In June 1860, in the village of Quellendorf, a young woman returned home at that hour when the lights in village cottages are extinguished one by one. She had parted from her sister earlier that evening, saying she had yet to see Doctor Jahn. When Emilie questioned her, Luise Berger confided that she believed herself to be with child, imputed this supposed condition to the physician, and explained that he had promised her a remedy. A few hours later, she lay dead in their shared bed. The judicial affair that followed hinged not merely upon the presence of a poison: it set two competing explanations, both stubbornly difficult to prove, against one another around the body of a dead woman who could speak no more.
The two sisters had lived together ever since illness had carried off their parents and nearly their entire kindred. Emilie, aged thirty, and Luise, twenty-nine, had weathered their bereavements by sustaining one another, though their relations with their brother Wilhelm had grown strained. Luise had given birth to a little girl the preceding year. Toward the end of June, she appeared ailing and preoccupied; yet she denied to her sister that any new suitor had entered her life, or that she was carrying another child.
On June 22, the day wore on amid household labor and the customary coming and going of the village. Toward evening, Luise informed Emilie that she was obliged to go out once more. Later, she tapped upon the window of their dwelling and let her sister know that the rendezvous agreed upon with the doctor, near a wheat field, had again miscarried. She would therefore seek him out at his own house. Emilie counseled her to await another occasion. Her sister departed nonetheless. When the clock—which ran an hour fast—struck midnight, Luise returned at last.
She asserted then that she believed herself pregnant, laying the putative paternity at Jahn’s door. According to what she recounted to her sister, the physician had already given her money and promised more; he had likewise spoken of a means to procure an abortion. He had reportedly instructed her to send for him should hemorrhaging ensue, and had promised to come himself with instruments if this first remedy failed. Such were the declarations that the chronicle attributes to Luise, as reported by Emilie after the decease; they constitute neither an admission on Jahn’s part nor independent corroboration of what was actually said.
Emilie urged her sister to take to her bed. Luise lay down with great difficulty, still fully dressed, lamenting the future that awaited her with two children and no support. Soon her breathing grew rapid and labored. She asked for water, declared that she was seized with nausea, and suddenly collapsed. Emilie ran out into the night to summon aid. When she returned, Luise was dead.
The following morning, the family physician was summoned to verify the decease. Jahn declared to several persons that Luise had been four or five months with child and that some abortive medicine might have brought about her end. The post-mortem examination, conducted on June 23 by order of the magistrate, established nonetheless that she was not pregnant. The chronicle records that Jahn took part in the anatomical inspection and manifested great astonishment at this discovery. This glaring contradiction soon rendered his initial explanations far heavier to sustain.
The preliminary inspection could not determine the cause of death on its own. The physicians preserved the stomach and intestines so that they might be submitted to chemical analysis. The chemists first tested for various mineral poisons, before turning their attention to organic substances. On June 28, the experts announced that they had detected coniine—a virulent alkaloid derived from hemlock—within the digestive remains. This finding was subsequently subjected to a more rigorous control analysis by Professor Lehmann, a chemist at Jena. Despite the minute quantity preserved, his tests corroborated the original identification. The presence of the poison was thus established by scientific expertise; the quantity ingested and the hand that administered it remained entirely separate questions.
Jahn was a practicing physician and managed a small dispensary at Wörlitz, affiliated with the apothecary’s shop at Oranienbaum. He thus commanded access to lethal substances; yet such access, taken by itself, did not reveal who had uncorked the vial or to what purpose. The magistrates gathered depositions from those who had overheard whispers of the nocturnal meetings, the advances of money, and the promised medicines. As the judicial inquiry advanced, the doctor shifted his explanations. He eventually conceded that he might have handed Luise a preparation containing coniine, though he maintained that he had inadvertently mistaken the phial for another compound—Hoffmann’s anodyne mingled with tincture of opium.
This line of defense cast the selfsame facts in an entirely different light. For the prosecution, the liaison with Luise, the terror of public exposure, and the physician’s ready access to the poison furnished both motive and design; his shifting versions and certain remarks reported after the decease only deepened the suspicion. For the defense, these elements fell short of demonstrating an intent to kill. Jahn might have blundered while compounding a draught intended merely to soothe Luise; or she might have procured the coniine by her own means. According to several witnesses, she had spoken of suicide and described poison as an expeditious manner of dying. Yet no one could prove that she had taken the substance unassisted. The possibility remained an argument for the defense, not an established fact.
The trial opened before the assize court at Dessau on May 27, 1861; the principal debates took place on June 3 and 4. The medical men revisited the post-mortem findings, and the chemists defended their analytical conclusions. Witnesses recounted Luise’s final words and Jahn’s demeanour. The jurors were obliged to distinguish between death by coniine—substantiated by scientific testimony—and the contested assertions regarding the relationship between Luise and Jahn, before confronting the capital question: had the physician administered the poison with malice aforethought, through gross negligence, or had he not administered it at all?
Science could not resolve every doubt. Experiments upon animals enabled the experts to estimate the virulence of the poison, but they could reveal neither the precise dose Luise had received nor the hand that had conveyed it to her lips. The toxicologists explained that ingested coniine might vanish from the gastric contents; what remained was therefore no measure of what had been swallowed. The case presented an identified substance and a corpse, but not a single witness to the act of ingestion itself. It was within this gulf between chemical certainty and human fallibility that the court had to seek its verdict.
The public prosecutor contended that Jahn had acted to silence Luise, whose confidences threatened to lay bare their liaison. He interpreted the prisoner’s reticence, his assertions regarding the pregnancy, and his composure during part of the post-mortem as so many tokens of premeditated design. The defense countered that the evidence concerning the young woman’s intentions was precarious, that her utterances were variable, and that she had genuinely contemplated self-destruction. Counsel recalled that not a shred of material evidence proved the handing over of the poison by Jahn’s hand. The compiler sets forth these pleadings at great length, though his final commentary leans heavily toward guilt; one must separate this personal conviction from the pervasive uncertainty that attended the trial.
On June 4, the jury retired. The issue submitted to them was one of premeditated murder; an affirmative verdict required a majority of eight votes out of twelve. The decision was reached by the narrowest of margins: eight jurors declared Jahn guilty, while four voted for his acquittal. That majority sufficed for a conviction, without ever erasing the deep division recorded in the ballot. Capital punishment having been abolished within the Duchy of Anhalt, the court sentenced the prisoner to penal servitude for life.
The following morning, before the court resumed its sitting, Jahn was discovered hanged in his cell. The presiding judge reminded the jurors that it was not their province to judge that death, and exhorted them to discharge their duty with impartiality. The chronicler, for his part, represents this suicide as dispelling the last remaining doubts; yet such a conclusion forms no part of the judicial verdict, nor does it transform the four dissenting votes into voices for conviction. Luise had died of coniine; Jahn had been convicted by eight votes; and he had taken his own life in prison before any further judicial recourse could unfold. Upon these facts, and upon the unresolved questions they leave behind, the case reaches its conclusion.