Gesche Gottfried seemed to be out of luck. You sick around and killed your Loved ones. Parents, husbands, children, friends, the twin brother – all of enigmatic diseases have been taken away. And Geshe took care of, nursed family and friends from the bed to the stretcher. The”angel of Bremen” was made, the woman of faith, who was born in 1785 in poor conditions. And was the fate of so bad.
In the year 1828 she was arrested for multiple murder. The angel was a poisoner that killed 15 people and at least 19 others ill made. Up to today, is puzzled about the motives of the woman. Also, you could only contribute little to the enlightenment. For three years she was in prison before the death sentence was enforced. During this time she was interrogated, their statements are documented as a Protocol and reveal above all an ignorance of their own deeds. “A reason why I gave the child something that I had not. […] I’ve given so many, has done nothing to me”, said Gottfried.
The forced marriage
Magarethe Gottfried, geborene Timm and called Geshe, 1785, the daughter of a ladies tailor, and a woollen seamstress in conditions of poverty to the world. She is described as beautiful, even as a little vain. She wants to be an actress, and secretly takes dance and French lessons. By getting Married you want to know anything. When she is 21 years old, makes her father, that’s the end, and married it with the saddler Johann Gerhard Miltenberg. As a result, the family company on the rise, and financially.
Happy will not happen, because her husband, an “irresponsible drunk”, such as Peer-Meter-writes in “Gesche Gottfried: A Bremer tragedy”, frittered away the parental heritage is in the brothel and on the counter. His physical deterioration accelerated, he became a case for nursing Care. And Geshe God Siegfried’s first victim. “You had to live with the unloved husband, and to Nurse her before now. It was not hatred, what she felt against him, but Boredom to disgust,” wrote Ludwig Scholz about the possible motives in his “criminal-psychological study” in 1913. After seven years of marriage and three children Gesche made final. To kill her husband, she was creative: your mother had smeared the bread with mouse butter – a mixture of arsenic and Lard – and the attic is designed. Geshe scraped The poison down and there was the Breakfast, the unloved husband. He suffered from vomiting, diarrhea, and thirst – and recovered. Therefore, they gave another dose in his Porridge. Four days later he died, officially of “hot-tempered gall fever,” says his doctor, Dr. Olbers.
How the family was murdered
Two years later, Gesche Gottfried murdered her mother, who was ill moved in with her daughter to care for. Gottfried mixed arsenic under the lemonade. “While I can the poison, with the love of God, a hearty loud Laugh, that I was startled myself in front of it. But all the same, thought I, this is the love God would give me to prove to you that my mother would now be laughing soon in the sky,” writes Gottfried in custody about the murder. Two days later, her mother dies in agony.
“As if in a frenzy, the murder of your family now,” writes a Peer-Meter. Her youngest daughter gets the poison on the butter cake, which was of the funeral of the grandmother left. A week later, she poisoned her eldest daughter, seven-year-old Adeline. After four days of agony the child died. Six weeks later, she mixed her father’s poison in the soup, he dies after a day. Then her son Heinrich followed, but only after eleven weeks. “Why can I not let this boy live longer than the other, I know”, quoted in meters from the Gottfried Protocol. A year later, her brother, had lost force, and suddenly had appeared died. The whole family was wiped out, until, in 1816 – only Gesche survived.
About the reasons of the murders Gottfried expresses contradictory. She explains in the prison, they feared that the wine merchant Michael Christoph Gottfried do you want to marry with the children would not have. Also, your parents would have been against the connection. Both reasons revokes it later. And: Just a day before the marriage with Gottfried, whose name she took, mixes you also give him arsenic in his food. He died a few days later.
Financial uncertainty for Gesche Gottfried
Similar to the first marriage gift to stand in front of financial problems. Miltenberg had left her an indebted Sattelei, Gottfried a mountain of debt. After the first marriage her father had set it up, after marriage number 2, it made the gift themselves – the tactic remained, of course, the same: Both lügten. You vertrösteten the creditors, Geshe on even took out a loan, though you had assets to sell, their quality of life. “Who had no sympathy for the hard tested! To do this, you doubled the proofs of her for years recognized charity. As a Comforter, and angels appeared at the poor, the sick and lying-in women, and was blessed everywhere,” writes Scholz, a little sardonically.
Six years later, a new man stepped up – at least officially – to the life of Gesche. The fashion retailer Paul Thomas carpenter blessed in 1823, although the Temporal (what a Surprise), but the two were not married. Geshe inherited anyway.
Then you poison people indiscriminately. In 1825, died in her friend Anna Lucia Meyerholz, a music teacher, she had lubricated the mice of butter on toast. Your neighbors Johann Mosees tormented you arsenic for almost a year, until he died in 1825, after long Suffering. Financially you stand on rounding, your house had to sell it to the couple Rumpff. However, they were gift as a housekeeper in exchange for room and Board. As an “aunt” lived in their household and took care of the family. Until Wilhelmine Rumpff, only shortly after birth, two days before Christmas eve, 1826, died. Also the nurse of the infant was poisoned.
More Mice Butter
In may, the fact she killed the maid, girlfriend Beta, Schmidt and their three-year-old daughter. This murder is almost cynical. Initially, you had to get the mice butter of your mother. As this was consumed, murdered Geshe. Six years it was quiet around the Poisoner. Until you asked your girl friend Beta-Schmidt is to buy in a pharmacy new mice butter. With the arsenic she killed more. In the autumn of 1827, her old friend Frederick Small had to die.
The attempted murder of Johann Rumpff should be to your doom. Also he had mixed arsenic in food, he is not ill, but died. A piece of pork, and brought it has well tolerated, him on Geshe’s track. Because of the piece he cut only small corners – the Rest went into the stock. When he repeated it later in the day, he noticed a small white grains. As he hath spoke to said that it was fat. But his suspicion was aroused. He let the grains investigate, and arsenic was detected.
Imprisonment and beheading
On 6. March 1928 was arrested Gesche Gottfried. She sat three years in prison and was interrogated by the Senator Franz Friedrich Droste. They confessed to 15 murders and many more cases of poisoning. Some of you could remember, whether she had smeared the poison on bread or cake. She told them that she had against many of the poisoning victims also nothing. Nevertheless, they had to die. Almost carelessly and without remorse she tells Droste their action.
Three years of pre-trial detention for a capital crime are unusual in the 1830s. However, this is not without reason that The justice system wanted to solve the puzzle of Gesche Gottfried, the backgrounds of the murders to understand – from a scientific and humanitarian motives. Your case should be one of the first in which the defense pleads insanity. Your lawyer Friedrich Leopold Voget described according to the Meter, “a cold calculating, from lower, profit addicts motives murder at the end of Gesche Gottfried”. Meters criticizes the portrayal of women and the Bremen citizenship. Rather, it was given years before the arrest, evidence that Gesche Gottfried was regarded as the “angel of Bremen”, but that it did give warnings that you handle with poison. And that these warnings were ignored. The nervous doctor Ludwig Scholz comes in 1913 to the conclusion that Gesche Gottfried was not a cunning, evil creature, but “a woman that is permeated by self-deception, so that” the actress Gottfried with the real Gottfried eventually zusammenfloß in a Person”. 21. April 1831 is Magarethe “beheaded Gesche” Gottfried in front of around 35,000 spectators at the Bremen Cathedral square. It should be the last public execution in Bremen.