At Oßmannstedt, near Weimar, during the night of December 8 to 9, 1860, the newborn son of Johanna Winter passed away in the bedchamber where his mother slept alongside Friederike and Wilhelmine Köhler; the other two sisters lodged on the upper floor. In the morning, the infant was found lifeless, the left side of his face suffused with a livid, bluish hue. It was presumed at first that he had succumbed to the convulsions that had racked him during the night. Yet several hours later, when a man arrived to convey the small corpse to Apolda, blood was observed about the mouth. The household assumed the violent spasms had provoked the bleeding. The child was wrapped and borne away without an examination.
Such was the inception of a case that the 1871 *New Pitaval* titled "Murder or Accident?". The heading was no mere literary flourish: in the course of the inquest, the physicians themselves altered their opinions regarding the wound discovered upon the neck, ultimately overturning the entire criminal premise of the prosecution. Johanna was but twenty-four years of age. In November, she had been brought to bed in Apolda, far from her family, and the boy had suffered from convulsions and an infirmity that had left him grievously weakened. She too had fallen ill, stricken with childbed fever. According to the four Köhler sisters who sheltered her, she watched over the babe with tender devotion and wept bitterly at his seizures. The archival source notes that the sisters had failed to notify the burgomaster of her presence, an obligation legally incumbent upon them. It was said they feared official entanglement because Johanna had earlier evaded an expulsion order by abruptly leaving a place of employment. Furthermore, she had served a fourteen-day sentence for having falsified a certificate of service. These circumstances cast a shadow over her moral character well before the wound was ever inspected. While they illuminate the hostile gaze directed at the accused, they offered no material connection whatsoever to the infant's demise.
On December 3, Johanna had removed with her child to the Köhlers' dwelling in Oßmannstedt. One of the sisters was meant to seek out a foster family to take the child; the errand was postponed. Following a restless night, the infant fell asleep at daybreak. When he failed to wake, he was discovered to be dead. Johanna asked that he be interred at Apolda, where he was born, and raised no objection when it was proposed that the remains be delivered to the anatomical institute at Jena. The formalities soon went awry: the order of the Apolda burgomaster arrived only after a bearer had already departed with the corpse. The bundle was not unsealed in town; on the morrow, it was brought back to Oßmannstedt and placed in the custody of the village burgomaster.
This circuitous journey carried grave consequences. During the initial conveyance, the man entrusted with the bundle observed traces of blood about the mouth. The Köhler sisters had heard mention of blood, yet maintained they had seen no wound. They surmised that the child's violent paroxysms might have caused the hemorrhage. When the medical examiners at last inspected the body, they found the linens and the bonnet drenched with blood along the left side of the neck. The corpse had remained unburied for several days. These circumstances aroused the suspicions of the village and were brought before the gendarmerie. The state prosecutor thereupon ordered the remains seized for a formal post-mortem examination.
The physicians discovered a transverse incision upon the neck, measuring slightly over an inch in length, whose margins gaped widely. They detected no other injury, nor any morbid alteration of the internal organs. This absence of internal trauma weighed heavily in subsequent evaluations. The integument and the underlying musculature had been severed; blood continued to exude from the tissues. The district physician concluded that a major vein had been divided and that fatal hemorrhage had ensued. He had not, however, dissected out the vessel itself: his opinion rested upon the depth of the cut and the flow of blood. He judged the wound to have been inflicted during life, solely because the margins were separated. If this conclusion stood, the wound was of human contrivance. The inquiry narrowed immediately upon the women present in the house, and foremost upon Johanna, who had slept beside her infant.
Upon being informed of the medical report, she protested her innocence, denying she had ever harmed her child. She could offer no explanation for the laceration. Confined to prison, her conduct alarmed the wardens: she wept profusely, spoke of portents, occasionally shattered earthenware, and asserted that she received visions in her sleep. At other times, she composed lengthy letters and answered interrogatories with remarkable lucidity. She stressed that the infant had been surrounded by witnesses, that her sister had promised her aid, and that she would hardly have consented to sending the corpse to an anatomical theater had she sought to conceal a mortal blow.
The medical men could not agree upon the meaning of these manifestations. A clergyman found her thoughtful, composed, and of sound mind; the district physician suspected the onset of mental alienation, while conceding he could not dismiss the possibility of simulation. Her exhausted state following confinement and the childbed fever were cited as plausible sources of nervous derangement.
A supplementary forensic examination dramatically shifted the course of the inquiry. The district physician acknowledged that the gaping of the wound margins by no means proved it had been inflicted during life. The integument of a cadaver retains elasticity, and an incision made while the neck is sharply flexed will appear wide and gaping once the head is straightened. To test this hypothesis, he executed comparable incisions upon the body of a recently deceased infant: the wounds opened in identical fashion. He formally conceded that the criterion he had deemed decisive was entirely fallacious.
The Superior Medical College of the grand duchy concluded that the incision had in all probability been made after death. The council found no evidence of fatal exsanguination: the infant bore none of the systemic signs of catastrophic blood loss, and the topographical site of the wound did not correspond to the vein alleged to have been severed. The Crown thereupon dropped all charges, ordering her release from custody and the closure of the judicial investigation. Johanna was transferred to the hospital at Jena, not as a convict, but for medical observation. She remained there roughly four weeks. The director initially suspected her of feigning illness, yet discovered no sign of permanent mental disorder; neither paroxysms of fury nor somnambulic crises were ever observed. After residing for three months with her parents, she petitioned for employment at the asylum as a nurse, discharging her duties with commendable diligence. The magistracy pursued inquiries to ascertain whether another hand might have mutilated the corpse after death, but no perpetrator was ever discovered.
The chronicler did not conclude that a murder had taken place. He entertained two plausible explanations for the posthumous wound: either some individual, believing the infant to be in an apoplectic stroke, had attempted a clumsy venesection and subsequently concealed the act; or Johanna had suffered an acute postpartum crisis, wherein terror and delusion had driven her to erratic behavior. The author frankly acknowledged that these hypotheses lacked evidentiary support and declined to present them as established facts. The Köhler family was never indicted; inquiries aimed at discovering another actor who might have cut the body came to naught.
The origin of the incision was never elucidated. As for Johanna, she returned to the very institution where she had once been held under psychiatric scrutiny, this time entering its service as a caregiver. The chronicle that preserved the initial suspicions cast upon the young mother recorded likewise this tribute to her subsequent life: that she proved herself unfailingly devoted, attentive, and gentle in ministering to the sick.