CHAPTER VIII
SOME REMARKABLE PRISONERS
Extracts from the experiences of a Bavarian prison chaplain—Life history of a notorious criminal, Joseph Schenk—Early crimes—Kaiserslautern, “The Crescent Moon” prison—Schenk becomes known as the “Prison King”—Punishment has no effect on him—Frequent escapes—Passes through the prisons of Würzburg, Munich, Bayreuth—Würger, the usurer—Plies his trade when committed to gaol—Anecdotes of his rapacity—The tax collector who becomes his prey—Anna Pfeiffer, a rare example of a female hypocrite—Two recent crimes—The boy murdered in Xanten—A Jewish butcher accused—Trial causes an immense sensation—Gigantic sum stolen from Rothschild’s bank by chief cashier—Eventually arrested in Egypt—The causes of the cashier’s crime.
Some other interesting types of German criminals are described by a Bavarian prison chaplain, the Rev. Otto Fleischmann, who spent a quarter of a century in earnest labours among the inmates of a great penal institution. Some of his descriptions and experiences will be of interest and give us at the same time the life histories of notorious criminals. Let us begin with one Joseph Schenk, a curious example of the old-time convict, one of a class now rarely to be met with in the modern prison.
Joseph Schenk was born in Berlin in 1798. His mother was a canteen woman in a Prussian regiment. His father, whose name he never learned, was no doubt a soldier and a man of coarse, brutal disposition, many of whose worst traits had been clearly transmitted to his son. Joseph Schenk, from his earliest days, exhibited a cruel nature; his temper was ungovernable, his delinquencies incessant; he was given to acts of brutal violence, and to the last he was of an inhuman character. He passed much of his old age in the prison hospital, where his greatest treat as a patient was permission to attend at a post mortem and be present at the dissection of a corpse. It was horrible to see him gloating over the hideous details as he watched the autopsy.
Schenk’s mother, when she left the regiment, went to her native place, Oberlustadt, where her son served his apprenticeship to a weaver and was then drawn by conscription into a regiment of Bavarian light horse. He never talked much of those days (we are still quoting from the chaplain), but it is certain that when the restraints of strict discipline were loosened and he was discharged, he rapidly fell into evil courses and developed into an accomplished miscreant. He went home to Oberlustadt and became the terror of the neighbourhood as the author of repeated dastardly crimes. In 1824 Schenk was put upon his trial to answer for the commission of three heinous offences perpetrated in rapid succession. A large concourse of people attended the trial at the Assizes. He was charged with rape, street robbery and murder, and his sentence was death, but was commuted by the soft-hearted king, Maximilian I, into lifelong imprisonment in chains.
At that time the great central prison of Kaiserslautern, the so called “Crescent Moon,” was still in process of construction, and the reprieved convict was lodged in the gaol of Zweibrücken. There he quickly developed into a prison notoriety; he became a terror to his officers from his bold and cunning tricks, and the admiration of his fellow-convicts. He was known as the “prison king,” whom no walls, however high or thick, could hold, and who was endowed with such strength that he could carry with ease a leg chain and bullet weighing 28 pounds. He soon acquired the deepest insight into prison ways and was unceasingly insubordinate and the constant contriver of disturbance. He scoffed at all authority, sought perpetually to attain freedom and was for ever setting all rules and regulations at defiance. When the Kaiserslautern prison was finished he was transferred there to ensure his safe custody, but was still the same reckless, irreconcilable creature. In chapel services, which male and female prisoners attended in common, he attracted the attention of the women and started many intrigues by passing letters and presents to them. When the spirit moved him, he would burst out into loud roars of laughter or mock the officiating clergyman in the middle of the service. He was continually engaged in tampering with officers and guards, bribing them to carry on a clandestine traffic with “outside” and persuading them to supply him with food and prohibited articles. He was a power among his fellow-prisoners, who yielded ready obedience to his caprices and carried out his orders punctiliously. When searched, contraband articles were frequently found in his possession; weapons for assault and tools to be of assistance in his many projected escapes. Punishment, blows and close confinement in a dark cell, he endured with a stoical resignation which earned him the glory of martyrdom. With the higher authorities he comported himself cunningly, adapting himself to their individual peculiarities; he could in turn be cringingly civil, or audaciously impudent, and more than one letter of complaint against them he concocted and contrived to have secretly forwarded to Munich.
After making several attempts to escape on his own account, he formed a conspiracy with a number of daring convicts, the object of which was to obtain freedom by armed force. The plot was carried out on October 18, 1827, but proved disastrously unsuccessful. The conspirators, who were unable to effect the murder of some of the warders as contemplated, were completely overpowered. A special court met in the following year to sit in judgment on the would-be perpetrators of this foul attempt, and on June 9, 1828, Schenk, as well as two of his associates, was condemned to death for the second time, the execution to be carried out in the market place at Kaiserslautern. King Ludwig, the reigning monarch, was no more in favour of capital punishment than his predecessor, and Schenk’s sentence was again commuted to life-long imprisonment in chains.
His peregrinations now began, for he was transferred from one prison of Bavaria to another, until he had made acquaintance with nearly all. In each his conduct was so outrageous that the managing board always declined to keep him beyond a certain time, deeming him a constant menace to good order. He invariably obtained so great an influence in whatever prison he was held that the officials were in despair. On January 22, 1829, Schenk left Kaiserslautern, laden with chains and escorted by three of the most trustworthy police officials, and arrived at the prison in Würzburg on February 1st; he remained there until September 30, 1833. Here every thought was centred on means of escaping. He tried violence, and all kinds of clever schemes and devices, and in spite of being flogged and receiving other punishments, he persevered in his daring ventures until the authorities of the Würzburg prison declared that the prison was not sufficiently secure to retain him in durance. He was now transferred to Munich, where an interesting group of the most dangerous malefactors of Bavaria had been collected and were placed under the supervision of a strict and competent prison administrator. In Munich Schenk underwent a series of the most severe punishments that could be inflicted. The governor stated it as his opinion that Schenk was the most dangerous criminal of his kind and of his century. He added that never during the six and thirty years of his official life had he met with such a combination of astute cunning, incomparable audacity and hypocritical deceit.
Schenk remained at Munich until the year 1842, when the minister Abel succeeded in establishing the plan he had conceived of placing the Bavarian prisons on a denominational basis. This might have answered fairly well had the convicts not been allowed to alter their religion while in prison. As it was, whoever had had enough of one institution and desired a change, simply declared himself converted to another belief, and was then transferred to the fresh gaol where its professors were collected. The convicts could change their creed as often as they liked, but Schenk repudiated such weakness of character, and pretended to set great store by his Protestantism. He could not, however, remain at Munich because it was a Catholic prison, and at the beginning of the year 1842 he was removed to St. George at Bayreuth. In this institution he reached the pinnacle of his evil fame and influence. The administrator charged with its management in the years 1848-1849 must have been a young and diffident man, for Schenk intimidated him to such an extent that the prisoner became the actual master of the gaol. Seldom or never, perhaps, has a convict occupied such a position in a prison as Schenk did during his palmy days at Bayreuth. To curry favour with him he was often invited to drink coffee with the governor in the office and while they drank it the governor discussed with him prison problems and the proper treatment of prisoners. It must have been a strange sight to witness the convict in his chains on a sofa and the director doing the honours. Of course a peremptory stop was put to such a scandal. The timid governor was superseded by a more severe disciplinarian and Schenk was grievously annoyed. He stirred up a fierce opposition to the new man, whom he represented as a ruthless despot, and filled his fellow-convicts with apprehension as to the future that lay before them. They determined, therefore, to greet this functionary with a striking proof of their bad humour and distrust. Accordingly, when the new administrator entered the building on February 9, 1850, a general insurrection broke out among the prisoners, which was only quelled with great difficulty by armed force. Schenk’s reign was now over. The new governor soon knew that he had been the ringleader and took measures to subdue his troublesome charge. Instead of coffee, he received hard blows, and in place of the sofa he was provided with a wooden couch.