In the dead of night, the bride had vanished. Her name was called through the garden; the grounds were searched; guests hastened to her chamber and to the dwellings of her companions. The Lord of Bärwalde even gave orders to prepare the draining of the estate pond, fearing Rosalie had cast herself into the waters. The celebration, commenced but a few hours earlier, had left behind an empty chair and a mounting dread that seized the assembly.
In that year of 1837, Wilhelm Klett, joiner to the seignory, had wed Rosalie Wiesner, daughter of the estate’s brewer. Both had departed the Protestant church alongside their guests to repair to a garden pavilion, commonly lent to the local folk on days of festival. The baron, his stewards, and Xaver Bamberger, the head forester, had lingered over the banquet. Bamberger was thirty-six years of age. The chronicler portrays him as an exact and dutiful officer, held in high esteem by his master, and reputed throughout the village to be a man of tranquil disposition.
Yet in the course of the evening, his demeanor had grown absent. While dancing with Rosalie, he had pressed her hand and whispered that he must speak with her in private upon an urgent matter concerning her husband. She consented to the rendezvous, believing he wished to caution her against some peril threatening her new household. Towards midnight, as the dancers prepared for the ensuing measure, Bamberger slipped several morsels of cake into his pocket and stepped outside. Rosalie joined him in the garden.
The coachman Samuel Hänel had received instructions to hold a carriage in readiness behind the park, horses harnessed, awaiting further orders. He knew nothing of what Bamberger intended. When the forester arrived with Rosalie, he thrust her into the vehicle and commanded her silence. She implored Hänel to turn back to the festivities; he drove onward. Later, he recounted his fear that his master would shoot him dead had he intervened. He nonetheless heard the cries and lamentations of the young woman, yet did not rein in his team.
The carriage quitted the village along a woodland trail. Far from Bärwalde stood the Tower of Reineck, an ancient, solitary edifice deep amidst the trees. Bamberger possessed its key. In its upper reaches, he had fitted out a minuscule chamber furnished with a straw pallet, a table, and four narrow casements set close beneath the eaves. The iron door was secured from without by a massive lock. Nothing in this retreat could afford a young woman any hope of timely succour.
Upon their arrival, Rosalie was half-fainting. Bamberger carried her up to the chamber. He laid a loaded, double-barrelled pistol upon the table and declared that she must submit to his will; should she resist, both her life and his own would reach their end. She wept, struggled to flee, and begged him to restore her to her husband. He subdued her by force and violated her. The chronicle records that he renewed his assault, then descended to draw water from the well. He had brought cakes and a stone pitcher, yet these provisions did nothing to mitigate Rosalie’s captivity.
Bamberger bolted the tower and departed in his carriage, commanding Hänel to reveal nothing. The coachman, who had heard Rosalie's cries, obeyed at first; but once back upon the estate, he sought out the baron and recounted all he had seen and heard. The lord ordered the horses harnessed anew. At six o'clock in the morning, he set out for Reineck in the company of Rosalie’s father. They discovered her upon the straw pallet, feverish and unable to stand. Her father attempted to embrace her; she repulsed him initially, crying out that she would sooner her mother were dead than behold her in such an extremity. When her young husband came to take her hand, Rosalie besought him not to touch her: she deemed herself dishonoured, believing this outrage had severed their destinies forever. She chose to remain under her parents' roof.
When she was at last in a condition to be examined, Rosalie recounted Bamberger’s violence, explaining that she had followed him into the garden solely because she believed he bore grave tidings regarding her husband. The coachman corroborated the journey, the cries, and his own refusal to halt. Bamberger, for his part, made no denial of the abduction. He admitted to having arranged the route, prepared the tower, and carried the pistol. He confessed further that he had sought to possess Rosalie, with whom he claimed to be passionately enamoured, and that his design had been to bear her farther still, to a modest estate he held some ten hours' journey distant. There, he fancied, he might induce her husband to sue for divorce and win over her parents. This stratagem elucidates why he had selected a tower so far removed from the village and ordered the carriage before ever speaking to the young woman: he had not sought to deliver any message, but rather to isolate her before she could divine his intent.
Rosalie’s malady delayed the proceedings. Her nervous affliction and fever persisted for upwards of five months; in November, a medical certificate at length pronounced her out of mortal peril. She was not with child.
The defence endeavoured to subvert this chronology. Bamberger’s advocate contrived the notion of a consensual assignation in the garden, arguing that coercion had commenced only at the moment of departure; he further pleaded drunkenness to attenuate his client’s culpability. Yet Bamberger himself had never claimed intoxication, nor had Hänel so described him. Above all, the coachman had witnessed Rosalie struggling and heard her cries for aid. The character witnesses spoke well of the former forester; their esteem, however, could alter neither the screams that had pierced the night nor the prisoner’s own admissions.
The judgment handed down in January 1838 sentenced Bamberger to hard labour for life for the abduction of a married woman, committed against her will through violence and threats of death, and for rape. The coachman Hänel was sentenced to three months in a penal workhouse: the tribunal held that he had suffered the carriage to proceed despite Rosalie’s entreaties, though it acknowledged that he had been ignorant of his master's design and had denounced him immediately upon their return. Bamberger subsequently petitioned the baron to solicit the pardon of Rosalie, her husband, and her parents.
The baron interceded with the family and the sovereign. Yet, within the sequence recorded, he could no longer secure the forgiveness of the husband: Wilhelm Klett had died. The chronicle furnishes no cause for his decease. Rosalie’s father allowed himself to be persuaded to consent to a new union; his daughter resisted. She declared she could never place faith in the affection of a man who had treated her with such brutality. She was willing enough to forgive the transgression, but trembled at the mere thought of finding herself alone in his presence.
The lord persisted. He invoked the forester’s repentance, his prospects, and the grief of his aged father. Rosalie ultimately declared she would yield to the baron’s will. In an interview within the prison walls, she extended her hand to Bamberger, weeping bitterly. The sovereign at last commuted the sentence to a fine of two thousand thalers, apportioned between the poor-box and the church fund of Bärwalde. The decree cited his record of service, his contrition, over seven months of detention, the reconciliation effected, and the contemplated marriage. Bamberger was set at liberty and reinstated in his office.
The nuptials of Rosalie and Bamberger are recorded under the date of 21 August 1838. The markers provided by the chronicle regarding Klett’s demise and the steps toward clemency contain discrepancies; they do not permit us to establish with certainty the precise chronology of these intervening stages. An epilogue assures us that Bamberger subsequently won Rosalie’s affection. That conclusion belongs strictly to the chronicler. The young woman’s initial refusal, her terror, and the duress that preceded her assent remain no less present in his narrative. The sentence of perpetual labour had been expunged; it fell to the victim to spend her days with the man she had brought to justice.