master, Christoph, came before the jurors to attest to it: the workman was skilled and diligent; he had retained him for several months, fully cognizant of his past. Then the visitations of the gendarmerie and the clamour of his fellow journeymen made his presence untenable. Kneissl departed. Other witnesses corroborated his search for labour and the rebuffs he encountered. His counsel, Walter von Pannwitz, saw herein the fatal turning where social ostracism had barred the lawful path against him.
Another path had opened alongside Holzleitner. The two men initially plotted a robbery within a presbytery, only to abandon the scheme. On the 25th of October, 1900, they gained entry to the Scheurer homestead at Oberbirnbach, posing as hop merchants. The family was at table. Ottilie Scheurer bade them wait; she presently discovered them within the bedchamber, rummaging through presses and forcing open chests. Holzleitner threatened her, and the men made off with money, jewels, and securities. Their commercial pretexts had sufficed to carry them across the threshold without alarm.
At his trial, Kneissl insisted he had offered the woman no threat. She affirmed as much, while maintaining that he had fully partaken in the theft. In the cellar, he had demanded that the poor belongings of the little herdsman be spared. This gesture lent weight to his defense: he still preserved some scruple for the helpless. Yet it restored neither to the Scheurers their goods, nor to Ottilie the sanctuary of her home, wherein she had been bolted fast to allow the thieves time for flight.
Other assaults ensued. At Josef Mooseder’s dwelling, the tale of extortion bore no such gentle hues: a masked man had demanded money of an aged couple. Kneissl confessed to the extortion while swearing he had never intended to fire. This distinction was continually renewed. He brandished arms to compel, to intimidate, to flee; he refused to allow these designs to be confounded with a resolve to kill. But those who stood before the muzzle possessed no means of plumbing the depths of his purpose.
On the 30th of November, he came to Irchenbrunn and besought the hospitality of Rieger, who had known his father. The peasant furnished him with bread, meat, and beer. He likewise dispatched word to the gendarmerie. Commandant Brandmeier and Gendarme Scheidler repaired to the farmstead, accompanied by youths from the village. Rieger hesitated to unbar the door. Kneissl had concealed himself; when the officers discovered him, he opened fire. Brandmeier perished of his wounds; Scheidler succumbed after his transport to the hospital. The fugitive eluded capture once more.
Wherefore had Rieger sent the summons, only to falter? The prosecution discerned in this a concerted snare. The defense saw only the mortal terror of betraying to Kneissl that he had delivered him up. A witness recounted the brigand’s threats against his host should he draw the bolt. Other tokens were debated, as were Kneissl’s own statements following his capture—statements that had initially incriminated Rieger before being retracted. The advocates pleaded that the prisoner ought not to be deemed a liar when he spoke in his own defense, yet held infallible when he accused his companion in the dock.
A bounty of one thousand marks had been set upon his head. It had not sufficed to conquer every hesitation: to inform upon a man who remains at large is to court the peril of seeing him return.
In March 1901, the constabulary traced Kneissl to a farm in Geisenhofen. A formidable force surrounded the outbuildings. Following an exchange of fire and an assault, he was seized, grievously wounded. In court, Munich police officers acknowledged having shielded him from the blows of agitated gendarmes. One admitted he had fired his own weapon after mistaking the shadow of his own gun for that of the fugitive. The apprehension, far from an exhibition of cool mastery, had partaken deeply of panic and disarray.
Physicians tended him through many months. He appeared before the court from the 14th to the 19th of November, 1901. Public Prosecutor Farnbacher urged that the romance of the gallant bandit be cast aside; Pannwitz pleaded his attempts at honest toil, his blighted childhood, the contradictions of the witnesses, and the absence of any premeditated intent to kill. The widow Scheidler appeared to present a sterner reality: she had five young children to rear. Neither the brutalities of the capture nor the slights of his youth could efface the ruin of a hearth bereft of its father.
The jury drew a distinction between the two deaths. They returned a verdict of murder for Brandmeier, but found voluntary assault occasioning death in the case of Scheidler. They likewise convicted him of sundry robberies and violent acts. Rieger was acquitted upon all counts. The same decree restored the peasant to his liberty and condemned Kneissl to death, with supplementary terms of imprisonment for his remaining offenses. The convict's mother raised a clamorous protest; she was in turn arrested upon stepping from the courtroom.
Petitions for clemency came to naught. On the 21st of February, 1902, Kneissl was guillotined at Augsburg. Popular ballads and broadsheets continued to follow him along the highways, more footloose in death than he had ever been in life. Rieger, to recover his own freedom, had been forced to establish that he had never willed the destruction of the men he had summoned. Caught between the terror of the outlaw and the suspicion of the magistrate, an evening’s hospitality had well-nigh cost him the remainder of his days.