On September 7, 1824, having parted from his father in a woodland near Hersbruck, John George Sorgel returned home speaking openly of a man he had struck down. He repeated this account to several persons, described the precise spot where he had encountered his victim, and explained his violence by recounting strange visions. A few days later, his mind was an absolute blank. The magistrates were thus left to determine whether these early declarations proved merely the commission of the act, or whether they demonstrated that the young man could not be held accountable for it under the law.
Eichmüller, a woodcutter of seventy-one years, had been employed in clearing tree-stumps in a forest tract near Hersbruck. On the evening of September 7, he failed to return at his accustomed hour. His wife dispatched her son and several youths in search of him. They discovered the old man lying dead near his place of labor. The authorities determined that the corpse had been dragged from the spot where the blow was struck, and that one of his axes bore marks consistent with the crime. Two florins which he was believed to have carried upon his person were missing. No money whatsoever was discovered upon Sorgel.
On the road homeward, a day-laborer named Paul Deuerlein had encountered Sorgel. The youth spoke to him without hesitation of a man he had felled in the woods, and of spectral visions in which he believed he had discerned horns. Under his parents’ roof, he rehearsed his confession before his father and several neighbors: he declared that he had seized the woodcutter’s own weapon, slain him, and taken his coin. To others, he professed that he had acted in order to drink the blood of a criminal, believing it would deliver him from his convulsions. His father took these utterances for the raving of a disordered mind, and had him bound with cords as a measure of precaution.
On the following day, September 8, Sorgel was brought before the magistrates. In his initial examination, he narrated the sequence of events with coherent precision: he had quitted his father, observed Eichmüller at work, imagined that the laborer was unearthing his own blood, and forthwith assailed him. He recognized the deceased when the authorities presented the body before him. He further explained why he believed it necessary to prevent himself from being put in chains. He described the place, the implements, and the supernatural impulses that had guided his hand, exhibiting no outward signs of distraction.
On September 9, he added that the old man had let fall his pipe, and that he had possessed himself of the victim’s flint and steel. These articles were duly found and produced before the court. Sorgel’s statements regarding the money, however, fluctuated: though he had boasted to his kinsmen the day before of having stolen it, nothing was found in his pockets. The magistrates confronted these assertions with the objects surrendered by his family and the depositions of those who had encountered him upon his return.
Within a few days, his mental condition had undergone a complete alteration. Examined anew on September 15, Sorgel appeared calm, civil, and perfectly lucid. He remembered that the magistrates had visited his cell, but professed to have no recollection whatever of having slain a man, of having identified the body, or of having recognized the axe. Whatever knowledge he now possessed, he attributed solely to the accounts his father had related to him. At a further interrogation on September 28, he no longer recognized the physical exhibits that had been shown to him only weeks before.
At the hearing of November 3, his counsel moved for an acquittal upon the ground that the prisoner was entirely unaccountable for his actions. Sorgel concurred in this defense, declaring that had he been in his present frame of mind, he would have done no injury to any living soul.
The son of an impoverished day-laborer, Sorgel had learned to read and was apprenticed to a chimney-sweep in 1820. His master commended his industry and conduct; yet after a year, a convulsive seizure of such violence overtook him that he had to be sent home to his parents, abruptly terminating his trade. These paroxysms returned with frequency, sometimes several times within a single day; Feuerbach records that on one occasion he endured as many as eight fits. The malady rendered him incapable of regular labor, and according to the narrative, he felt himself to be an unbearable burden upon his family.
In the spring of 1823, an attack confined him to his bed. He refused all nourishment, stared fixedly at a corner of the room, and at intervals raved disconnectedly of God, Christ, and Paradise. Constable Andreas Lauter testified that the youth preached, shouted, and sang hymns without intermission for twenty-four hours. When Lauter entered the chamber, Sorgel mistook him for the Devil and implored his mother to cast him out; later, he retained no memory of the incident. His mother estimated the duration of this seizure at a week; his father, at a month. Upon his recovery, Sorgel resumed his work and remained nearly a year without a relapse.
In the spring of 1824, Katharine Gassner observed his violent agitation upon witnessing three youths depart to seek their fortunes. He lamented that he had been cast aside by disease, struck the woman who attempted to lead him back to his chamber, and then fell upon a passer-by, trampling the man’s hat underfoot. His relatives pacified the crowd by explaining his infirmity. One night, he leaped through a window in his nightshirt and fled across the fields to the graveyard of a neighboring village. In May, while working near a pond, he stripped off his garments and cast them into the water; he then asked a farmer how he might regain dry land, persuaded that the earth was opening beneath his feet.
At the beginning of September, those who lodged with him observed a sudden decline. Margaret Gotz related that after complaining of a heavy oppression in his chest, Sorgel withdrew into solitude, spoke of visions, and announced that he was about to die. On Monday the 6th, he threw himself upon the ground beneath a tree; his father was obliged to carry him home and bind him fast to restrain him. The following morning, Sorgel begged to be taken for a walk to the old hillside. Upon reaching the summit, he plunged into the thickets and vanished. His father hastened home to alert the family; late that afternoon, a day-laborer met Sorgel on the road to Hersbruck, where the youth freely recounted the attack.
The physicians summoned to examine the prisoner concluded that he had acted under the influence of an acute paroxysm, during which he was not master of his faculties. The court adopted their findings and acquitted him of the murder. Judgment was pronounced on November 23, 1824.
The tribunal decreed his confinement in the hospital at Schwabach. A few months later, Sorgel died within its walls.