The examining judge now proceeded with circumspection. Instead of making more searching investigations into the murder, he dropped it entirely and, pretending to be occupied only with the theft, questioned the culprit solely in regard to this. The woman Holzmann’s clothes were spread out before Rauschmaier, and he was inveigled into recognising all of them. But various little trinkets had been included, which had been found in his room and about the ownership of which some doubt existed. Among them were two earrings, two gold hoops and the brass ring already mentioned, which the corpse had tightly pressed in her left arm. The judge now seemed on the point of closing the examination, as though he took it as a matter of course that Rauschmaier, who had admitted so much, would not hesitate to confess that he had also stolen these trifling pieces of jewelry as well. “No,” the accused exclaimed, suddenly protesting against the supposed injustice, “these are mine, my own property.” The judge strongly urged him to make no mis-statements but to stick to the truth. Nevertheless Rauschmaier continued to assert with great violence that the earrings, the hoops and the brass ring really belonged to him. He declared that he had always been in the habit of wearing the ring, and, as the judge still shook his head, Rauschmaier drew the ring on to show that it fitted the little finger of his right hand. It did so, but very loosely, and it could be twisted about from one side to the other. This betrayed him. He was further interrogated, and the judge laid much stress upon the suspicious circumstance, whereupon Rauschmaier broke down utterly and made full confession of his guilt.
He had been an idler from his childhood and, after serving in the Franco-Russian war, he deserted and was often an inmate of the house of correction at Augsberg. When free, he had supported himself in various ways in that city till he became a lodger in the house of the ill-fated woman Holzmann, whom he had resolved to kill on finding that she had so many valuable things and was supposed to possess much money. He was long undecided as to the method of doing the deed, but at last chose strangling as the easiest form of death and because it could be carried out without noise or leaving traces of blood; and he had heard doctors say that a strangled and suffocated corpse yielded little blood when dismembered. His opportunity came on the morning of Good Friday, when all the people in the house were at church and the lodger, Steiner, had gone out. Silence reigned in the tenement; he was alone in the upper story with the woman Holzmann. He stepped into her room and, without a word of warning, seized his victim around the throat with both hands and pressed his thumbs against her wind-pipe for the space of four or five minutes until he had murdered her outright. Then, when certain of the fact, he threw the corpse down and hastened to ransack her chest, which he found practically empty. Instead of a great treasure, he came upon only eight kreutzers and two pennies, and nothing more was brought to light after further minute search. He had strangled her for a few coppers.
Concealment was now imperative. After a quarter of an hour the corpse was cold, and he dragged it out through the door into the garret adjoining. He then proceeded to the ghastly work of dismemberment, and acquitted himself of the horrible task with the greatest adroitness, thanks to the knowledge he had acquired when campaigning, from watching the Russian surgeons at the same work. His labours occupied only a quarter of an hour. His plan for disposing of the limbs has already been described. Rauschmaier was condemned to be beheaded, but the additional sentence that he should previously stand in the pillory was remitted.
Besides Rauschmaier, his sweetheart and the other lodger, Josef Steiner, had been involved as suspects in the cross-examination. The woman’s guilt consisted only in her having assisted in selling the stolen goods, and she came off with a trifling punishment. Steiner’s connection with the principal crime was looked upon in a different light and was more complicated. This man caused much perplexity to the judge. In point of education and intelligence he was far inferior to his late room-mate. He could not be sworn because, although thirty-four years of age, he could not be brought to understand the nature and meaning of an oath. The judge declared that Steiner was on the borderland of insanity and on the lowest level of intelligence. When interrogated, he at first denied any knowledge of the crime, but later he practically became a witness for the prosecution and his evidence helped materially to secure conviction. Steiner himself was acquitted.
At Mannheim, on March 23, 1819, August von Kotzebue, the eminent German playwright, author of the famous play The Stranger, was stabbed to death by a hitherto unknown student named Karl Ludwig Sand. It was a murder of sentiment, not passion, and inflicted with cold-blooded calmness, to vindicate the liberal tendencies of the age exhibited by the so-called “Burschenshaft” movement, which Kotzebue had unsparingly ridiculed and satirised by his writings. Immense sympathy for the criminal was evoked in Germany; the heinous deed was approved by even the right-thinking, phlegmatic Germans, and tender-hearted women wept in pity for the assassin. His last resting place was decked with flowers, and he was esteemed a martyr to the cause of romanticism, while no one regretted the great dramatic poet.
As a youth, Sand suffered much from depression of spirits and pronounced melancholia. He was a patriot even to fanaticism, and showed it in his fierce hatred of the Napoleon who had enslaved his country. He could not bring himself to attend a review of French troops by Napoleon, lest he should attack him and so risk his own life. After the return from Elba, he entered the Bavarian service and narrowly escaped being present at the battle of Waterloo. At the end of the war he matriculated at the university of Erlangen and became affiliated with the “universal German students’ association,” the Burschenshaft, to which he vowed the most enthusiastic devotion. “It became,” says a biographer, “his one and all, his state, his church, his beloved.”
This guild did not develop very rapidly. But its leading members selected a meeting place situated on a hill in the vicinity of Erlangen. Here, after smoothing the ground and piling up stones to serve as seats, the students held a consecration feast at which punch and beer were freely indulged in. Hot discussions, followed by reconciliation, interrupted the proceedings. Dancing was indulged in around a fire, under the rays of the moon which shone through the pine trees, until the tired and probably somewhat intoxicated students, including Sand, lay down in different parts of the ground to sleep off their excitement. From Erlangen Sand moved to Jena, where he was a much less prominent student, and his life was uneventful, but when he left after eighteen months’ residence there, it was for Mannheim with daggers in his breast and a matured purpose of slaying Kotzebue. He had satisfied himself, after much inward conflict, that by killing the satirist he would be rendering a supreme service to the Fatherland. He was now possessed with a passion for notoriety. At Erlangen he had championed a good cause; at Jena his activity had perforce ceased, and the desire to do some remarkable deed had grown upon him. Constantly hungering for an opportunity to make himself celebrated, he resolved at least he would become a martyr if he could not be a hero.
No obvious reason existed for his attack upon Kotzebue. The poet had many foibles and failings, it is true, but he had done nothing to deserve to be struck down by the dagger of a fanatic in the cause of virtue, liberty and the Fatherland. He had indeed ridiculed the outburst of German national feeling which was now being developed, and thereby gave great offence to the youthful enthusiasts. He was employed as a correspondent by the Russian government, to report upon German conditions, literary, artistic and intellectual. Men of ability were often chosen in a like capacity by the Russian and other governments, and their calling was regarded as a perfectly honourable one. Kotzebue, however, wrote of Germany in a malevolent spirit. His vanity had been wounded by the public burning of his “History of the Germans,” and this, no doubt, inspired the bitter sarcasm with which he attacked the German character, though his strictures were taken much too seriously by the Germans of that day.
Before Sand left Jena for Mannheim, he had a long dagger fashioned out of a French cutlass of which he made the model himself. This was the dagger which actually penetrated Kotzebue’s breast. Sand called it his “little sword.” On arrival, he engaged a guide to take him to the house where Kotzebue lived. The poet was not at home. Sand gave his name as Heinrichs from Mitau to the maid, and she appointed a time between five and six o’clock in the afternoon for him to call again. Soon after five o’clock he stood once more in front of Kotzebue’s door. The servant, who admitted him at once, went up-stairs to announce him and then called to him to follow, and after some further preliminaries ushered him into the family sitting room. Kotzebue presently entered from a door on the left. Turning toward him, Sand bowed, of course facing the door by which Kotzebue had come into the room, and said that he wished to call upon him on his way through Mannheim. “You are from Mitau?” Kotzebue inquired as he stepped forward. Whereupon Sand drew out his dagger, until then concealed in his left sleeve, and exclaiming, “Traitor to the Fatherland!” stabbed him repeatedly in the left side. As Sand turned to escape, he paused to notice a little child who had run into the room during the progress of the murderous attack. It was Alexander von Kotzebue, the four-year-old son of the victim, who apparently had watched the proceedings from the open door. The boy shrieked and the murderer, who had been stupidly staring at him, was recalled to what was happening. But for this incident Sand would probably have escaped. A man-servant and Kotzebue’s daughter now rushed in and raised the wounded man, who still retained sufficient strength to walk into the adjoining room with their assistance. Then he sank down near the door and died in his daughter’s arms.
The house was in an uproar and for a moment Sand found himself alone. He fled downstairs but was interrupted; loud cries of “Catch the murderer, hold him fast!” pursued him, and being held at bay, he stabbed himself in the breast with his dagger. When the patrol appeared, he was carried on a stretcher to the hospital. For some hours after his arrival there he appeared to be sinking, but toward evening he revived sufficiently to be subjected to some form of examination. When questioned as to whether he had murdered Kotzebue, he raised his head, opened his eyes to their fullest extent and nodded emphatically. Then he asked for paper and wrote what follows:—“August von Kotzebue is the corrupter of our youth, the defamer of our nation and a Russian spy.” On being told that he was to be removed from the hospital to the prison, he shed tears, but soon controlled himself, ashamed, as he said, of showing such unmanly emotion. In gaol he was treated considerately and allowed a room to himself, being always strictly watched and allowed no communication with the outside world.