Johanna Catharina Höhn

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Johanna Catharina Höhn (born April 15, 1759 in Kottendorf , † November 28, 1783 in Weimar ) was an unmarried maid in Weimar who killed her newborn child and was executed for it. Her case was a focal point for the debate in the Duchy of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach on the reform of the punishment for child murder. In addition, after it became known late in the 1920s, it sparked an ongoing controversy about the discrepancy between Goethe's portrayal of the Gretchen tragedy in Faust and his position on the death penalty for child murder in the course of the proceedings against Höhn.

Life

Picture of a maid around 1700

For the life of Johanna Catharina Höhn and the deed committed by her, one can only rely on a few sources , as many files have not been preserved. The entries in the church registers , the reasons for the verdict from the Schöppenstuhl , the entry in the Weimar Book of the Dead and the brief report on the execution in the Weimar weekly advertisements remain . Her father, Johann Friedrich Höhn (1723–1798), came from a long-established Tannroda family and was court master at Kottendorf. In 1751 he married Christiana Sophie Leudolph. The couple had five children, only three of whom, including Johanna, reached adulthood. After Christiana Höhn's death, the father married two more times. Six half-siblings of Johannas came from these marriages.

Johanna Catharina Höhn worked as a maid in the Niedermühle in Weimar, possibly from the age of 14. The Niedermühle (called Karlsmühle from 1854) was a grain and oil mill . Research has determined that in the early modern period, maidservants formed the main group of child murderers, which resulted from their situation: They were largely single, of marriageable age, had to move frequently due to work, belonged to the lower class, had low earnings and lived and worked together with the servants. Even so, there were great social differences among maids who became child murderers.

In 1782 the 23-year-old Johanna Höhn became pregnant, nothing is known about the circumstances or the father. Apparently, she pushed her pregnancy out of the way and did not prepare for the birth and child. However, she showed her pregnancy bump a week before the birth of her employer, who did not take any precautions. Since hiding a pregnancy was a criminal offense, this was relevant.

After eight months of pregnancy, Höhn gave birth to a boy on April 11, 1783 at noon in her room. She was alone. After a quarter of an hour she removed his umbilical cord , stabbed the child three times in the neck with a knife and buried him in the straw of her bed. Hours later the midwife was called - probably by the maid and her sister - who, when asked, showed Höhn where the dead child was hidden. Höhn was arrested and the Weimar Justice Office investigated the case.

Reform debate and proceedings against Johanna Catharina Höhn

Constitutio Criminalis Carolina, Art. 131: "Straff der Weiber so ire Kinder kill" (edition of 1533)

Earlier child murder cases in the Duchy of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach and reform debate

In the further proceedings, the specific case was linked to the reform debate at the time about the penalties for illegitimate births ( church penance ) and child murder. In the second half of the 18th century, the neck court order of Emperor Charles V ( Constitutio Criminalis Carolina ) from 1532, according to which child murderers should be buried alive, staked or drowned, still applied. At the time of the Höhn case, the last execution of a child murderer in Weimar was almost three decades ago (1753 Maria Gertraude Schmidt ), who was the maid in Lottenmühle . In 1774/75, during the reign of Duchess Anna Amalia , the death sentence of a child murderer was changed to a prison sentence (Catharina Elisabetha Warz case).

In general, infanticide and the reform of criminal laws for child murderers were lively discussed in the countries of the Roman-German Empire at that time . In 1780 the so-called Mannheim prize question - “What are the best feasible means to put a stop to child murder?” - was advertised, for which almost 400 essays were submitted and several were published outside the competition. No other competition of the time found a similar response. One of the responses to the prize question was a contribution by Christian Gottlob Voigt (1743–1819) from Weimar , published anonymously in 1781 . Voigt had been prompted for the first version of the article by the child murder committed by Dorothea Altwein on February 11, 1781 in Weimar. Goethe was aware of this article before it was printed. Thereupon he renounced his “own processing of the matter”, which he had apparently intended. The Duke also asked Voigt to read the finished essay. The book purchases that Carl August and Goethe made at this time (including Heinrich Wagner's play Die Kindermörderinn and Jakob Völkersamen's treatise on child murder punishments) also demonstrate their keen interest in the reform debate. The acquired writings opposed the death penalty for child murder.

The child murder committed by Dorothea Altwein was the trigger for Duke Carl August's first attempt at reform . Altwein was sentenced to death by drowning, which the duke commuted to life imprisonment (she was pardoned in 1798). The Duke commissioned the Weimar government to revise the regulations for concealing pregnancies and the church penance for illegitimate births. At this point, however, these reform initiatives fizzled out.

Procedure and judgment

Carl August Duke of Saxe-Weimar and Eisenach (1796/97)
Jakob Friedrich von Fritsch
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, India ink drawing by Johann Heinrich Lips from 1779

Höhn had been interrogated in custody; the minutes passed the justice office to the government in Weimar, which informed the sovereign, Duke Carl August, on May 2nd. The government asked the duke to decide whether the special inquisition should be carried out. To this end, Carl August met on May 13th with the Secret Consilium, a body that had existed since 1756 and that advised the sovereign on all matters submitted to him for decision or exclusively reserved for him. The Privy Councilors Jacob Friedrich Freiherr von Fritsch , Christian Friedrich Schnauß and - as the youngest member - Johann Wolfgang Goethe belonged to the Secret Consilium .

The first interrogation had already shown that the act was deliberate, which made the death penalty apparent early on. Influenced by the current reform discussion on the punishment of infanticide, the Duke took this opportunity to raise the question of whether the death penalty for infanticide could not be replaced by a more effective, because more deterring, punishment: cutting off the hair for permanent disgrace, and being pilloried Public flagellation , lifelong penitentiary with hard work, repetition of the pillory and public flagellation for life or at least a number of years once or several times a year, especially on the anniversary of the child murder. The government in Weimar was asked to take a position on this idea. The decision on the special inquisition has meanwhile been postponed.

The statement was presented in the form of individual reports by members of the government on May 26th. These have not been preserved, but it is assumed that the members of the government rejected the duke's proposals by a majority. The Duke discussed the government's position on June 3rd with the councilors of his Secret Consilium. Carl August now ordered the special inquisition, d. H. a detailed questioning, which in the Höhn case took place without torture, and the appointment of a defense attorney. The files with the interrogation results and the defense letter were sent to the Schöppenstuhl at the University of Jena on September 16 . The members of the Schöppenstuhl looked at the files on September 19. On September 25, the written judgment - death by beheading with the sword - with reasons was available, which the government in turn sent to the Duke on October 9 for confirmation (confirmation or amendment).

The Duke had the Councils of the Secret Consilium take a position on the issue of changing the child murder sentence, an unusual measure, since the Secret Consilium normally did not issue legal opinions on questions of " embarrassing law ". In his "Rescript" of May 13, 1783, Duke Karl August spoke out in favor of the abolition of the death penalty for child murder of unmarried mothers and thus the pardon of Johanna Höhn. Von Fritsch and Schnauß both spoke out on October 25th and 26th, albeit with different degrees of clarity, against the Duke's proposed changes. Von Fritsch was actually in favor of retaining the death penalty, but assumed that the abolition was a done deal and supported this decision. He called for the draconian prison sentence to be mitigated. For Schnauß, the death penalty was the most effective punishment for deterring women from child murder; he voted resolutely for the retention of the death penalty and for the execution of Johanna Höhn. With a delay, Goethe submitted his position in the form of an essay on November 4th. Unlike the reports by Fritsch and Schnauß, this article has not survived. Goethe only took his official vote on the files:

“Since the result of my most insidiously submitted essay agrees completely with both of the thorough votes available; so I can all the less doubt to join them in all respects and to declare that, in my opinion, it would be more reasonable to keep the death penalty. "

Since the votes of both the members of the government and the councils of the Secret Consilium had voted for the retention of the death penalty, the Duke refrained from converting the death penalty for Höhn into another sentence. He upheld the sentence on November 4th and instructed the government to enforce it.

execution

Johanna Catharina Höhn was beheaded with the sword on November 28, 1783 in front of the Erfurt Gate, on the Galgenberg between Weimar and Tröbsdorf . The execution was originally due to take place on November 25th, but in order to put in place security, it was postponed for three days. A ceremonial trial, a show trial of the Embarrassing Neck Court , was held prior to the execution . A document with the instructions for action was discovered in 2006 and published in 2008. It was written ten days before the execution and describes the process in detail - the structure of the place of execution , the seating arrangements for the judges, the indictment, interrogation and reading of the verdict, the last steps from Johanna Höhn to the execution bench up to the departure of all those involved after the beheading . According to these “stage directions”, the show trial was to be carried out on a podium with a black background, a black draped table and fourteen black chairs for the judges and scouts, protected by a militia of 200 soldiers and farmers. In the morning, officials dressed in black would march in a solemn procession from the office to the place of execution. While the judicial legitimacy and authority would be formally established, the "poor sinner" would be escorted by clergymen to the right side of the executioner , who also acted as the "embarrassing accuser". The executioner would then announce the indictment:

"Mr. Richter, I embarrassingly accuse at the first meal, I accuse embarrassingly at the next, I embarrassingly accuse the present poor sinner, Annen Catharinen Höhnin from Tannroda, for the third time, that she acted the fifth commandment again, and the child she gave birth to as a matter of principle murdered and killed. "

The clerk was to ask the convicted person in detail whether she had given birth to and killed the child on April 11th. At this point in the script it is to be “hoped” that “the poor sinner will answer every question individually with a yes! answered ". After the complete reading of the judgment, the executioner would be assured safe conduct and the population would be asked not to avenge Höhn's death on the executioner. After the execution, the last words of those involved are given by the script:

“Executioner: Have I judged correctly?
[Judge]: You have done what Urthel and justice brought with them. "

There is no evidence that the actual execution did not follow this script. The Duke himself had deliberately left Weimar on the day of execution. The writer Johann Joachim Christoph Bode also traveled from Weimar to Erfurt that day in order - as he wrote in a letter the day before - "to avoid a local head-shop of a child murderer by not seeing it as a punishment, but as a state murder . "

Höhn's corpse was handed over to the anatomy department of the Medical Faculty of the University of Jena, the usual procedure for those who were executed. The head of anatomy complained that Höhn had been fed too well in prison so that she was less useful for demonstrations. This head of anatomy was Justus Christian Loder .

Other child murders in 1783 in the Duchy of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach

In parallel to the lengthy proceedings against Johanna Höhn, the authorities had to deal with another child murder in Weimar. On April 4, 1783, a few days before Höhn's infanticide, the single maid Maria Rost killed her newborn child, which she hid after the crime. She was arrested on May 8th and the body was found on May 10th. Unlike Höhn, Rost did not admit the crime, and Carl August did not approve any questioning under torture. In her case, the Duke decided on December 19 that she was sentenced to life in prison because of the lack of a confession. After five years she was fired for good conduct.

There are only incomplete files on another case in the Duchy in the same year. Sophia Catharina Seyfarth gave birth to a child on May 21 in the area of ​​the Ilmenau district , who, according to her, was born dead. In her case, too, the Duke decided against torture. The further course of the proceedings is not known, but the death penalty can be ruled out, otherwise the duke would have been approached about the confirmation .

reception

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in front of a tomb with a female bust, silhouette around 1780

The comparable case of Susanna Brandt in 1772 induced Goethe to include the tragedy of the child murderer Gretchen as a central motif in the Urfaust , which was mentioned and processed early in Goethe research. Goethe's "supposedly incriminating statements" on the death penalty for child murder in the context of the Höhn proceedings were not known until the 1920s. Because of this, a first controversy arose at the beginning of the 1930s. Publications by Sigrid Damm and W. Daniel Wilson in the course of the 1990s brought the events back into public awareness, whereupon Federal President Roman Herzog referred to them in a speech on Goethe's 250th birthday. The controversy led to two editions appearing in 2004 with documents on the Weimar child murder cases and Goethe's involvement in the Höhn case.

Controversy in the 1930s

Until the 1920s, little was known about Goethe's official activities. Accordingly, Goethe's views on the death penalty for child murder were derived from his fictional writings. In a 1918 article on the death penalty in the Goethe Yearbook , Julius Zeitler argued that Goethe had advocated a mitigation of the strict law on child murderers. Only Fritz Hartung quoted Goethe's vote from the files in 1923 without mentioning the reference to the Höhn case. In 1929 Friedrich-Wilhelm Lucht made the connection in his treatise on the administration of criminal justice in Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach.

It was only with an article by Karl Maria Finkelnburg in the Berliner Tagblatt in 1931 that Goethe's vote became generally known. However, he misunderstood a quote from Lucht and criticized the fact that Goethe's vote only consisted of the two words "also I", which was "formulaic, without a syllable individualizing approach to the case". He also emphasized that Carl August was more willing to reform than Goethe and more humane. The Goethe picture would have to be corrected. In his commemorative speech on the 100th anniversary of Goethe's death on March 18, 1932, Thomas Mann was shocked by Goethe's attitude towards the derisive death sentence and constructed a divergence between the poetry assigned to the realm of the "eternal" and earthly life. A counter-article by Erich Wulffen in the same year pointed to Finkelnburg's “I too” misunderstanding and published the full text of Goethe's vote. Wulffen also argued with the “bourgeois separation of poetic and material reality”. Goethe's development as a poet would have suffered if he had advocated the humanization of criminal law.

In 1936, the Goethe Society responded with a collection of answers to frequent inquiries to Goethe Institutes . Their line of defense was the validity of Charles V's neck court order and that the Schöppenstuhl (not Goethe) had pronounced the death sentence. In his exile novel Exil (1940), Lion Feuchtwanger took up Goethe's division into the humane poet and the politician.

Controversy from the 1990s

In the decades that followed, Goethe's behavior was discussed again and again, but it was only with the publications of Sigrid Damm in 1998 and W. Daniel Wilson in 1999 that the controversy reached the general public again. In her couple biography Christiane and Goethe , Damm evaluated the files on the Höhn case and stated that Goethe defined a “double existence” for himself, separated spirit and power and gave himself up to the “illusion” of being able to be “poet and politician […] at the same time . ”In his book Das Goethe-Tabu , the American German scholar W. Daniel Wilson complained that Faust research ignored the Höhn case for a long time, although it could be relevant to parts of the Gretchen tragedy that were written after the Urfaust . He also advocated the thesis that Höhn's death penalty was controversial among the Weimar population. The Weimar government had to take considerable precautionary measures to prevent unrest by having the execution protected by a strong militia. The fact that the script for the neck court was in the private archives of a citizen, who obviously showed great interest in the Höhn case, reinforced Wilson in 2008 in his suspicion that the death penalty in Weimar was more controversial than previously generally assumed.

In 2003, Freiburg German studies scholar Rüdiger Scholz asked Goethe research: “It is about explaining how Goethe's behavior came about, what consequences it had and how the relationship to discursive and fictional works is to be understood.” But Scholz also argued morally . He assigned Goethe the “ blame for the execution of Johanna Höhn”: “That he pleaded in real life for the retention of the death penalty and thus for the execution of Johanna Höhn, despite the already written maudlin story of Gretchen, does not fit the picture of the great humanists and practitioners of humanity. ”Wilson differentiated, on the other hand, that it was not about the moral question of guilt , but about Goethe's part of the responsibility for maintaining the death penalty for infanticide, which is why Höhn was executed.

In his address on the 250th birthday of Goethe on April 14, 1999, Federal President Roman Herzog referred to Goethe's vote and warned against idealizing Goethe:

“Some of the things that now come more clearly into focus about his life are questionable. It was Goethe, a member of Duke Carl-August's Secret Consilium, who pleaded for the execution of the death penalty on a desperate child murderer who was abandoned by all - the same Goethe who, in his Faust , especially in the original version, was so sensitive to the fate of someone put such a woman. "

Damm, Wilson and Scholz were again accused of overestimating Goethe's influence on the judgment. Damm would have stylized Goethe's vote to "tip the scales", but the decision would have been made by the Duke, whereby Goethe would only have contributed one statement from many, according to Germanist Wolfgang Wittkowski in an essay on the "witch hunt on Goethe". According to the lawyer and Goethe researcher René Jacques Baerlocher, the statements did not refer to the verdict, but to the general change in the sentence. Wittkowski and Baerlocher also argued that with the death penalty, Goethe opted for the milder sentence compared to Carl August's alternative proposal. Goethe's apologists did not address the question of integrating the scornful case into Faust research .

The vote of the Privy Councilor Jakob Friedrich von Fritsch turned out to be open to a wide variety of interpretations. Volker Wahl , director of the Thuringian main state archive in Weimar and editor of one of the two source editions on the Höhn case, described it as "more cautious and more tactful" (compared to Schnauß 'vote), but clearly formulated against the Duke's alternative proposal. Scholz and Wilson saw it that way, but derived two important points from the first and last paragraph of Fritsch's vote in particular. In her first paragraph, von Fritsch was convinced that the Duke had almost definitely committed to the abolition of the death penalty. In the last paragraph von Fritsch suggested to the Duke not to set a uniform punishment for child murder, but to decide only on a case-by-case basis. The two critics concluded that von Fritsch supported the Duke's intention, albeit against his personal convictions. If this were the case, then the councilors of the Secret Consilium would have dissuaded Carl August from his original intention with their votes. Goethe's shared responsibility for the final decision of the sovereign would be greater.

Damm had read the votes of Fritsch and Schnauß as diametrically opposed to each other, which contradicted the fact that Goethe had described himself in his vote as completely in agreement with the positions of the two. She insinuated that she hadn't read the votes of the two at all, and described Goethe's brief vote as "the result of absent- minded viewing , like a little accident in the meandering of shops ". Damm was shocked by the "nonchalance with which he [...] gave his yes to the death penalty". Baerlocher then contemptuously described Damm's biography as a "marriage novel". Wilson disagreed with Damm on this specific point but defended her book as "well researched."

Further reception of the Johanna Catharina Höhn case

The Germanist Susanne Kord, who described the debate about Goethe's participation in Höhn's trial as an "insignificant dispute", was interested in the manuscript with the instructions for the show trial because of its "double life as a legal and literary document". The execution was not only "dramatic" in the figurative sense, but was even partially staged as a drama. The dramatic aspects of the execution script are just as prominent as those of other theatrical works of the 18th century. Like the drama in the 18th century in general, the neck dish - according to Horace's requirements - should instruct and delight. Public executions were generally aimed at spectators. The teaching of the scornful throat judgment was aimed at young women and girls - like the “bloodcurdling contrition” of the child murderer on the scaffold in contemporary literary representations . The display of the guilty as described in the historical document, their supposed public confession corresponds to the literary discourse of the time. Such a “spectacle” could only develop its moral effect if the child murderer on the scaffold adhered to “etiquette”, the social agreement of appropriate behavior during the execution. The “repentant acceptance of guilt” and “willingness to die” of the perpetrator, highlighted in contemporary literature, represent “male fantasies”, as Germaine Groetzinger has already analyzed. In fact, most women seem to have surrendered to their fate, but Kord cites a case from 1849 in which the convicted murderer struggled and fought for her life until the last moment. In this case the spectacle, being deprived of its dignity, could not be an edifying illustration of morality. In 2013, in his essay " Noble be man - and punish. Goethe's essay on maintaining the death penalty for child murderers", Rüdiger Scholz represented the thesis that the middle part of Goethe's 1783 poem, written and published at the time of the Höhn trial, was "Noble der Mensch "is a plea for maintaining the death penalty and thus for the execution of Johanna Höhn.

In 2009 the novel Goethe's Execution of Victor Glass was published , which dealt with the Höhn case.

literature

General

  • Susan Geißler (2012): After bad Wercken follows bad wages - The Weimar Richtschwert from 1623. In: Weimar-Jena: The big city - The cultural-historical archive 5 (3). Pp. 191-199.
  • Susanne Kord (2009): Murderesses in German writing, 1720-1860: heroines of horror . Cambridge studies in German. New York: Cambridge University Press. In particular, chapters Shame: Child killers (pp. 121-153) and The end: the etiquette of execution (pp. 187-219).
  • Susanne Kord (2011): Etiquette or Theater? Child murderers on the scaffold . In: Gaby Pailer / Franziska Schössler (eds.): Gender play spaces . Drama, theater, performance and gender . Amsterdam Contributions to Newer German Studies, Vol. 78. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
  • W. Daniel Wilson (2008): The 'Halsgericht' for the Execution of Johanna Höhn in Weimar, November 28, 1783 . In: German Life and Letters 61 (1). Pp. 33-45.

Contributions to the controversy in the 1930s (chronological)

  • Fritz Hartung (1923): The Grand Duchy of Saxony under the government of Carl August 1775–1828. Weimar: Böhlau. In particular the chapter on the administration of justice (pp. 105–120).
  • Friedrich-Wilhelm Lucht (1929): The administration of criminal justice in Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach under Carl August . Contributions to the history of the German criminal justice system Vol. 1. Berlin: Gruyter. In particular chapter The material and formal criminal law (pp. 30–50).
  • Karl Maria Finkelnburg (1931): "ALSO ME ...". Child murder justice and criminal law under Goethe . In: Berliner Tagblatt April 5, 1931 (1st supplement).
  • Thomas Mann (1932): Goethe as a representative of the bourgeois age . In: Die neue Rundschau 43 (1932). Pp. 434-462.
  • Erich Wulffen (1932): known and unknown about Goethe as a criminalist . In: Dresdner advertisement. Scientific supplement March 29, 1932.
  • Alfred Wieruszowski (1932): Goethe and the death penalty . In: Juristische Wochenschrift (12). Pp. 842-845.
  • Willy Flach (1934): Goethe and child murder. In: The Thuringian Flag. Monthly booklets for the Central German home 3. pp. 599–606.
  • Hans Wahl (1936): Answers to frequent inquiries from the Goethe Institutes . In: Goethe. Quarterly publication of the Goethe Society New Series 1. pp. 74–75.
  • Lothar Frede (1966): Child murder and church penance with Goethe . In: Journal for the entire criminal law science 78 (3) 1966. pp. 420–431.

Contributions to the controversy since the 1990s (chronological)

  • W. Daniel Wilson (1994): Born to poetry, appointed to inform . In: Die Zeit December 30, 1994. p. 28.
  • Sigrid Damm (1998): Christiane and Goethe. A research . Insel: Frankfurt am Main 1998. pp. 81–97.
  • W. Daniel Wilson (1999): The Goethe taboo. Protest and human rights in classic Weimar . Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag. Pp. 7-8.
  • Hans-Jürgen Schings (1999): Swelling cadre files for a classic . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung April 1, 1999. p. 49.
  • twz (1999): Goethe, so far . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung April 16, 1999. p. 41.
  • W. Daniel Wilson (1999): How Weimar's Privy Councilors drove human trafficking (Letter to the Editor) . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung April 24, 1999. p. 49.
  • Günther Baum (1999): For Goethe's chief prosecutor a foregone conclusion (letter to the editor) . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung April 29, 1999. p. 11.
  • Katharina Mommsen (1999): Goethe and our time . In: Goethe-Jahrbuch 116. pp. 27–40.
  • René Jacques Baerlocher (2002): Comments on the discussion about Goethe, the death penalty and child murder . In: Goethe-Jahrbuch 119. pp. 207–217.
  • Wolfgang Wittkowski (2002): Witch Hunt on Goethe. November 1783: Execution of a child murderer and 'The Divine' . In: Oxford German Studies 31 (1). Pp. 63-102.
  • Rüdiger Scholz (2003): Goethe's guilt for the execution of Johanna Catharina Höhn . In: Goethe-Jahrbuch 120. pp. 324–331.
  • René Jacques Baerlocher (2003): “Goethe's guilt for the execution of Johanna Catharina Höhn”? In: Goethe-Jahrbuch 120. pp. 332–339.
  • Jens Bisky (2003): In the pillory. On the humanity of execution: Goethe and the child murderer . In: Süddeutsche August 8, 2003. p. 14.
  • Volker Wahl (Ed.) (2003): Willi Flach (1903–1958). Contributions to archives, the history of the state of Thuringia and Goethe research . Publications from Thuringian State Archives, Vol. 9. Weimar: Böhlau. This edition reprinted several publications by Willi Flach on Goethe and Johanna Catharina Höhn from 1934 and 1948, among others.
  • Günter Jerouschek (2004): Scandal about Goethe? In: Goethe-Jahrbuch 121. pp. 253–260.
  • Volker Wahl (Ed.) (2004): "The child in my body". Moral offenses and child murder in Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach under Carl August. A source edition 1777–1786. Publications from Thuringian State Archives, Vol. 10. Weimar: Böhlau.
  • Rüdiger Scholz (Ed.) (2004): The short life of Johanna Catharina Höhn. Child murders in the Weimar of Carl August and Goethe. The files on the cases of Johanna Catharina Höhn, Maria Sophia Rost and Margarethe Dorothea Altwein . Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.
  • Rüdiger Scholz (2005): Response to Günter Jerouschek: Scandal about Goethe? In: GJb 2004, pp. 253-260 . In: Goethe-Jahrbuch 122. pp. 328–329.
  • Günter Jerouschek (2005): Reply to Rüdiger Scholz . In: Goethe-Jahrbuch 122. pp. 330–333.
  • Karl Otto Conrady (2007): Goethe's poem “Noble be man” in the shadow of a death sentence . In: Peter Hanau / Johannes Neyses (eds.): Dedicated administration for science: Festschrift for Johannes Neyses, Chancellor of the University of Cologne, on his 60th birthday . Cologne: University and City Library. Pp. 39-54.
  • Günter Jerouschek (2007): Scandal about Goethe? On Goethe's participation in the death sentence against the child murderer Johanna Catharina Höhn . In: Neue juristische Wochenschrift 60 (10) 2007. pp. 635–639.
  • W. Daniel Wilson (2008): Goethe, His Duke and Infanticide: New Documents and Reflections on a Controversial Execution . In: German Life and Letters 61 (1). Pp. 7-32.
  • Rüdiger Scholz (2008): Goethe's guilt for the execution of Johanna Catharina Höhn . In: Neue juristische Wochenschrift 61 (11). Pp. 711-713.
  • Alexander Košenina (2008): State murder instead of punishment. New documents on the execution of Johanna Höhn . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung April 21, 2008. p. 42.
  • Volker Wahl (2008): Sovereign Decision of the Duke (Letter to the Editor) . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung April 5, 2008. p. 10.
  • W. Daniel Wilson (2008): Goethe swam against the current (letter to the editor) . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung April 31, 2008. p. 38.
  • Volker Wahl (2012): “You did what Urthel and law brought with you” - The “embarrassing throat judgment” about the child murderer Johanna Catharina Höhn . In: Weimar-Jena: The big city - The cultural-historical archive 5 (3). Pp. 200-219.
  • Rüdiger Scholz (2013): Humans are noble - and punishable. Goethe's essay on maintaining the death penalty for child murderers, in: Colloquia Germanica 43, Issue 4, 2010, published 2013, pp. 285–293.

Individual evidence

  1. Volker Wahl: “You did what Urthel and law brought with you” - The “embarrassing neck judgment” about the child murderer Johanna Catharina Höhn . In: Weimar-Jena: The big city - the cultural-historical archive . tape 5 , no. 3 , 2012, p. 200–219, here 219 .
  2. a b c Rüdiger Scholz: The short life of Johanna Catharina Höhn. Child murders in the Weimar of Carl August and Goethe. The files on the cases of Johanna Catharina Höhn, Maria Sophia Rost and Margarethe Dorothea Altwein . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2004, ISBN 978-3-8260-2989-9 , p. 8-12 .
  3. ^ Warning message . In: Weimar Weekly Ads . November 29, 1783, p. 382 ( uni-jena.de [accessed March 30, 2018]).
  4. Scholz 2004, pp. 11–12.
  5. Scholz 2004, p. 10.
  6. Wahl 2012, pp. 201, 218.
  7. Eva Labouvie: Child murder in the early modern times. Searching for traces between violence, lost marriage and the economy of the female body . In: Marita Metz-Becker (Ed.): Kindsmord und Neonatizid. Cultural perspectives on the history of infanticide . Jonas, Marburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-89445-469-2 , pp. 10–24, here 13–14 .
  8. a b Judgment of the Jena Schöppenstuhl from September 25, 1783 . In: Volker Wahl (Ed.): "The child in my body". Moral offenses and child murder in Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach under Carl August. A source edition, 1777-1786 . Böhlau, Weimar 2004, ISBN 978-3-7400-1213-7 , pp. 98-101 .
  9. Volker Wahl: Introduction . In: Volker Wahl (Ed.): "The child in my body". Moral offenses and child murder in Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach under Carl August. A source edition, 1777-1786 . Böhlau, Weimar 2004, ISBN 978-3-7400-1213-7 , pp. 3–49, here 11–12 .
  10. Election 2004, p. 11.
  11. Election 2004, p. 12.
  12. Election 2004, p. 13.
  13. ^ Otto Ulbricht: Child murder and education in Germany . Oldenbourg, Munich 1990, ISBN 978-3-486-54951-5 , pp. 217 .
  14. Wahl 2004, pp. 21-25.
  15. Wilson, Goethe, 2012, pp. 17-19.
  16. Wahl 2004, pp. 26–31.
  17. Election 2004, p. 32.
  18. Election 2004, p. 4.
  19. Wahl 2004, pp. 31–32.
  20. Election 2004, p. 33.
  21. Election 2004, p. 34.
  22. Wahl 2004, pp. 34–38.
  23. Election 2004, p. 38.
  24. Election 2004, p. 38.
  25. Election 2012, p. 203.
  26. ^ W. Daniel Wilson: The 'Halsgericht' for the Execution of Johanna Höhn in Weimar, November 28, 1783 . In: German Life and Letters . tape 61 , no. 1 , January 1, 2008, p. 33–45 , doi : 10.1111 / j.1468-0483.2007.00409.x (The document was found in the Goethe and Schiller Archives in the holdings of the writer, publisher and entrepreneur Friedrich Justin Bertuch (1747–1822).).
  27. Reprinted in Wahl 2012, pp. 209–217. In contrast to the rendition of Wilson, the dialogues are not shown in two columns as in the original.
  28. Susanne Kord: Etiquette or Theater? Child murderers on the scaffold . In: Gaby Pailer, Franziska Schössler (ed.): Gender play spaces . Drama, theater, performance and gender (=  Amsterdam contributions to recent German studies . No. 78 ). Rodopi, Amsterdam 2011, ISBN 978-90-420-3275-0 , pp. 297-312, here 303 .
  29. ^ Wilson, Halsgericht, 2008, p. 40.
  30. ^ Wilson, Halsgericht, 2008, p. 42.
  31. ^ Wilson, Halsgericht, 2008, p. 43.
  32. ^ Wilson, Halsgericht, 2008, p. 45.
  33. Election 2004, p. 40.
  34. Scholz 2004, p. 18.
  35. Wahl 2004, pp. 42–43.
  36. Wahl 2004, pp. 43–44.
  37. Scholz 2004, p. 5.
  38. Election 2004, p. 1.
  39. Volker Wahl (Ed.): "The child in my body". Moral offenses and child murder in Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach under Carl August. A source edition, 1777-1786 . Böhlau, Weimar 2004, ISBN 978-3-7400-1213-7 .
  40. Rüdiger Scholz: The short life of Johanna Catharina Höhn. Child murders in the Weimar of Carl August and Goethe. The files on the cases of Johanna Catharina Höhn, Maria Sophia Rost and Margarethe Dorothea Altwein . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2004, ISBN 978-3-8260-2989-9 .
  41. Scholz 2004, p. 40.
  42. Printed in Wahl (Ed.) 2004, pp. 227–231.
  43. Scholz 2004, p. 41.
  44. ^ René Jacques Baerlocher: Afterword . In: Volker Wahl (Ed.): "The child in my body". Moral offenses and child murder in Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach under Carl August. A source edition, 1777-1786 . Böhlaus successor, Weimar 2004, ISBN 978-3-7400-1213-7 , p. 331–504, here 464 .
  45. Scholz 2004, pp. 41–42.
  46. Printed in Wahl (Ed.) 2004, pp. 232–238.
  47. Scholz 2004, p. 42.
  48. Scholz 2004, p. 44.
  49. Scholz 2004, pp. 45–46.
  50. See Baerlocher 2004, pp. 470–488; Scholz 2004, pp. 46–49.
  51. ^ Sigrid Damm: Christiane and Goethe. A research . Insel, Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-458-16912-1 , p. 94 .
  52. ^ W. Daniel Wilson: The Goethe taboo. Protest and human rights in classic Weimar . Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, Munich 1999, ISBN 978-3-423-30710-9 , pp. 7-8 .
  53. ^ W. Daniel Wilson: Goethe, His Duke and Infanticide. New Documents and Reflections on a Controversial Execution . In: German Life and Letters . tape 61 , no. 1 , January 1, 2008, ISSN  1468-0483 , p. 7–32, here 32 , doi : 10.1111 / j.1468-0483.2007.00408.x .
  54. ^ Rüdiger Scholz: Goethe's guilt for the execution of Johanna Catharina Höhn . In: Goethe yearbook . tape 120 , 2003, p. 324–331, here 331 .
  55. Scholz 2003, p. 324.
  56. Wilson, Goethe, 2008, p. 27.
  57. Speech by Federal President Roman Herzog on the occasion of the 250th birthday of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on April 14, 1999 in the Kaisersaal of the Frankfurt Römer . In: Etudes Germaniques . tape 54 , Spezial, 1999, p. 11–18, here 12 .
  58. Damm 1998, p. 89.
  59. Wolfgang Wittkowski: witch hunt on Goethe. November 1783: Execution of a child murderer and 'The Divine' . In: Oxford German Studies . tape 31 , no. 1 , 2002, p. 63-102, here 69 .
  60. Baerlocher 2004, p. 496.
  61. Baerlocher 2002, p. 216; Wittkowski 2002, p. 88.
  62. Wahl 2004, pp. 35–36.
  63. Scholz 2004, p. 23. Wilson, Goethe, 2008; Pp. 25-26.
  64. Damm 1998, pp. 89-90.
  65. Baerlocher 2004, p. 488.
  66. Wilson, Goethe, 2008, p. 8.
  67. Kord 2011, p. 307.
  68. Kord 2011, p. 308.
  69. a b Kord 2011, p. 311.
  70. a b Kord 2011, p. 309.
  71. Kord 2011, p. 300.
  72. Germaine Groetzinger: Men's fantasies and women's reality . Child murderers in the literature of Sturm und Drang . In: Annegret Pelz, Sabine Bröck-Sallah (ed.): Women, literature, politics . Argument, Hamburg 1988, ISBN 978-3-88619-172-7 , p. 263-286 .
  73. Kord 2011, pp. 309-310.
  74. Victor Glass: Goethe's execution . Rotbuch, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86789-058-8 .