On Sunday, July 14, 1861, between eight and nine of the clock in the morning, the King of Prussia walked unattended upon the Lichtenthal promenade in Baden-Baden. A young man had already passed him twice, bowing courteously on each occasion. Count Flemming, the Prussian envoy to the Court of Baden, soon joined his sovereign. After several hundred paces, the stranger closed upon them from behind and, from a distance of four or five paces, fired a double-barreled pistol. One ball missed its mark; the other pierced the collar of the monarch’s mantle and grazed his cravat. Wilhelm felt a sudden burning at his neck. The wound proved slight, yet the purpose had been deliberate.
The King turned. The Count demanded who had fired. The young man answered that it was he, and straightway confirmed that he had aimed at the King. He had cast his weapon and an umbrella into the grass. The advocate Süpfle threw him to the earth, while the sovereign commanded that no injury be done him. He was conveyed to the police office in a hired carriage. During the journey, he gave his name to Flemming as a student from Leipzig and delivered up his pocketbook: within it lay a portrait photograph of the King and a letter setting forth the reasons for his deed. The sheet, dated the previous day at Baden, bore a signature that, upon inspection of the facsimile, appears as “Oskar Beder.”
The deed had lasted but an instant; the letter already endowed it with a history. Therein, Becker professed his conviction that the King was incapable of achieving German unity. He hoped his act would arouse the German people and compel the princes to take action. He knew full well, he wrote, that his future would be destroyed and that many would condemn his course; he held his sacrifice, nonetheless, to be expedient. This explanation was no hasty confession extorted after his arrest. On the very eve of the event, he had committed to paper what he termed the motive for the outrage.
Upon searching Becker in prison, thirteen leaden balls and twenty percussion caps were found about his person; a perquisition of his lodging at the Zur Blume inn brought to light further projectiles, a second pistol, and loading implements. The chronicle of the Pitaval relates that he had departed Leipzig two days prior, had inquired after the King’s customary walks, and had purchased a photograph to recognize him. A porter carrying his valise had verified the likeness; a hotel servant had pointed out the sovereign’s morning route. Becker had practiced at target shooting with Sparig, a clerk who took language instruction from him. Sparig knew nothing of the enterprise. The premeditation, the stalking, and the discharge were thus clearly delineated beneath the composure displayed by the prisoner after his apprehension.
In his examinations, Becker at first denied neither his purpose nor the import he ascribed to his deed. He deemed the unification of Germany too slow and reproached the King with inability to achieve it. He cited the example of Italy and the act of Orsini, which he believed had advanced the Italian cause. He declared that he had intended to slay the sovereign and provoke, by his own sacrifice, a political upheaval. He in no way framed his act as a private vengeance. His narrative transformed a failed murder into an instrument of history.
The indictment that was to come before the jury was of narrower compass: an indictment for attempted assassination, and not for that vast enterprise of high treason which Becker likewise wished to see examined. He complained of not being arraigned for an assault against the German Confederation, a crime that, in his eyes, would have lent the deed the political magnitude he claimed for it. His petition was dismissed. In a letter written from his cell, he still acknowledged having aimed at the King and having accepted all consequences; the prospect of a sentence of twenty years’ penal labor appeared to him far less glorious than a martyr’s death.
Then he altered his tale. On September 8, following the rejection of his plea, he explained to his counsel, Ree, that he had intended merely a “feigned outrage.” He alleged that he had discharged a weapon he believed unloaded, not to kill, but to produce a moral shock. He asserted that he had initially confessed to a genuine murderous design only to render the deed more imposing and to secure for himself the death of a martyr. Letters received from his family, he now maintained, had resolved him to disclose the truth and spare them further grief.
This volte-face had perforce to be weighed against the pistol itself. Becker maintained that he had selected a barrel he presumed empty and had failed to perceive the previous charge. Yet he explained as well that he had introduced powder into the piece and verified with the ramrod that it was not loaded. The gunsmiths summoned to the bar demonstrated that a marksman, even a novice, could scarcely charge a barrel already loaded without perceiving the fact. The King and the witnesses had heard the shot; both barrels had been discharged. The very circumstance advanced by Becker to lend credence to his staging undermined his amended narrative.
The second contest turned upon his criminal responsibility. His defense raised the plea of a fixed idea: from childhood, his advocate contended, Becker had been consumed by statecraft, great men, and regicide; he deemed himself called to accomplish an act that other men could not fathom. His father, in deep distress, likewise entreated that he be regarded as a disordered mind rather than an ordinary felon. He adduced instances of mental infirmity in the family lineage and described in his son an enduring condition of exaltation. Counsel did not maintain that the act was innocent; he sought the recognition of diminished capacity.
The medical expert, Dr. Fueßlin, refuted this construction. He concluded that Becker comprehended the penal consequences of his acts and retained the freedom of his will to determine them. The preparations, the purchase of the arms, the target practice, the choice of the day, and his demeanour at the moment of his arrest appeared to him evidence of a sustained design. The “madness” pleaded by the defense and the political certitude asserted by the accused did not tend toward the same verdict. The former required the jury to discern an impaired will; the latter had long presented that will as the very wellspring of the act.
The trial opened at Bruchsal on September 23. The hall was thronged; correspondents had assembled from sundry nations. The public prosecutor denounced an assault upon the King and maintained that the narrative of a sham attempt could not stand against the material evidence. Counsel for the defense replied that public opinion had already prejudged the case and that the court must scrutinize his client’s frame of mind. Becker spoke at length in his turn. He reiterated that he had wished to die for German unity, yet conceded that the tale of the simulated outrage now rendered him ridiculous. The jurors retired for the space of one hour.
They answered in the affirmative to the question of attempted assassination, and in the negative to that of diminished responsibility. The court sentenced Becker to twenty years’ imprisonment in a house of correction and to perpetual banishment from the territory. He heard the judgment without murmur, and straightway comforted his brother, who rushed toward him weeping. On the following day, he abandoned his appeal and departed for the penitentiary. In the pages of the Pitaval, the convict preserves to the last his unyielding assurance; the history he had sought to trace in blood closed under the less dazzling guise of an enduring penal servitude.
This account follows the retrospective chapter “Das Attentat auf Se. Majestät den König Wilhelm I. von Preußen in Baden-Baden. (1861.),” published in the Neue Pitaval in 1862. The identity retained is Oskar Wilhelm Becker, in conformity with the investigative file catalogued by the Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg. The facsimile of the Pitaval appears to read “Beder” in the identification and the signature of the letter; optical character recognition alternates between the two spellings. We treat this as an uncertainty of decipherment, not as an established historical alias. The chapter does not constitute a verbatim transcript of the trial records.