The jury was then asked to decide whether “the accused Adolf Buschoff were guilty of having deliberately murdered Johann Hegemann in Xanten on the 29th June, 1891.” A speech for the defence then followed, which lasted two hours, and in the afternoon a second counsel spoke for the prisoner, setting forth the innocence of the accused and appealing to the jury to acquit him. Then followed the judge’s summing up, which was absolutely fair and impartial. He called attention to the fact that the population of Germany was divided between friends and foes of the Jews. “Before the court of justice, however,” he said, “all men are equal. A judge’s task is not to inquire to what religion an accused belongs; he must have no partisan feeling.” The jury was absent for only half an hour, and returned with the verdict of “not guilty,” which was received with storms of applause. So ended a trial which produced an immense sensation, not only in the Rhine provinces but to the furthest confines of Germany, and was followed with strained and feverish attention.
Another great crime is of about the same date, but of a very different character,—the theft and misappropriation of gigantic sums by the chief cashier, Rudolf Jaeger, of the Rothschild banking-house at Frankfurt-on-the-Main. The story will be best understood by an extract from the indictment on which he was eventually charged. It stated that on Good Friday, April 15, 1892, the chief cashier of the banking-house of M. A. Rothschild and Sons disappeared, but was not missed until April 20th by reason of intervening holidays, both Christian and Jewish. The suspicion of his flight was confirmed by two letters from him posted at Darmstadt. One was to a Frau Hoch, who sent it to the Rothschild house; the other was addressed to Baron Rothschild’s private secretary, Herr Kirch. In both letters Jaeger stated that he had been guilty of embezzlement and that he meant to take his own life. In the letter to Kirch he carried the comedy to the extent of sealing his letter with black, using a black-edged envelope and placing a memorial cross under his signature. He confessed that he had lost 1,700,000 marks by unlucky speculations on the bourse with money entrusted to him in the course of business by others, including the bank. The money was gone, he declared briefly, and he meant to expiate his deed by death, hoping for mercy from God alone.
Rudolf Jaeger first entered the Rothschild house as assistant to his father, then chief cashier, and on his father’s death he succeeded to the position. His salary was 4,500 marks; besides this, he received other payments for keeping the private accounts of the Barons Wilhelm and Mayer Karl Rothschild, as well as the New Year’s bonus, and such other extras, so that his circumstances were easy. He married in 1877. His first wrongdoing was when he embarked upon an egg-trading business in partnership with one Heusel, who subsequently entered the dock by his side. Heusel was always in financial straits, insatiable in his demands for money, and although Jaeger had advanced the sum of 102,000 marks, he clamoured incessantly for more, and to satisfy him Jaeger made his first fatal dip into the Rothschild safe, which was in his keeping. For a long time he managed his depredations most skilfully, and his methods of throwing dust into the eyes of the clerks under him by manipulating the books of the bank were extremely clever. Even when a revision of the books took place, after he had gone so far as to falsify them, his dishonesty was not suspected. However, he only narrowly escaped. He felt he was on the verge of being discovered and began his preparations for flight, in company with Josephine Klez, with whom he had been intimate for some time.
The fugitives went first to Hamburg and thence to Marseilles, where they embarked for Egypt. Having arrived there, they considered themselves safe and went about freely and openly, frequenting different hotels. Jaeger bought many valuable jewels for Klez in Alexandria and Cairo. The police in pursuit were soon upon their track and on May 10th both were arrested by the German consul, with the assistance of the Egyptian authorities, at Ramleh in the Hotel Miramare, and their goods were seized. Both carried revolvers. Jaeger attempted to draw his, but was prevented. At first, both endeavoured to deny their identity, but in the end they gave their real names. Jaeger maintained, when brought before the consul, that he had lost the greater part of the embezzled sum on the bourses, but the examination of his luggage proved this to be false, and a sum of 489,779 marks was found among his effects. Part of it consisted in thousand mark notes, which Klez had sewn into a pin-cushion. She had two purses, a black and a red one; in the first was English, French and Egyptian money, and the second contained German bank bills and marks in gold. On a second search, one hundred notes of a thousand marks each were extracted from a pillow. Among the papers seized, the most important was Jaeger’s note book, for pasted under its cover was a slip of paper with abbreviated figures not very difficult to decipher, and with a complete account of the embezzled sum and of the persons in whose hands the money had been deposited; so, thanks to the discovery of this memorandum, the greater portion of the sums left in Frankfurt was discovered.
When Jaeger and Klez arrived in Germany, they were committed to the Frankfurt prison, where a number of their accomplices were already lodged. Jaeger, when arraigned, pleaded guilty on every count. The woman Klez admitted her complicity in the flight, but denied that she was concerned in the frauds or had accepted anything but jewelry from Jaeger. The trial was brief and judgment was soon given. Jaeger was condemned to ten years’ imprisonment and, over and above this, to five years’ deprivation of his civic rights, “because he was so lost to all sense of decency as to leave his family and elope with a shameless woman.” Klez was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment, Heusel to six years, and others concerned to short terms.
CHAPTER IX
SILVIO PELLICO AT SPIELBERG
Spielberg for many centuries Imperial State prison—Its situation—Originally the castle of the ruling lords of Moravia—Silvio Pellico imprisoned there—Also Franz von der Trenck—Pellico’s relations with the Carbonari—His imprisonment in the Santa Margherita and the Piombi—Sentence of death commuted to fifteen years in Spielberg—Administration of this prison—His fellow sufferers—The gaoler, Schiller—Prison diet—Strict discipline enforced—Pellico is released at the end of ten years.
Spielberg, in Austria, served for several centuries as an imperial state prison to which many notable political and other offenders were committed. It stands on the top of an isolated hill, the Spielberg, 185 feet above the city of Brünn, the capital of Moravia and headquarters of the governor of the two provinces of Moravia and Silesia. The castle was originally the fortified residence of the ruling lords of Moravia and a formidable stronghold. It was the place of durance for that other baron Von der Trenck, Franz, the Colonel of Pandours or Austrian irregular cavalry, whose terrible excesses disgraced the Seven Years’ War. His unscrupulous and daring conduct gained him life-long incarceration in Spielberg which he ended by suicide. The fortress was besieged and captured by the French just before the famous battle of Austerlitz, which was fought in the neighbourhood. Its fortifications were never fully restored, but a portion of the enclosure was rebuilt and the place was again used as a place of durance, where some three hundred prisoners were constantly lodged. These were criminals largely, with a sprinkling of persons of higher and more respectable station who had become obnoxious to the Austrian government.
The lengthy sentence of imprisonment which Silvio Pellico endured at Spielberg was the penalty imposed upon him as an Italian subject who dared to conspire against the Austrian domination. The rich provinces of northern Italy had been apportioned to the emperor of Austria in the scramble for territory at the fall of Napoleon. The Italians fiercely resented the intolerable yoke of the arbitrary foreigners, and strove hard to shake it off, but in vain, for nearly fifty years. Secret societies pledged to resistance multiplied and flourished, defying all efforts to extinguish them. The most actively dangerous was that of the Carbonari, born at Naples of the hatred of the Bourbon rule and which aimed at securing general freedom for one united Italy. Its influence spread rapidly throughout the country and in the north helped forward the abortive uprisings, which were sharply repressed by the Austrian troops. Plots were constantly rife in Lombardy against the oppressive rule in force and centred in Carbonarism which the government unceasingly pursued. Silvio Pellico was drawn almost innocently into association with the society and suffered severely for it.