On Sunday, February 19, 1854, a traveller stumbled through the darkness upon a body lying prostrate along the road between Heddesheim and Viernheim. The burgomaster of Heddesheim hastened to examine the remains, but severe wounds had rendered the face unrecognisable. On his return, he knocked at the door of a house where a lamp still flickered: it was the dwelling of Valentin Schäfer, who was not at home. His wife cried out: "Ah, God grant it be not my husband!" Only late in the night was the corpse identified as that of Schäfer. Suspicion soon settled upon a youth to whom the credulous were wont to flock for miracles: Peter Träger, the prophet of Viernheim.
Träger had not yet reached his twentieth year. For several years, he had drawn hundreds of listeners to Viernheim. He would fall asleep, he said, and subsequently awaken speaking of visions, angels, and penance. Pastor Baumann reported to the court that the boy announced the end of the world and had described an angel who supposedly carried him aloft over the Rhine. The district physician, Dr. Stubenrauch, initially intrigued, later observed that the heralded convulsions lacked convincing physical manifestations. He ultimately deemed him a cunning impostor, endowed with a fertile imagination and a marked ascendancy over the populace.
The trial afforded Träger the occasion to describe his calling in his own words. He stated that at the age of fourteen, he had suffered a fever followed by religious dreams, but acknowledged that he had thereafter feigned slumber merely to retain his visitors and the gifts they laid at his feet. The judicial enquiry was not tasked with testing the theological truth of his visions; the question before the court was his complicity in the murder of Valentin Schäfer. The credulity of his adherents, the monies he extracted from them, and the crime formed a single backdrop, yet they did not constitute one and the same body of proof.
Schäfer was a prosperous landowner of Heddesheim, wedded to Élisabetha. The Pitaval depicts their union as unhappy and ascribes to the young woman a dominant influence over her husband; this characterisation remains that of the chronicler. The depositions and Träger’s own declarations established that he frequented the household, that the wife had bestowed gifts upon him, and that their liaison had commenced well before Schäfer’s demise.
The woman took a lively interest in Träger’s prophecies and took part in the devotions conducted in his bedchamber. Witnesses testified to having seen her praying alone in a small chapel; others related that she danced with him and visited him frequently. In his deposition, Träger admitted to an intimate relation and stated that Élisabetha had promised him a shared future once her husband was gone. Schäfer’s fortune was to fall to his widow, who estimated it at roughly twenty thousand florins, although other appraisals cited during the proceedings fell far short of that sum.
The design, according to Träger’s confessions, initially assumed the form of prayers beseeching God to carry Schäfer away. When these entreaties bore no fruit, Élisabetha and her aunt, Schrönelsäcker, allegedly broached other expedients. Träger recounted that mention was made of a hanging, a fall from a hayloft, and subsequently poison. He purchased rat poison from the apothecary Pirsch. A concoction mingled with food was said to have made Schäfer gravely ill without ending his life; a witness corroborated that his coffee or soup had tasted bitter. These episodes derived from the confessions and the preliminary examination as summarised by the chronicler, not from an autopsy establishing toxic substance.
On the Sunday of the murder, following a prayer assembly at Träger’s lodging, the two women drew him aside to discuss the execution of their scheme. That evening, according to his deposition, the young wife urged her husband to fetch certain drops from the apothecary in Viernheim. Schäfer consented to set out in Träger’s company. Ere they departed, she stripped him of his new coat and gave him an old one instead; Träger stated she had intimated that the new garment would be his. She had likewise placed in his hands a knife and a small hatchet, bidding him commit the deed upon Baden soil, where burial would prove less costly.
The two men departed Heddesheim in the direction of Viernheim. Träger recounted that he walked beside Schäfer with a pounding heart, hesitating several times before grasping the hatchet. Near the boundary between the two states, he struck him from behind upon the head. Schäfer collapsed; Träger dealt him further blows, then fled through the snow toward Viernheim. The body was discovered upon the highway, upon the Baden side of the border. The post-mortem examination revealed numerous head wounds. No accident or fall could account for such a death.
Near the scene, investigators recovered a bloodied implement; a knife was unearthed beneath a roof tile in the suspect’s dwelling. The local populace was already murmuring regarding the conduct of the wife and the youthful seer. Élisabetha was apprehended on the very next day, but Träger dwelt upon Hessian soil. Roughly a week after the murder, emissaries dispatched from Baden tracked him to an inn, compelled him to step outside, and carried him off by force in their carriage. The chronicler terms the operation a cross-border abduction; the authorities of Hesse entered a formal protest and demanded the restitution of their subject.
Incarcerated at Heidelberg, Träger fell ill with typhus. In the night of May 14, amidst a raging tempest, he roused his warder and confessed to the murder. He reiterated these admissions before the examining magistrate on the morrow. Later, he retracted them, asserting he had confessed in Baden solely to be remanded to Hesse and thereby regain his liberty. Thereafter, he recanted his retraction. The record also notes that he expressed remorse for his act, only to voice irritation elsewhere at having ever confessed. Such vacillations compelled the bench to weigh the confessions in conjunction with the other evidence, rather than in isolation.
The Baden judiciary conducted a protracted investigation. Träger was not brought to trial at Mannheim for the homicide: the proceedings held there concerned Élisabetha Schäfer and her aunt. At the Mannheim assizes, the jury returned a verdict of guilty against both for their participation; Élisabetha was sentenced to life imprisonment, and Schrönelsäcker to twelve years of hard labour. Träger was subsequently surrendered to the authorities of Hesse-Darmstadt, who arraigned him before their own assize court.
At Darmstadt, the hearings were held on October 19 and 20, 1855. Thirty-three witnesses were heard; the chronicler states that nearly three hundred persons had been examined in the course of the preliminary inquiry. The public prosecutor indicted him upon counts of attempted poisoning and murder. Träger did not deny having struck Schäfer. He maintained that he had long resisted Élisabetha’s importunities, only to yield at last to the prospect of an inheritance and marriage. In the deposition entered at the trial, he stated that Schäfer, felled by the initial blow, pleaded for his life; Träger acknowledged striking him again to prevent him from raising the alarm.
The jury found him guilty upon both counts. The prosecution called for eighteen years of hard labour, requesting that one year be deducted on the grounds that Träger had remained in detention through no fault of his own from February 26, 1854, to October 20, 1855. The court handed down a sentence of seventeen years, subject to the credit of one year, admitting as mitigating circumstances his tender years, the sway exercised by Élisabetha, and his confessions. The trial neither absolved the visionary nor his accomplices, nor did it elevate his trances into the direct cause of the bloodshed. In Viernheim, the youth had found in religious fervour an audience and a livelihood; in Heddesheim, the promise of coin and a new life had impelled him to take up a hatchet. The court judged the acts, the conspiracy, and the confession, leaving behind a frontier that the inquiry had violently overstepped ere it returned the accused to his rightful judges.