On the evening of 16 February 1854, the tax collector Hartmann departed his home in Eldagsen to exchange four louis d’or at a merchant’s shop. His wife, Charlotte, seven months pregnant, sat upon the sofa; Auguste Thiele, their young maidservant, was clearing the table. He had promised to return promptly, leaving the merchant at twenty-five minutes to ten. Upon his return, the familiar domestic scene was no more: the servant lay prostrate in the parlour, the floor was soaked with blood, and Charlotte had vanished.
He called out to her, searched the small chamber where the official strongbox was kept, and hastened outside to raise the alarm. A neighbour and his daughter entered alongside him. Charlotte was eventually discovered between the sofa and the table, struck about the skull and wounded in the throat; Auguste had suffered comparable acts of violence. The cabinet wherein the collector kept his money and jewellery had been forced open. The elements already arranged themselves into a plausible sequence: an intruder had gained entry, surprised the two women, seized the coin, and fled. Yet, absent any clue pointing to a particular man, mere plausibility singled out no one.
A search of the premises commenced on the morrow. The baker Ziegenmeyer and the mason Buße, who had supped together and stepped out at that selfsame hour, were among those examined. In Buße’s lodging, an iron hammer was noted whose point appeared to have been passed through fire of late; nonetheless, no stains were found upon their garments, and the magistrate set them at liberty. Hermann, an investigator dispatched from Hanover, assumed direction of the inquiries. He brought to light a contradiction in Ziegenmeyer’s initial statement: the latter claimed to have visited the notary Haarstrich, whereas Buße maintained they had never parted company. The deposition was altered; the suspicion remained.
Further indications soon gathered around this initial body of evidence. It was whispered that a child from the Ziegenmeyer household had let slip compromising remarks; neighbours recounted various movements after supper; an axe and a tool were scrutinised in light of the discovery. Yet none of this established Buße and Ziegenmeyer within the house at the precise moment of the deed. Both men insisted they had remained together, and witnesses had observed them returning to Buße’s residence. In the eyes of the investigators, the short distance between the dwellings, the opportunity to withdraw from company for a few moments, and the hesitant accounts supplied an explanation; for the defence, these very gaps left the crime without an identified perpetrator.
It was at this juncture that the night watchman Wild assumed a decisive role. He swore that he had caught sight of Buße and Ziegenmeyer near the Hartmann dwelling shortly after seven o’clock, and later asserted that, on another night, he had overheard Ziegenmeyer tell his wife that one had slain the servant and the other the mistress. These disclosures were not delivered in a single breath. Wild spoke of the initial encounter only at a late stage; the words allegedly overheard beneath the window surfaced later still. He offered several conflicting accounts regarding his vantage point, the precise hour, and the words spoken, before professing to recognise the two men by their voices, stature, and attire.
The chronology withstood this certitude poorly. Wild estimated a journey at nearly an hour which a subsequent verification reduced to under twenty minutes. Was Buße wearing the blue coat described by the watchman? Several witnesses testified to the contrary. Timetables reported by other individuals placed the two men at Buße’s lodging prior to the hour of the alleged encounter. Moreover, in his initial statements, Wild had made no mention of the scene beneath the window; to a fellow watchman on his rounds, he had at first remarked that he had seen nothing, though he had heard a great deal. His character, which the burgomaster had represented as unblemished, rested in part upon second-hand reports.
The trial opened in Hanover that December. The prosecution knit together the material suspicions, the conduct of the two accused, and Wild’s testimony. The proceedings also encompassed an earlier theft, unconnected to the deaths, in which Buße and Ziegenmeyer acknowledged some share; its examination during the same trial prejudiced the view taken of the prisoners. The jury pronounced them guilty of double murder committed in the course of robbery. Both were condemned to death. Ziegenmeyer took his own life in his cell the following day. Buße’s sentence was commuted to penal servitude in irons for life, and he was removed to the prison at Lüneburg.
The history might have concluded with this sentence. Yet it reopened in 1855, at Weetzen, when the farmhand Heinrich Bruns was implicated in an attack upon the residence of Captain Götz. Articles stolen from Eldagsen were discovered among the possessions associated with Bruns and his betrothed, Luise Sprengel. The lead arose not from any reconsideration on the part of the original investigators, but from a distinct felony committed far from the Hartmann house. Bruns had also spent sums far beyond what his wages could warrant; his father identified a metal casket connected to the purloined jewellery. An axe belonging to him was discovered at his parents’ home. While these proofs did not substantiate every detail of his story, they firmly bound the money and the property to the man who had moved through those scenes.
Bruns initially confessed to the murder. At his trial in March 1856, he recanted, accusing the police investigator Hermann and the officer Brüdern of having coerced him into speaking. The officers denied any intimidation; the former gaoler, on the contrary, described a confession made after Bruns had spoken tenderly of his aged parents. The prisoner then set forth an account of that evening that differed from his earlier statements: he had entered with an axe, struck down the two women, and carried off the money and jewels. He disputed certain details, failed to recall others, and subsequently reasserted his guilt. The historical record underscores these contradictions, though it affords no independent trial transcript by which they might all be reconciled.
The High Court of Hanover found itself confronted with a dilemma that the previous hearings had left unresolved: Buße and Ziegenmeyer had been convicted of this murder, and now Bruns had been convicted as its sole perpetrator. On 26 May 1856, the court quashed the verdicts and ordered a new trial for the surviving men, Buße and Bruns. Ziegenmeyer was dead; no subsequent hearing could undo his condemnation in his presence. In September, at Hildesheim, the two men stood trial together. On this occasion, the jury acquitted Buße of the murder, whilst finding Bruns guilty. The verdict brought an end to months of uncertainty, yet it arrived too late for the man who had perished in his cell.
The testimony of Wild was adjudicated separately. The night watchman had sworn under oath to having seen the two condemned men and having overheard the confession that incriminated them; when confronted with the timeline, the clothing, and the depositions of other witnesses, his contradictions could no longer be dismissed. The jury found him guilty of perjury, while determining that he had not acted with the deliberate intent to bring about the conviction of innocent men. The court sentenced him to eight years’ penal servitude. Before that tribunal, the narratives once held to be unassailable were turned upon their author.
As for Bruns, he was once more sentenced to capital punishment and executed at Hildesheim on 28 November 1856. The chronicle records an execution by the broadsword requiring several blows; it adds nothing to the evidence, but serves as a grim reminder that judicial proceedings ultimately fall upon flesh and blood, and not merely upon the logical coherence of dossiers. In this affair, a guilty man was finally condemned, a perjured witness punished, and Buße set free. Yet one of the two innocent men had already perished in prison before justice saw fit to reverse its decree. It is on this note that the chronicle of Eldagsen ends: not with an equitable restoration, but with a judicial truth that arrived only after the harm had been rendered irreparable.