On the second of November 1830, a pregnant woman was found dead in the yard of her dwelling, in the village of Märjen. Two days later, at Börthen, a twelve-year-old girl lay in her blood upon the kitchen floor. Both victims had suffered severed throats; between these two deeds, a man had quitted the premises without hindrance. The inquiries soon converged upon Karl Wilhelm Oertel, an errant knackers’ assistant, who admitted to both killings. Yet the trial that ensued turned less upon his identity than upon the question of volition: had he acted in full possession of his faculties, or in a state of mind disordered by strong drink, terror, and a life of brutal violence?
Oertel had been born into the household of an executioner and knacker, a trade that drew upon his father the scorn of their neighbours. His childhood was governed by the hard necessities of this calling. From the age of ten, he was compelled to assist in the removal of the corpses of suicides; when he wept or recoiled, his father forced him to swallow brandy to harden his resolve. He seldom attended school. He later recounted that he had wished to become a forest warden, but that his father had denied him any such alternative. His mother bore affection for her two sons, yet could not withstand her husband’s authority.
In his youth, the lad took to drink. He stole a watch, and was subsequently sentenced in 1826 to three years in a house of correction for sundry thefts and frauds. Discharged before the expiration of his term, he was again punished for theft and swindling. He sought to marry Friederike Wolfram, an impoverished young woman from Frößen; her parents rejected the match. Oertel nevertheless continued to lend her assistance, while sinking deeper into drunkenness and petty thievery. The chapter in the New Pitaval recounts this domestic history, though without suggesting that the degradations it records could absolve him of the guilt of murder.
Having lost his place with an executioner in Schleiz in October 1830, Oertel wandered for several weeks. On the second of November, he drank in two taverns, borrowed a small cask under a pretext, and loitered near the Wetzel homestead. He knew the occupants by sight. According to his confession, he entered the house intending to borrow or purloin money. He searched several rooms and climbed into the attic to force open a chest with a hatchet. As he was coming down, Maria Rosine Wetzel returned home and surprised him.
She recognized him and denounced him as a thief. Oertel implored her not to raise the alarm; she was moving toward the window. He struck her upon the head with the back of the hatchet, and then dealt her a second blow. The woman fell. He went back up to the chest, but failed to force it. Descending once more, he heard her death rattle. He took up a knife lying on the bench and severed her throat. He later explained to the magistrates that he had not wished to let her linger in agony; his confession also revealed that he had sought to silence her to prevent his denunciation. He dragged the body outside by the arm, took a red neckerchief, and fled. It was only while moving the victim that he perceived she was with child.
The following day, while in a barn, he overheard that the “knacker’s lad” was being hunted for the murder of a pregnant woman. Seized with dread, he ran to a pond, intending to drown himself. Yet he turned away and set off toward Neustadt and Roda. On the evening of the third of November, he reached Börthen and concealed himself in a heap of moss behind a barn. The cold gripped him; on the morning of the fourth, he sought out an inn to warm himself.
At the Kahlert house, the mother had gone to town; Christine Wilhelmine, aged twelve, was left alone with him. Oertel drank several measures of brandy and beer, then asked for provisions on credit so that he might take to the road again. The child refused, her parents having previously chastised her for lending money. She took his cap as a pledge. Oertel produced his few coins and his pocket-knife to show that he had almost nothing. She would not surrender the cap. He struck her with the hand that held the blade. She fell without a cry. He struck her again about the head, then cut her throat. The surgeon concluded that the wounds to the neck, each of which was mortal, had brought about death swiftly. Oertel took a few coins and two neckerchiefs, but abandoned the garments he had initially sought for his flight.
He made his way to Jena, choosing to flee no further. Upon his arrest, he confessed to the murder of Christine; a few days later, he likewise acknowledged that of Maria Wetzel. He escorted the investigators to both dwellings, identified the spots where he had struck the victims, and showed where he claimed to have cast the knife away. His admissions agreed with the depositions of witnesses and the physical evidence recovered. He made no attempt to deny the deeds; he wished to die to make atonement for them.
The defence maintained that Oertel might have suffered a momentary loss of control over his actions, most notably when he killed the young Kahlert. The medical men gave divergent opinions: at Weida, a practitioner held that rage had impaired the freedom of his will; at Neustadt, another judged that he had acted with full consciousness and free of mental disease. The superior medical college at Weimar concluded that if by impaired volition one meant a pathological state, there was no ground to admit it. The court condemned Oertel to death. It distinguished the second homicide from premeditated robbery: the capital charge rested upon the resolve to sever the throat, and not upon an intent to rob the victim.
The interval between the sentence and its execution was protracted. The court of first instance pronounced the judgment in May 1832; the appellate jurisdiction confirmed it in August. The decree reached the prison only in November. In late January 1833, the Grand Duke refused a commutation; the determination was announced to Oertel on the first of February. He repeatedly asked that the day of his death be appointed without delay, and refused to petition for clemency. During his confinement, he wept when recounting his life, read the Psalms, and tamed first a sparrow, then doves. He professed to have no dread of the punishment itself, but desired that the multitude should bear him no ill will.
On the eve of the execution, the eighteenth of February, he received the sacrament at five o'clock in the afternoon and chose for himself the hymn that the choristers took up. On the following day, the nineteenth of February 1833, at ten in the morning, he ascended the scaffold erected upon an eminence near Weida. He had requested that no hand be laid upon him until he was seated in the chair of justice. Over the convict’s garb he wore his Pikesche, the coat he had worn during the commission of the murders. Having reached the platform, he took it off, bared himself to the shoulders, and said: “Here I lay aside the garment of my sin.” He then took his seat, and received the stroke without flinching.
The appointed day coincided with the annual fair of Triptis, four hours distant from Weida. The magistracy of the small town feared that the concourse drawn by the execution would desert the stalls, depriving the shopkeepers and publicans of their custom. Couriers were dispatched to Weida and Weimar to solicit a postponement. The petition arrived too late: the reply stated simply that there was no longer any cause to alter the date. The New Pitaval observes with a touch of irony that the worthy folk of Triptis weathered the day without ruin or insolvency.