Susanna Margaretha Brandt
Susanna Margaretha Brandt ( February 8, 1746 in Frankfurt am Main ; † January 14, 1772 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a Frankfurt maid who, along with the Maria Flint case, served as a model for Goethe 's Gretchen tragedy in his Faust . She killed her newborn child and was sentenced to death and executed for it .
Life
Susanna Margaretha Brandt was born the eighth child of a soldier and grew up as an orphan . She worked as a maid for the widow Bauer in the Frankfurt hostel "Zum Einhorn". Three or four weeks before Christmas, 1770, she was seduced by a journeyman goldsmith from Holland , who had stayed at the inn as a guest while traveling . According to her later testimony, he invited her to wine and flattered her with nice words, possibly even putting a powder in the wine, because "she felt so strange, she couldn't resist any longer, the devil had to put his hand in had game".
After a few days, the goldsmith moved on to Russia . Susanna Margaretha Brandt knew neither his exact name nor an address. She hid her pregnancy from her two sisters and her landlady, although they soon became suspicious. She continued to work from dawn to dusk. A doctor she saw when her “ cleansing ” didn’t happen prescribed tea for her. He didn't notice anything about the pregnancy.
Four weeks before the birth , at the urging of the other women, she went to another doctor. He also didn't notice that she was seven months pregnant. On July 31, 1771, in the laundry room, she suffered from nausea and severe abdominal pain. The widow Bauer made her some tea and at the same time threatened her with dismissal. At that time, concealing a pregnancy or even giving birth in secret was punishable by law.
On the evening of August 1, 1771, she gave birth to a boy in the scullery. It was a fall birth, the child fell head first on the stone floor. She later testified that it only rattled briefly. In a panic, she grabbed his neck with her left hand and scratched his face with her right; then she hid it in the stable on the Staufenmauer behind the house.
At dawn, with the opening of the city gates, she fled via Höchst to Mainz , where she had to sell her earrings in order to be able to pay for the market ship and the hostel. Completely destitute and exhausted, she returned to Frankfurt the next day. She was arrested by the guards at the Bockenheimer Tor and taken to the prison in the Katharinenpforte next to the Katharinenkirche . On the evening of August 3, 1771, she was taken from there to the hospital .
Five days later, the child's body , which was buried in the Gutleuthof cemetery , was dug up again. When it was presented to her, she broke down and confessed, "Lord Jesus, this is my child, I laid hands on it". After eight weeks of preparation, the court sat in the Römer from October 8 to 12, 1771 . According to the custom of the time, the criminal proceedings took place without an oral hearing. The first death sentence was issued on October 12 , after which her defense attorney, Marcus Augustus Schaaf, had time to write a plea . On January 7, 1772, the verdict was upheld; it was death by the sword ; an appeal for clemency was rejected the very next day.
On January 14, 1772, at around 10 a.m., the condemned woman was led to the scaffold at the main guard station, where the executioner Johann Hoffmann was waiting for her at the judge's chair . "The messenger led the female maleficent to the chair with his hand, sat her down on it, tied her to the chair in two places, bared her neck and head, and while the clergymen kept shouting at her, her head was happily removed with a prank. "
The verdict in its entirety
The 335-page case file ( Criminalia 1771 , No. 62) is preserved in the Institute for City History . A pair of scissors, the corpus delicti , with which Brandt is said to have mutilated the corpse of her child, is also preserved in the file .
"Regarding embarrassing investigations against Susanna Margarethen Brandtin, we, the Mayor and Council of the Imperial Free Imperial City of Frankfurt am Mayn, recognize, based on prior laborious research and investigation of the matter, submitted legal syndicate concerns and careful consideration of all circumstances, that Brandtin thought of the children who were born alive, according to his own repeated testimony, deliberately and maliciously committed murder, according to the divine and worldly laws, namely to bring them to death with the sword as a well-deserved punishment and as a hideous example to others and to demand this judgment be done. Closed by Rath on Tuesday January 7th, 1772.”
Objections during the procedure
In public, the process had moved minds. The council's strict approach was not universally applauded, especially since Brandt's defense attorney, Marcus Christoph Schaaf, who was called to the trial belatedly, listed all sorts of mitigating circumstances in his plea. She was confused and desperate; whether the child lived at all is questionable. He proved to the medical experts that they had already judged incorrectly in previous cases. In general, the child was eight months old and, as is well known (at the time), these were only rarely able to live. However, the Council was not impressed by the plea.
Goethe and the criminal trial
At that time, Johann Wolfgang Goethe had just completed his law studies and worked as a lawyer in his native town from August 1771 to May 1772 . He was personally well acquainted with many of those directly involved in the process and experienced the whole process. The court clerk Johann Heinrich Thym had been tutor to Johann Wolfgang and his sister Cornelia for nine years . Goethe's friend and later brother-in-law Johann Georg Schlosser was the executioner's secretary at the time. The two doctors who treated Susanna Margaretha Brandt in the hospital were general practitioners of the Goethes and the Textors . Other relatives of Goethe, including his uncle Johann Jost Textor, belonged to the court.
Goethe had the clerk Liebholdt make copies of the trial files. He was so deeply impressed by Brandtin 's story that the tragedy surrounding the child murderer Gretchen became a central motif of Urfaust . The scene in the dungeon , still written in prose – the oldest part of the Urfaust – was probably written a short time after Margaretha's execution .
Goethe himself did not take a position on the process in Poetry and Truth , but only reported in a brief, distanced form: "Soon a major crime was discovered, and its investigation and punishment caused unrest in the city for many weeks."
In the case of the maid Johanna Catharina Höhn , who was executed in 1783 and who also killed her child, researchers now assume that Goethe - against the intention of Duke Karl August - advocated the death penalty .
commemoration
On September 10, 2021, the local advisory board of the Frankfurt Gutleutviertel placed a memorial stone made of Odenwald quartz for Susanna Margaretha Brandt in the Sommerhoffpark . The inscription reads " Susanna Margaretha Brandt / 1772 sentenced as a 'child murderer' / and / executed at the main station / buried here in the former / Gutleuthof cemetery. / As / Gretchen / immortal in Goethe's Faust."
literature
- Ruth Berger: Gretchen. A Frankfurt criminal case . Kindler, Reinbek 2007, ISBN 978-3-463-40513-1 . Fiction processing.
- Siegfried Birkner: The life and death of the child murderer Susanna Margaretha Brandt. Based on the case files . Insel Verlag, Frankfurt 1973 ISBN 3-458-32890-4
- Rebekka Habermas (ed.): The Frankfurt Gretchen. The trial of the child murderer Susanna Margaretha Brandt . CH Beck, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-406-45464-X .
- Heinrich Heym: Lines of Life. Destinies from an old town. Volume I, Frankfurt a. M. o. J. , printed in: Joachim Proescholdt (ed.): St. Katharinen zu Frankfurt am Main . Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-7829-0240-8 .
- Wolfgang Kloetzer (ed.): Frankfurt biography . Lexicon of personal history . First volume. A–L (= Publications of the Frankfurt Historical Commission . Volume XIX , No. 1 ). Waldemar Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-7829-0444-3 .
- Kent D. Lerch / Jörg Ziethen / Sascha Ziemann: The suffering of the young "Gretchen". A Frankfurt criminal case in 1771/72: The trial of the child murderer Susanna Margaretha Brandt , in: Forschung Frankfurt, issue 2/2011, pp. 49-54.
web links
- Marko Rösseler: 01/14/1772 - Execution of Susanna Margaretha Brandt WDR Zeitzeichen (Podcast).
itemizations
- ↑ Matthias Trautsch, Gretchen in court , In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of October 9, 2021
- ↑ Matthias Trautsch: Trial 250 years ago: Gretchen in court . In: FAZ.NET . ISSN 0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed 9 January 2022]).
- ↑ Gernot Gottwals: Gretchen is now being guarded . In: Frankfurter Neue Presse . September 11, 2021, p. 19 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Brandt, Susanna Margaretha |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Child murderess and role model for Goethe's Gretchen |
| BIRTH DATE | February 8, 1746 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Frankfurt am Main |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 14, 1772 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | Frankfurt am Main |