von Hellmut Schramm, Ph. D.
1944
a translation by R. Belser of
Der jüdische Ritualmord
Eine historische Untersuchung
Very rarely has a ritual-murder trial had as a result the sort of comprehensive literature and coverage as the proceedings before the jury-court of Cleves on the occasion of the boy-murder of Xanten.
As this literature also gives us important information about the dominating Jewish influence and the anti-Jewish trends at all levels of society which became increasingly strong in reaction, but which remained without influence due to lack of unified leadership, we wish, since what has been written down in the records remains even today easily accessible to anyone, first and foremost to make use of the stenographic records of the jury-court hearing at Cleves [1] in composing this chapter.
On 29 June 1891, Peter-and-Paul Day, a Monday, the cabinetmaker Hegmann of Xanten on the Lower Rhine was missing his little five-and-a-half year-old son since ten-thirty in the morning. The mother of the child, later questioned about this by the President of the court, told on the second day of the hearings (5 July 1892), the following:
"I awakened the child before I walked to church (on Peter-and-Paul's Day, 1891) and took him from his little bed and then let him down; then I went to church.
"When I came back, I put a smock on him, then he went off and I have not seen him again. We drank our coffee at breakfast about ten-thirty.
"When I was making the buttered bread ready for the other children, I said: 'But where is Schängchen' -- that's what we called Johann --
"Now it was noon... it got to be two o'clock and he still wasn't there. The child never stayed away past the time [when he was supposed to]."
She looked for her child all day -- her husband was still seriously ill; now and then people brought her a chair so she could rest. In the evening, toward six o'clock, (232) the wife of the ritual-slaughterer Buschhoff appeared and said in response to the lament of the mother: "Pray one Vaterunser [an Our Father, or Pater Noster], he will probably come back." -- We recall the cynicism of the Jewish family Scharf in Tisza-Eszlár!
The mother made her way to church again:
"I lighted a candle in the church before Saint Anthony, it was still not burned out when I heard that people came and said the child had been found. I went home, and it was already full of people. Buschhoff and his wife also came."
-- Frau Hegmann was in the late stage of pregnancy. The Jewish wife called out:
"Comfort her -- she's getting a replacement for it..."
The Buschhoffs busied themselves around the Hegmanns' place in the most intrusive fashion. The ritual-slaughterer Buschhoff [physically] supported the Hegmann father, who a few months previously had suffered a neurological attack, so that he would not fall off his chair:
"My husband fended him off fiercely, he did not want to be held, he said that it seemed to him as if Buschhoff had bloody hands and had soiled him with them." The Hegmann father before the court (second day of the hearing):
"Just as Buschhoff laid his hand on my back, I felt as if a bloody hand were reaching out for my back...Buschhoff held me firmly, which I did not want to allow, I always wanted to get away from him... "
-- The court chairman:
"You had the thought, then, that he had killed the child and so you developed a dislike for him?"
-- witness: "Yes. He (Buschhoff) was very pushy..."
The Buschhoffs still had a fizz powder on their account at the drugstore, and wanted to brew a strong pot of coffee for the Hegmanns.
Frau Buschhoff babbled: "I'll make a good cup of coffee, and as true as it is that God lives in Heaven, I've taken thirty grams in one coffee pot!" Frau Hegmann thanked her:
"No, I want to have my child back first, I'm not drinking..."
Finally the Jews left. The Hegmanns breathed with relief: "Thank God that we're alone now!" (From the second day of the hearing.)
On this evening, toward six-thirty, the maid of the town councilor Küppers, Dora Moll, had found the child's body in a passage of the barn, lying on his side with his little legs spread, and having bled to death from a (233) frightful cut through the neck, which extended in a circle from one ear to the other and had run through the soft tissues down to the cervical vertebrae.
"I saw something lying there," explained this witness before the court, "I thought it had been hens and I would chase them off.
"When I looked more closely, I saw the body lying there...
It was lying with the little legs toward the barn door and with his little head toward the winnowing machine...
When I approached more closely, I saw right away that it was the child of Hegmann..." (First day of the hearing).
It struck all witnesses who were called here, that apart from slight traces of blood, there were no pools of blood or blood spray anywhere to be noted!
The staff physician (retired), Dr. Steiner, who had examined the body on the same evening in the presence of the court assessor Buchwald and of the mayor Schleß , and had determined that the [amount of] caked blood (the clotted blood) was very insignificant, perhaps as much as a small egg, gave the following expert opinion before the court:
1. All the soft tissues of the neck were cut through, from the right ear through the throat to the left ear, even the muscles which were located at the cervical vertebrae were cut through, and the cut penetrated down to the cervical vertebrae.
2. This circular cut was unquestionably performed by a practiced hand with a very sharp and large instrument.
3. A jet of blood, a sharply delineated wave of blood, appeared to have poured down over the clothes.
4. The traces of blood which were present were extraordinarily scant: "In my opinion the blood which was found at the site was not all the blood which flowed out of the body. I consider it to be that blood which, after the first blood flowed out, still flowed out after death ensued.
5. No signs whatsoever of an unnatural assault were present. (Dr. Steiner on the first day of proceedings in Cleves.)
Both of the other witnesses testified as follows:
"After the examination protocol of the body itself had been (234) recorded, the area closest to the body was dealt with; neither on the winnower nor on a post which lay in the vicinity, was I able to discover traces of blood...
"we checked with a lantern and two lamps, in order to absolutely be able to see individual blood traces but we found none."
(Assessor Buchwald on the first days of the hearings.)
"At the inspection of the body we found this terrible cut; we found the child with his neck cut through from one ear to the other.
"It looked horrible, it made a frightful impression, I have to say that in the first moment I said to myself:
'That can only have been done by a skillful hand that knows what it's doing with a knife; it must have been a very large knife.'
"I cannot conceal the fact that I had suspicions about the Jewish butchers Buschhoff and Bruckmann living in the neighborhood..."
(Mayor Schleß on the third day of the hearings.)
Also, the autopsy protocol of the court physicians Bauer and Nüninghoff of 30 June 1891 confirmed the absolute blood-emptiness of the internal organs of the child's body. Point by point the descriptions read: "Completely void of blood," "extraordinarily bloodless," "pale and empty," "empty of blood," "totally void of blood," and so forth.
Furthermore, the separate expert opinion of Dr. Bauer of 15 July 1891 had to concede in its essential points, that the blood volume of the child was evacuated by the pumping power of the heart in the shortest time, perhaps within one minute, so that
"the body was, in fact, empty of blood...
With the highest degree of probability, it was a long, strong, and sharp butcher knife with which the cuts were executed."
Crossways above the chin, there was a smaller cut, the surface of the right side of the chin was cut through, and the cut continued to the right shoulder of the overalls and the smock, which was cut through to a hair's breadth, "thread by thread," in this spot.
-- People were very puzzled over these unusual features, although the explanation was really obvious:
The child, as he saw the knife coming toward him, in his fear of death, instinctively tried to protect himself by moving his head backwards, which was in the clamping grip of the murderer standing behind him, and thereby raised his shoulders, so that (235) the knife, which was just starting its cut, first cut into the chin and through the part of the right shoulder protected by the pieces of clothing!
The lack of blood at the site of discovery had immediately convinced all eyewitnesses that the the child was first killed at another location and was brought into the barn just after he bled to death, not least of all for the intention of covering up traces of the crime and to incriminate others with the murder as much as possible. -- A devilish plan!
The magistrate Riesbroeck of Xanten later stated before the jury-court in Cleves:
"The body gave me the impression that it was not killed there but rather had been brought there." (First day of the hearings.)
But now the alert ten year-old Gerhard Heister -- described by the chief state's attorney himself as an "intelligent young man" -- had remarked how on the day of the murder, toward ten o'clock in the morning, a white, unclothed arm pulled the small Hegmann child from out of the street and into the Buschhoff shop.
We wish to insert the crucial passage of his examination here word-for-word, due to its particular importance.
President [of the court]: "Do you still know what you saw on the Sunday of Peter-and-Paul of the previous year?" [Note that Schramm tells us that Peter-and-Paul Day in 1891 actually fell upon a Monday, so that the President of the court is probably in error here.]
G. Heister: "I was lying on the stone on the corner of Cleves Street and Church Street."
Pr.: "Did some children come onto Church Street?"
G.H.: "Yes. There were two boys."
Pr.: "And then one was pulled, by someone's arm into Buschhoff's? Do you know which child?"
G.H.: "Schängchen Hegmann."
Pr.: Didn't you also see what the others did?"
G.H.: "They ran away. Stephan Kernder ran to his house, and Peter Venhoff also went to his [own] house."
Pr.: "What was the arm like, that came out of the house?"
G.H.: "It was bare. It came out up to the shoulder."
Pr.: "Did it come from the doorway of the house?"
G.H.: "Yes, out of the doorway."
Pr.: "Do you know out of which house the arm came?" (236)
G.H.: "Out of the house of Buschhoff."
Pr.: "Was it Schängchen who was pulled inside?"
G.H.: "Yes. -- I have never seen Schängchen again."
The mother of Heister had been questioned by the Commissar Verhülsdong. She told him that her young son had related to her in a quite relaxed way, that he had been sitting on the curbstone at Cleves and Church Streets and wanted to see whether Papa was walking to church and by this chance, he saw both his acquaintances Stephan Kernder and Peter Venhoff with Schängchen Hegmann walk up to Buschhoff's house, and then he noticed all at once how a hand came out of this house and Schängchen was gone...
The aforementioned little five year-old Kernder had been walking hand-in-hand with Hänschen [Both Hans and Hänschen, like Schängchen, are diminutives of the Christian name Johann, and the Hegmann child was usually called by one of these nicknames.] on the street in front of Buschhoff's.
He told his mother a few days after the murder of Hänschen , that he had gone across the street because Frau Buschhoff had stood behind her door and called out: "Schängchen, will you go out for me? Come in here!"
But the little Hegmann boy resisted, at which she pulled him into the house.
"I and Peter Venhoff, we were left standing there, when Frau Buschhoff said: "Just go and play."
-- The small Stephan then told that Frau Buschhoff had spoken "very rudely."!
(Statement of the father, Heinrich Kernder, on the fourth day of the hearings.)
The third play companion, little Peterchen Venhoff, made such an impression of being intimidated, that this likewise very important witness could not be questioned!
A gardner by the name of Mölders had been walking by the Buschhoff property around the same time; he had seen how an arm had been extended from out of the Jewish shop and pulled a small youngster inside. However, he was unable to recognize the child himself, since he saw him from the back.
"In the direction of the cathedral, the children were in front of me, and as I was at Buschhoff's, a white arm emerged. A child was pulled inside. That, I clearly did see ..."
On the day of the burial of the victim, the Buschhoff couple apparently tried again to dispense "comforting words" in the residence of the Hegmanns; but thereupon, a scream was heard (237) directly.
-- "Buschhoff and his wife came past our door and were totally confused, they came out of Hegmann's, and they were completely pale and didn't say anything..."
(The witness Mrs. Ventoff on the second day of the hearings.)
The father Hegmann had flung out a single sentence at Buschhoff:
"You are the murderer of my child!" -- Buschhoff had not defended himself...
Since no further evidence about the whereabouts of the child [i.e., between the time he left his mother and the time his body was found] existed, suspicion had to be directed upon the Buschhoff family.
Buschhoff himself was a ritual-slaughterer and at the same time a "prayer leader" in the synagogue -- his father had been strongly suspected of a ritual-crime a number of years earlier!
From out of the butcher shop of the Jew, one could come into Küppers's barn directly by means of back door, which Buschhoff also regularly made use of as a passageway.
The judicial investigation suffered at the very start from great carelessness. The first state's attorney of Cleves, Baumgardt , sent out an assessor who had been temporarily transferred to him for training, as investigator; Baumgardt himself came out for the first time a week later.
Already, a short time later, the Board of the Jewish community, with the Head Rabbi of Krefeld, suddenly appeared unannounced at the residence of the magistrate Riesbroeck in Xanten and with Jewish pushiness asked "about the way things stood."
But the magistrate told them curtly that he could say nothing, the documents were in the hands of the state attorney's office (magistrate Riesbroeck on the first day of the hearings).
Now Baumgardt held the opinion from the beginning, that what was accepted by all circles in the populace of Xanten , that this was a case of a ritual-murder, was downright nonsense, unworthy of an "educated man," and -- as he later said -- a "rural superstition."
For this state's attorney, it follows that the accused Jewish butcher, directly after the first report, was completely innocent, witnesses making statements against Buschhoff were spoken to harshly
-- the same tactics of intimidation were employed later in the Polna ritual-murder trial by the Jewish examining judge Reichenbach, as also in Konitz!
On the contrary, a house search at the Buschhoffs, in accordance with usual procedures, wasn't even carried out -- despite extremely suspicious (238) factors!
Probably on the basis of higher instructions, Buschhoff himself demanded his arrest "in order to be able to prove his innocence"! This maneuver does not appear new to us, since the Jews at some earlier ritual-murder trials had of course already had this sly idea!
State attorney Baumgardt seemed to want to see nothing. He lost precious time by pursuing baseless leads in the beginning.
On 30 July -- thus a full month after the blood-murder -- the Crime Commissar Verhülsdong was assigned to Xanten. He came to be convinced, completely without prejudice, that the child disappeared on the property of the Jewish butcher, and moved for the arrest of the Buschhoff family at the state attorney's office.
Baumgardt refused!
After almost another two months had gone by, and the entire process had caused unrest and exasperation in the populace -- thus the Jews had their own "secret police" -- the criminologist Wolff from Berlin appeared.
He too very quickly believed that the evidence discovered was sufficient to execute the arrest of the Buschhoffs -- as he later stated as a defense witness in the Oberwinder [2] trial.
In his report of 6 October 1891, among other things, Wolff spoke of the fact that the completion of the circumstantial evidence was possible only with the immediate arrest of Buschhoff, since the latter would take flight across the nearby border "as soon as he becomes aware of the new state of affairs through recriminations and further investigation."
The Jews, who had not reckoned with this turn of events, a quarter-year after the murder, much less than they had reckoned that the Xanten Jewish community itself had proposed and -- financed [3] -- the sending of this Crime Commissar, moved heaven and (239) earth.
The synagogue director, Abraham Oster, was at the head of the group of Jews zealously trying to exonerate the well-befriended Buschhoff. After a short time, they were so sure of themselves that in the stronghold of Jewry, Frankfurt am Main, money was collected with which to procure a "new home" for the Buschhoff family -- and actually, Buschhoff was released from custody on Christmas Eve of still the same year (1891), without the case having been cleared up through a proper court procedure!
The Kreuzzeitung wrote on 20 January 1892:
"But on the side, apparently under official masks, but without doubt here by order of the synagogue, all sorts of persons are wandering around in Cleves and Mayen, who likewise played a role in the derailing of the legal proceedings.
Concerning this point and concerning the dealings of the Rabbi in Crefeld with the chief states's attorney in Cologne [4] and other persons in Cleves, further revelations shall still follow as opportunity allows."
Furnished with abundant money, Buschhoff was sent off to Cologne. Protest meetings in all the larger cities finally succeeded in the investigation against Buschhoff being taken up anew. A German-Social petition of those days to the Justice Minister von Schelling reads:
"The ritual-slaughterer Buschhoff, strongly suspected of the murder in Xanten, has been released from investigatory custody, even though the inquiries of Crime Commissar Wolff have yielded overwhelming circumstantial evidence for his guilt.
"The German-Social Association at Eberfeld expresses its regret over this release, since it (240) might be likely to bring about the perturbations of consciousness of the Law, caused by the cases of Paasch, Manché, Bleichröder, Liebmann, Morris de Jong [5] and others, in even higher levels of society.
"Therefore the German-Social Association at Eberfeld directs to Your Excellency the urgent request, that Your Excellency might use your influence to see that the investigation of this Buschhoff case is taken up again. The German people are entitled to demand that any appearance of insecurity of the Law and of inequality of the Law be avoided..."
On 9 February 1892, as clouds were again gathering above Buschhoff, the Deputy Rickert, the Chairman of the Verein zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus [literally:
Association for the Warding Off of Anti-Semitism], publisher of the notorious Antisemiten-Spiegel [Mirror of Anti-Semites], by occupation the Regional Director (retired) of Danzig, "the meritorious General of the Troops for Protection of Jewry," undertook without warning a planned and inspired "offensive of exoneration" at a session of the Prussian House of Deputies, which had been scheduled for entirely other matters.
We shall not go into closer detail regarding his "profound" arguments. Nevertheless, we do give this speech, which is not without interest as a document of its times, in the Appendix in excerpted. [6]
On 8 February 1892, Buschhoff had been "arrested" for the second time -- the entire procedure created the impression on the populace of a contrived and boldly acted comedy! The examining judge was the very elderly Brixius.
But when it leaked out that he had appointed for the defense of Buschhoff, of all people, the attorney Fleischhauer , his son-in-law, the prosecution of the supposedly so-difficult law case was handed over to district councilman Birk.
The course of the whole investigation proceeded in a strangely confused manner right from the beginning. Because of these events, the Prussian Minister of Justice Schelling was interpellated several times in the house of Deputies and attacked particularly by the conservative side; but serious recriminations (241) made due to the halting and unsure trial procedure remained unanswered.
One full year after the crime -- analogous to the Skurz case -- the hearings began before the jury-court at Cleves (4-14 July 1892). The Chairman of the Court of Justice was District Court Director Kluth, the charges were to be presented by the state's attorney Baumgardt -- therefore by the same man who originally rejected the arresting of Buschhoff and who acted during the course of the trial as his zealous defender.
Moreover, he was given as an assistant for the solving of his task the Cologne Chief State's Attorney Hamm, so that it was actually superfluous that three more "famous" defense attorneys (Stapper/Düsseldorf, Gammersbach /Cologne, Fleischhauer /Cleves) stood ready to assist.
Thus Buschhoff went to trial well-armed! The bill of indictment of 20 April 1892 had once again summarized all incriminating points which led to the arrest of Buschhoff and read in a crucial passage:
"The Buschhoff family must therefore explain what happened to the young Hegmann. That they are not able to do this, and that they dispute at all having pulled the boy Hegmann into the house on that morning and having him there, makes them extremely suspect."
There were 167 witnesses heard. All of the grounds for suspicion of Buschhoff were fully confirmed!
Aside from the statements of Mölders and the children Heister and Kernder, which have already been given in another connection, the several days of the jury-court hearings produced overwhelming evidence!
Shortly before the disappearance of the little Hegmann boy, several witnesses observed how Buschhoff ducked into his house with a strange, strikingly ugly Jew, who was carrying a black leather bag and was coming from the train station.
President: "On Peter-and-Paul Day of the previous year, were you walking through Church Street? When was this?
Witness Peter Dornbach:
"Approximately five minutes before ten. I was walking to high mass. Buschhoff ran into me 25 steps in front of his house with another man, a stranger, apparently an Israelite.
This man had on a defective suit, his hat (242) was pushed in. He was in a most intimate conversation with Buschhoff." (Fifth day of the hearings).
Between eleven and twelve o'clock this Jew, who was described according to other witness statements as "foreign" and "ugly," left the Buschhoff property and went back to the train station!
On the day of the murder, shortly before ten, the neighbor of Buschhoff, Wilhelm Küppers, heard a conspicuous clamor of voices through the somewhat obstructing door of the butcher house; to another [female] witness, these goings-on were "creepy." The cloistered brother van den Sandt, who was passing by, likewise heard several voices.
After the strange Jew had left Xanten, Buschhoff wandered, apparently without plan or purpose, through the streets in a terrible state of excitement. Many witnesses, who knew Buschhoff as an otherwise quiet man, were struck by this extraordinary excitement.
Shortly after eleven o'clock the witness Brandts first met him: "Buschhoff came up to me; something extraordinary must have happened, he seemed downright out of his mind..." (Second day of the hearings.)
The 72 year-old Peter Kempkes also met Buschhoff:
"He (Buschhoff) was running so fast, was rushing around so, his head was shaking. I thought to myself, he can well have done it..." (Fourth day of the hearings.)
Some hours later Buschhoff had to sign some business papers. His entire body was shaking so badly "that his hand had to be guided." -- In the evening, shortly before discovery of the body, he had himself under enough control that he went bowling at an inn -- which he had never done before -- and bought rounds for people there ("Buschhoff, what's made you so frisky?"), in order to be able to receive the news of the discovery of the slaughtered child's body with pretended equanimity.
In the early afternoon, at approximately two forty-five, a strange, younger, Jewish-looking man was up to something in the garden of Küppers, facing the house of Buschhoff. Unfortunately the witness involved was not able to describe his appearance more closely.
But she declared with certainty that he had to have been a stranger who was completely unknown to her, and who stayed in the garden for a long while and, like a sentry, (243) constantly walked up and down; when he felt himself observed by the witness, he concealed himself behind the fence palings.
"...I presume it was a Jew rather than a Christian; I wanted to see who it was, to me this was quite conspicuous during [the time of] the worship service."
(The witness Windheus on the sixth day of the hearings.) The individual, without a doubt a Jew who was standing as "a lookout" for what was then happening, had suddenly disappeared, however, as if vanished from the surface of the earth!
A short time later, Hermine Buschhoff, the adult daughter of the ritual-slaughterer, went across the gateway to the barn, and in such a way that she held her right side conspicuously toward the house of her parents; on this side she was carrying the heavy weight of a long object which tapered toward the bottom, which was wrapped up in a large gray sack. (The witness Mallmann on the third day of the hearings.)
Three and a half months after the crime, the policeman Schloer, who occasionally checked the residence of Buschhoff -- there could be no question at all of a systematic search -- found, right in the very bottom of a kitchen cabinet, a sack which bore a strikingly large and dark spots.
Along with other things, it was brought to the city council building and spread out on a table. Mayor Schleß said the following about this (on the sixth day of the hearings):
"As Frau Buschhoff later entered the hall to be questioned by the Herr magistrate Riesbroeck, she was visibly upset and that caught my attention; she said:
'Herr Mayor! God, have you brought along the old sack that we have used to lay over the barrels when we smoke [i.e., smoke meats, etc.].'
But she was very upset by it, and I told Commissar Wolff about this directly. I did not show her the sack, she herself found it among the objects which were lying on the table.
-- The large dark spots seemed suspicious to the mayor; he thought they were blood spots!
In the trial, Buschhoff then claimed that they were "pickling spots"!
A court chemist and a professor said of it that there was no longer any point in investigating the sack, it most likely could have been determined that there was blood there... A thorough examination was actually not performed!
In the late afternoon Buschhoff went into the synagogue, (244) then afterwards to bowling in a neighboring inn. Before his bowling companions had yet learned that the little Hegmann child had been found in the barn, the Jew knew all about it: the thirteen year-old Jewish scion Siegmund came running and whispered something in his father's ear!
On the way home, Buschhoff questioned his neighbor Küppers in a memorable way, whether in his barn there "had not been a sharp object, where the child could have fallen in on it, a knife or something else?"
On the following day the property of Buschhoff, but especially the cellar, was subjected to a thorough cleaning, various laundry was washed. The door in the back of the butcher shop, going toward the gateway, had been nailed shut on the evening before the murder and this had been especially noticed by Küppers; now the nails were removed again...
About eight days after the murder, Buschhoff came with Siegmund from the city hall through the middle gate when the young Jewish boy said something to his father, who was hard of hearing. [7]
The witness Roelen, who was walking a few steps behind the two, heard quite clearly how Buschhoff answered:
"Ach, if they have no proof, they can't do anything to us! "
-- When this witness was then later walking past the property of the ritual-slaughterer, she had dirty water poured on her by the latter! (Roelen on the fourth day of the hearings.)
But Siegmund was slowly developing, in a way similar to the children of the temple servant Scharf in Tisza-Eszlár , into an enfant terrible of the Jewish bunch -- only there was no Bary in Xanten! Another Xanten citizen, Anna Mauritz was walking only two or three steps in front of father and son Buschhoff on Cleves Street.
Suddenly Siegmund, who apparently had complete knowledge of everything, crowed: "Papa, if only it hadn't happened." Highly embarrassed, the Jewish father pulled his young son close to him, looked around with dismay, and disappeared around the next corner!
Shortly after the murder occurred, Frau Remy was traveling on the train (245) from Goch to Büderich to a wedding.
"When I boarded the train in Xanten, two Jewish gentlemen came aboard with me. I was alone in the coupé; we had a few minutes stopover there. The gentlemen were saying that they were sick of Xanten.
The one said: 'Yes, I would have already have gotten out of there if it had been possible. I would not have been so stupid; that was the stupidest thing that he did, that he brought it to the barn.'"
But when the two Jews heard the name of the witness [being called] at a station along the way, they nudged each other and continued speaking in a foreign language.
On the next to last day of the hearings, the schoolboy Hölzgen gave a serious statement. A year before the youngster was watching, at another Jewish butcher's in the Mill Street, how a cow was supposed to be slaughtered. He stepped closer without being seen, so as to "see the thing for once."
In the slaughterhouse there were three ritual-slaughterers present, who were earnestly discussing the death of the Hegmann child:
"We need only keep this secret among ourselves, say nothing, and impress upon Buschhoff, that he doesn't blurt something out"...
"They've already gotten quite a bit, but that they shall not get!"
The intelligent youngster went immediately to the mayor, to inform him of the overheard conversation. The latter advised the witness to write down what he had heard. The young boy was able to present the paper to the court and read his statement from it! The ritual-slaughterer Bruckmann called out:
"Nothing was spoken about the murder. No, nothing at all was said about it, nothing at all!"
In spite of all obfuscations, matters had shaped up extremely critically for Buschhoff in the course of the eight-day questioning of witnesses -- then the doctors were sent in to help -- the same procedure had, of course, been employed in Tisza-Eszlár as well!
A faculty composed of four physicians, after one year advanced the basic -- and for the outcome of the trial, definitive -- thesis that the traces of blood in the barn, which they admittedly had not even seen, were sufficient [for them] to maintain that the slaughtering of the child had taken place in the barn -- therefore, that the place of discovery was the scene of the crime, while the expert opinion of the staff physician Dr. Steiner, which had been recorded still on the evening of the day of the murder (246) had yielded the decisive findings that only very insignificant traces of blood, considering the condition of total emptiness of blood of the body, had been noted in the vicinity of the place of discovery, that the child therefore could not possibly have bled to death in the barn -- nevertheless, the court accepted the opinion of the faculty!
The neck-cut [they said] could have been performed with any sort of knife-like instrument, even with a pocket knife (!) -- a so-called slaughtering knife, as was found in Buschhoff's residence -- had not been necessary for this!
And now, in order to exonerate Judaism per se from the suspicion of ritual-murder, the so-called "expert opinion" of the Straßburg Professor Nöldeke -- we have already gotten to know him -- was drawn upon.
This unusual "expert" appeared on the second day of the hearing already and admitted on being asked, that
"in the laws of the Talmud it is very difficult to find one's way."
Nöldeke gave to understand that he wasn't entirely well-read, that the Talmud was very voluminous, "it consists of twelve thick volumes, which one tackles only with the greatest reluctance," but he could still state -- disregarding all of this -- "As far as I know, there is in this (the Talmud) no evidence at all for ritual-murder."
-- Nöldeke called it "frivolous, through and through," "when over and over again it is repeated that the Jews need the blood of Christians for ritual purposes."
But while the hearings at Cleves were still going on, the "Professor of Hebrew Antiquity at the German university in Prague," Rohling, directed a dynamic letter to the Court of Justice dated 10 July 1892, which sharply attacked the brazen arguments of Nöldeke and described blood-murders as historical truths!
In his letter, Rohling informed [his readers] that the facts of history could not be denied.
In spite of the "castration" of certain rabbinical works, there were still texts here and there, "which refer to the subject (of ritual-murder) and contain hints which, despite all the precautions of editing, speak very clearly in light of historical events."
-- Because of its importance, we will give this letter of Rohling in its complete text in the Appendix! Letter of Rohling to the Court at Cleves
(247) Finally, in order to shake the statements of the chief witness Mölders, who had seen how an arm from out of the Buschhoff shop had pulled a child inside, the state's attorney Baumgardt claimed that Mölders would not even have been able to see because of conditions at the locale; thereby the chief state's attorney was casting doubt on the credibility of this chief witness -- a shameful hand-in-hand working for Jewish interests!
A court summons in Xanten [i.e., a trip to the actual location], however, brilliantly justified the statement of Mölder, as the state's attorney himself was forced to admit!
This move for the exoneration of Buschhoff had to be regarded as having failed. But something else was put together! In the later plaidoyer [French: a barrister's speech] the state prosecutor's office could summarily declare:
The most important and least suspicious exonerating factor for Buschhoff's innocence is the proof of alibi!
How did things stand with this "proof"? -- It had been contrived! A dubious character, the neighbor of Buschhoff, Ullenboom, described by an out-of-town mayor and by various witnesses as a liar and a notorious loudmouth, as a boaster and thief, and declared a total liar by Crime Commissar Wolff, "he has tramped around in every possible factory on the Rhine; I also got the impression that there was something sexually wrong with him," considered to be "half-crazy" by a member of the jury, he appeared as a "defense witness" for Buschhoff, in that he stated that at the time in question he had stopped at Buschhoff's with his foster child -- indeed [he said], it could have been the child that disappeared into the Buschhoff shop!
Although he caught himself up in hopeless contradictions with this statement, so that the chairman of the court himself had to confirm that one of the witnesses must have committed perjury, and although doubt in the reliability and/or the soundness of mind of Ullenboom was expressed on all sides, the prosecution accepted his statements, held him to be merely "easily made nervous" but despite this "reliable" -- and constructed the proof of alibi with this!
But this masterpiece did not seem even to the state's attorney Baumgardt, to have been totally fishy! At a crucial passage in his plaidoyer are the significant words, from (248) which one could infer a great deal:
"It has probably not escaped your notice that the witness Ullenboom is a main witness, perhaps the most essential witness, and for those who did not really want to believe Ullenboom, it was very much of interest to prove that he also really was not credible.
The witness Ullenboom has been made to appear totally unbelievable.
Indeed, if that were true of him, then surely the proof of Buschhoff's whereabouts and actions, as they were essentially represented chiefly by the supporting testimony of the witness Ullenboom, would have been badly shaken..."
The next question before us is: how did the same Court of Justice behave toward prosecution witnesses? A few examples should suffice:
The witness Mallmann incriminated the Jewish butcher. Thereby he aroused the extreme indignation of the chief state's attorney:
"The most unbelievable of all witnesses is Mallmann, this peculiar man, who always speaks so hastily and never can be held to one point with his statements, who is afflicted with such stirring fantasies, that he considers himself called upon to support the charges against Buschhoff...
This witness deserves not the slightest belief..."
These declarations need no commentary! But on the occasion of the witness being examined to the point of exhaustion, Mallmann finally lost patience and said to the President: "It seems that you want to confuse me. I request that the protocol be shown to me!" (Sixth day of the hearings)
The witness Mölders, an honest, elderly workman with the best reputation -- since with their best efforts he could not be pronounced mentally disturbed -- was supposed to be labeled a total drunkard in order to refute his testimony!
The disgraceful procedure which was adopted toward this very important prosecution witness can only be described as shameful!
One brief scene from the courtroom should throw light upon this. Mölders is giving his testimony on how the child was pulled inside Buschhoff's.
President: "Into which house was the child pulled? Into Buschhoff's?"
Mölders: "Yes." (249)
Pr.: "Did you see that clearly?"
M.: "Yes."
Pr.: "You must reflect, your testimony is very important, you must be able to take responsibility for this before God and your conscience. Did you see that with complete certainty?"
M.: "Yes!"
Pr.: "Were you at that time still entirely sober?"
M.: "Yes, I had drunk only a Korn." [The German das Korn has two meanings in such a context: der Kornkaffee, "corn coffee," a sort of substitute coffee, like chicory during the Depression; but the word can also refer to German grain whiskey, like Schnaps. Since the setting is the witness's home in the morning, it should have been clear to the questioner -- and probably was -- that a coffee-like drink is meant, and not an alcoholic beverage.]
Pr.: "But you weren't drunk from that, from one Schnaps?"
M.: No. It is rare that, [being] sober in the morning, I drink Schnaps; I just drink coffee in the morning."
Pr.: That is what I hope, that you don't drink a Schnaps [when you are] already sober. I mean, if you are drinking one Schnaps, then do you really have your full faculties...?"
Another witness, Anton de Groo who as a former boss of Ullenboom was giving a very unfavorable assessment of him, was interrupted by chief state's attorney Hamm with the tactful words:
"The man seems sick, he seems to be apoplectic (inclined to strokes)..."
On the other hand, Jewish witnesses were "Herren" ["gentlemen"; when used in addressing a man, this word is similar to our "Sir," but perhaps a bit more respectful.]:
The Jew Isaac is questioned; for the chairman of the court, he is not simply "Isaac" like "Mölders," "Mallmann" and all the rest of the non-Jewish witnesses, but rather "Herr Isaac": "Herr Isaac! Do you still recall it?"
It must strike even the most unbiased and naive reader of the protocols, with what particular politeness the whole band of Jews was treated in this drama before the court, and even encouraged in their criminality!
At the beginning of the afternoon session of the fifth day of the hearings, the court chairman Kluth became outraged over the fact that one letter among others arrived for him in which it was said that he should now finally proceed against the Jew Buschhoff more quickly and not in such a friendly manner!
The chaplain Bresser wanted to work to calm the aroused populace in Xanten, to prevent thoughtless excesses from occurring. He told the court that these efforts had earned him the nickname "Chaplain of the Jews." For our purposes this would be entirely meaningless in itself, but the chairman of the court responded to this:
"You (Chaplain Bresser) can (250) refer to St. Bernhard, who also protected the Jews..."
The resident Beekmann is supposed to have come out of the barn of Oster, the head of the synagogue, one night, and the next day have been blind drunk. One of his relatives is supposed to have said:
"God, if only that goes well, the man has a lot of money..."
-- The chief state's attorney refused to summon this witness, with the argument, as casual as it was outrageous:
"If Beekman is supposed to reveal something and is given money by the Jews for it, that has no bearing on the case!"
Several witnesses had noticed a strange Jew on the day of the murder. These witnesses expressly emphasized that he was a stranger, for the few Jewish families who lived in Xanten, a small city of then barely 4000 inhabitants, were naturally all known.
It seems incomprehensible to us today that the prosecution did not pursue these tracks. In all probability, this was a case of the Dutch beggar-Jew Vellemann , who smuggled the blood of the victim over the border in the well-known black bag in combination with some middlemen.
Once again we have now compared all of the relevant interrogation protocols with one another. Their slight extent is already striking at a glance: in all, they take only a few lines, then the hearing is broken off without warning -- while entirely unimportant matters fill many pages! One gets the painful impression:
Buschhoff is not supposed to be further incriminated!
The witness Lenzen gives a short description of the strange Jew with a statement of the exact time. The chief state's attorney merely replied:
"To me that does not seem likely. It was probably on the day before, when a Jew was at Buschhoff's?"
The witness is certain: "No, on Peter-and-Paul's Day!"
The witness Bernsmann is also questioned: "Are you not mistaken, aren't you confusing the Sunday with the Monday?"
Witness: "I saw it with total certainty on the Monday!"
When the witness Dornbach is just at the point of giving detailed evidence concerning "the strange Jew," the questioning is cleverly stopped (251) and the witness led over to: "Were you satisfied with meat purchases (at Buschhoff's)?"
The mayor of Xanten, Schleß, wanted the reexamination of a witness, who had important evidence about the surfacing of a stranger in Xanten on 29 June 1891, "whom she believed to be a Jew." The prosecution, however, "found no reason to move to summon the witness again from our side"...
On the sixth day of the hearings a dispatch from the prosecutor's office in Dortmund came in to the jury-court in Cleves, according to which the book printer Reinhard had come in and wanted to make it known that 30 years before in Wesel blood was withdrawn from several girls by Jews by means of needle sticks.
-- State's Attorney Baumgardt: "I find no cause to make application [for summons]" -- "The court regards the matter as inessential and the summons of Reinhard for it unnecessary."
But staff physician Dr. Steiner, who possessed a reputation far beyond Xanten as a skillful doctor and researcher of the region -- he acquired the greatest merit for his historical research about Xanten -- and who was so "tactless" as to state that the quantity of blood found was much too scant for the butchering of the child to have taken place in the barn, had to see himself made the object of the public reproach in the courtroom, that he had [been the one to] first carry the "vague assumption" of a ritual-murder to the people!
In his summation on the next to last day of the hearings, Chief State's Attorney Hamm also attacked him:
"The entire erroneous management of the case at the scene is based upon the mistake, so that it, misled by the assertions of Dr. Steiner that not all the blood was present [at the scene], believed that: The child was not killed at the scene but was brought there as a corpse..."
Dr. Steiner was torn to shreds:
"At any rate it is a misfortune (aha!) that the first doctor (i.e., Dr. Steiner!) was a private physician not sufficiently trained in forensic medicine. It has already been more frequently lamented in medical circles, that private physicians are so poorly informed in matters of forensic medicine.
That is how the whole false idea originated..." (Chief State's Attorney Hamm).
Again, eight years later, after a completely similar (252) blood-murder in Polna, "there was a dearth of" -- according to the Jewish "verdict" -- "positive knowledge and critical capacity, especially in the local experts, who, cut off from the progress in science, conduct their practices in rough-and-ready style..."
Concerning the motive of the horrible crime, the chief state's attorney was of the opinion that the question of whether this had been a ritual-murder or not, did not belong within the boundaries of consideration; for him, this was merely an "academic" issue!
One of the defense attorneys of Buschhoff, the lawyer Stapper, supported by medical "experts," made the attempt to portray the boy Hegmann as a victim of an unnatural assault.
According to this notion, the perpetrator had been "overcome by strong arousal impelling him to great violence," and cut the child's neck open!
-- President: "Herr Dr. Steiner, do you concur in the opinions of the professors?"
-- Dr. Steiner: "That I cannot do!"
With bated breath, the public awaited the start of summation by the prosecuting attorneys on the next to last day of court. Going by the attitude of the Court of Justice up till now, nobody believed any longer that Buschhoff would be found guilty of the murder and condemned. At least it was to be hoped that a position would be taken on whether Buschhoff was to be regarded as an accomplice or as accessory.
But what the public got to hear exceeded even the worst suspicions of all levels of German society who were conscious of national events!
Chief State's Attorney Hamm spoke first. He had not the remotest thought of making any sort of charges against Buschhoff, but on the contrary gave a defending speech which had been composed from the start in a extremely clever and talmudic arrangement.
The reasons on which he based his deductions stood in direct contradiction with the clear and definite evidence of the most significant and most credible witnesses, whose statements the chief state's attorney pushed aside as "meaningless" with a brazenness that simply flabbergasted the listeners. Hamm came to the end of his summation in this manner:
"It is proven that (253) Buschhoff cannot have committed the crime, and the prosecution must (!) come to the proposal of moving for a verdict of not guilty for the accused...
The proof will be deduced with mathematical exactitude by my colleague Baumgardt, that Buschhoff cannot have committed the crime and pulled the child inside around ten o'clock..."
After the chief prosecutor, the state's attorney stepped forward with equal zeal as defender of the accused. He developed the already mentioned "proof of alibi" with the assistance of the statements of the ill-reputed Ullenboom.
This prosecutor also put forward the basic argument that the scene of discovery was simultaneously the scene of the crime, and that therefore the murder was committed in the barn of Küppers!
His memorable and happily delivered plaidoyer concluded with the words:
"Buschhoff is therefore, I declare, neither the murderer nor an accomplice to murder, nor even an accessory to the murder, he must (!) be excluded from any suspicion.
I come then to the conclusion that we are by no means dealing with a case of non liquet [Latin: "it is not evident"]; one thing is clear, by no conceivable means could Buschhoff be the perpetrator; regrettably it is unclear who did commit the crime...
By duty and conscience, I cannot move for a guilty verdict for Buschhoff. I move for his acquittal."
All the stenographic records make note of this moment with the significant word "commotion."
The three actual defense attorneys, since the prosecuting attorneys had taken on themselves the task of defense, really produced nothing essentially new in their long arguments -- their main mission seems to have consisted of spreading a kind of halo around Buschhoff; they all moved perfectly in the direction indicated to them by the prosecution!
Attorney Stapper:
"Gentlemen of the jury! The outcome of this trial will not be in doubt, and you yourselves, gentlemen, will think back upon this day with satisfaction your whole life long, the day when you were called upon to restore freedom to a poor, unfortunate man, to restore to his persecuted family, which was abandoned for months to hatred and to the agitation of a rabble without the ability to judge, their head of the house, to restore to his children their father, and to his community its member...
On (254) the evening of 29 June 1891, the bloody specter of ritual-murder climbed out of the darkness to which it was exiled for decades...
Behind it lies a system, gentlemen, it is the conflict of anti-Semitism which got ahold of the Buschhoff case...
Yes, gentlemen, there was a risk that an innocent man might lose his life, had we not had dutiful officials..."
Attorney Fleischhauer:
"Gentlemen! I have taken on the task of defense, infused with the noble mission of the advocate to give protection and aid...
I am happy to have participated according to my abilities in the work whose cornerstone is being set today. I permit myself to say that in the accused I have come to know a man for whom every man, be he Christian or of another faith, must have the greatest respect. Buschhoff cannot possibly have been the perpetrator..."
Frau Buschhoff, who had called out in the presence of Frau Hegmann:
"But console her, [that] she is getting a replacement for it," and who had imposed herself in the most disgusting fashion, experiences via this lawyer the following "evaluation":
"...In what a touching manner did Frau Buschhoff deplore the crime, how well did she strike the proper tone, the tone of tenderest sympathy and genuine mother-love!
Gentlemen!
These expressions of human empathy, of true unfeigned sympathy, witnesses dare to criticize, these sounds of a good heart..."
"Gentlemen of the jury! When I ask you after this present day to take with you the image of these proceedings, I also ask you to take along with you the image of a man who lived modestly but peacefully and quietly with his family and his neighbors, who up till now enjoyed the friendship of all and gave friendship to all... who from now on must eat the bitter bread of charity, since his middle-class existence, which he had grounded in a blameless life [8] is destroyed for a long time...
This trial is for us, who are experiencing it, and hopefully also for wider circles of our people for may years, if not for always, a comforting release from the unkind agitation which has sullied the story of the past year!"
(255) Attorney Gammersbach entered the area of religion:
"Gentlemen of the jury, there would be no sharper weapon against the charge of ritual-murder that that basic law:
'Thou shalt not kill!' But if we can refer to this commandment, which for us has been valid for 1800 years, the Jews are in a position to refer to this particular commandment, which for them has been in force for more than 3000 years, and to the law that prohibits the Jews from the consumption of blood..."
-- "What has held Buschhoff up?
His firm trust in God!
When I said to the accused: 'Now you are coming before your judge,' he answered: 'I trust in God! God will not let me, an innocent man, be condemned!'
"Gentlemen of the jury! This trust in God has preserved the accused right up to this hour...
I am convinced that we will all agree in the decision: By honor and conscience before God and man: The accused Buschhoff is not guilty!"
The chairman declared before the pronouncement of the judgement:
"In the slaughtering of a five year-old innocent child, the blood cries out to Heaven"
(but he forgot to add that it couldn't cry out to Heaven, since it was no longer there)...
The jury was now securely nailed in advance to one question, shrewdly formulated under a sham frame of reference; as such, this already meant a catastrophe in the tragedy of Cleves. It read:
"Is Adolf Buschhoff guilty of having killed by intent the boy Johann Hegmann in Xanten on 29 June 1891 and of having committed this killing with deliberation?"
"The juror Graf Loë proposed a practical division of the issue, so that the jury could also speak to the aiding and abetting or instigation of the crime.
"The chairman of the court rejected this, because aiding and abetting and incitement did not come into consideration; the prosecutor did not, he said, include any such issue relating to this!
"You only have the right to answer the questions put to you about murder. Should you be of the opinion that no murder took place but rather perhaps aiding and abetting or perhaps abuse with a fatal outcome, then you must acquit, because a question dealing with that has not been put to you..."
The verdict of the jury consequently had to read "not guilty"!
(256) The President:
"In consideration that the accused Buschhoff, through the verdict of the jury, has been declared not guilty, on this basis it is adjudged that:
The accused Buschhoff is acquitted, the order for custody is lifted, and the costs of the proceedings charged to the state treasury. The session is concluded."
Buschhoff was immediately set free. Jews and free masonic comrades of Jews of all faculties had gotten together in order to point out to the little Jew entrusted to them the tiny hole through which he could slip, a tiny hole in the net which, despite their desperate countermeasures, was contracting more and more tightly around him.!
This final and decisive chess move in Buschhoff's favor aroused extreme astonishment in all circles, even in judicial ones!
In the Prussian house of Deputies Stoecker, referring to the scandal in Cleves, said:
"Certainly there is uncommon alarm also in legal circles over the growth of the Jewish element in the judicial profession, because one fears that influences, as I have characterized them here, will continue to grow, the more the Jewish element permeates our justice system.
It is necessary to speak about these matters from another point of view and to procure clarity, because there are people among our folk -- perhaps unique on the Earth and in world history -- people who today, where Jewry arrogates to itself and exercises an unbearable influence upon our folk -- feel themselves induced -- I do not know for what reasons -- to act as protectors of over-powerful Jewry and to offer the world the miserable spectacle that a nation is left in the lurch, is not protected by its own citizens, among them respected citizens.
Such is the case with the so-called protection troops, this association for the warding-off of anti-Semitism. In the face of this smoke-screen we want to bring these matters to the agenda and, Mr. Deputy Rickert, may you be convinced, I know my folk, in our German folk three-quarters will be on our side, not on yours."
(Laughter from the left, robust applause from the right.)
"That a nation is not protected by its own citizens" -- Free Masonry had so judaized just those "citizens, among them respected citizens," (257) mentally and morally, that they were no longer aware that they were acting against and had to act against the most elementary interests of life, that they were betraying their folk -- they had become without will, unnerved tools of international Jews! [How much more profoundly true this is today, thanks in large part to Jewish control of the brainwashing instrument of the ages, television, and all other forms of popular media!]
To this let us add a small illustration from that Cleves courtroom: A Jewish paper out of Berlin which had sent in its own correspondents to Cleves, reproached -- we are sufficiently familiar with the motif -- the Xanten populace with lack of education, with fanaticism, with superstition, etc., etc.
It was suggested to the court President that the press card be revoked from the Jewish rats involved,
"because it isn't right that anyone who enjoys a privileged place as a guest, should use the opportunity of this trial to express such adverse and contemptuous comments about the local populace."
-- What did the court chairman do? Let us allow him to say it in his own words:
"I have not agreed to this proposal because I like to allow everyone his own opinion..."
His strained arguments for the "rehabilitation" of the populace could only have a embarrassing effect upon his audience!
Incidentally, among the trial correspondents, just as at Tisza-Eszlár, sat Paul Nathan...
In conclusion we wish to establish the following for the characterization of the trial, "that bitter comedy of the last decade of the aging century": [9]
1. For the Jew Buschhoff were toiling -- omitting from our account the most basic legal and practical elements -- one President, two prosecutors, three defense attorneys, eight medical "experts" including those of the "Royal Medical College," and obviously the Jewish press, while
2. from the side of the Court of Justice not one single individual acted for the innocent non-Jewish victim, the small boy Johann Hegmann! -- When the mother of the victim, fiercely crying, entered the courtroom, she was received by the President with the words:
"One must yield to what is irrevocable, (258) since nothing can be changed..."
Then began the cross-examination! The Hegmann family was delivered up defenselessly to Jewish extortions and threats. As the state's attorney Baumgardt himself had to admit in the later pending Oberwinder trial, the Hegmann family was beset by threatening letters of every sort!
3. The unanimity and consistency with which all parties cooperated in court with the single purpose of dispersing any strongly incriminating factors to the favor of the accused, seems to us, who are these days accustomed to seeing more sharply into these matters, downright uncanny.
4. As the main reason for the ineffective manner in which the trial was conducted, we recognize the enormous Jewish influence and the cleverly insinuated opinion that something like "ritual-murder" could not exist and never has existed among the Jews -- and that, as an ancient "cultured people" the Jews were ethically too far above such a thing!
5. The prosecution played the role of the defense! Dr. Schwindt explained in the Oberwinder trial:
"...The entire procedure of the state's attorney in the preliminary investigation just as in the main trial, shows that the prosecution played the role of the defense."
And the press? At the release of Buschhoff -- insofar as it was Jewish or infected by Jews -- it broke out in frenetic jubilation and outdid itself in extreme attacks upon all who thought differently.
The Kölner Zeitung [Cologne Times] participated in the collection of money for the "compensation" of the "innocent" Buschhoff!
As the Deutsche Nachrichten [German News] reported on 30 September 1892, up until 28 September 1892, at one Berlin collection place alone, 51,282.45 Marks came in for the Buschhoff family!
Only a few German papers, like the Kreuzzeitung and the Staatsbürgerzeitung [Citizen Times] agreed in essence that the Buschhoff trial had shown so many abnormalities, like no other trial in Prussia had up till then.
They pleaded for the invalidity of the entire proceedings.
But Buschhoff himself, "the stooping, half-deaf, white-haired Jew with the (259) gentle facial features" (Paul Nathan), led a comfortable untroubled existence as a retiree for several more years in Cologne, abundantly furnished with financial means which the Jews from all parts of the globe continually sent him as "martyr's pay," without an appeal [against the legitimacy of the trial] ever having been entered; the Prussian authorities had readily approved his taking another name!
-- Later, Buschhoff moved to America, into the land of -- in this respect, too -- "limitless possibilities"...
As early as the beginning of the year 1893, it was said that a half million Marks had been remitted to Buschhoff: According to the prophesy of his defense attorney Fleischhauer, Buschhoff could therefore "from now on eat the bitter bread of charity."
In any event, the Buschhoffs must have counted on a very fundamental improvement in their economic situation for a long time already before the murder.
Frau Buschhoff said one day to Mallmann -- thus to one of the witnesses who, since his evidence was incriminating, were "not approved" -- when business conditions were being discussed, that they -- the Buschhoffs -- wanted to leave Xanten soon, but that they first still had a "good piece of business" in prospect; when that had been done, they would sell their property and leave.
Mallmann told this to the court and added: "That is certainly serious. Is that then not good business?"
-- President Kluth: "What are you trying to say?... How do you bring this expression into connection with this case? What does this have to do with it, that the Buschhoffs wanted to do some good business?"
Mallmann experienced then, as so often by this time, a thorough rebuff; the further course of events, however, gave to his evidence, which the court apparently confronted without comprehension, a wholly particular meaning!
In 1892, the Jew Paul Nathan crowed in his Betrachtungen zum Prozeß Buschhoff [Reflections on the Buschhoff Trial]:
"In Cleves the progressive culture of the German (!) people once more struggled against the intellectually and morally backward elements of the nation . And who is it, now, who is trying to put the achievements which we now possess into question?
Apparently only a flock of unscrupulous people without any intellectual prestige and without any moral respect, who (260) have placed themselves at the head of stupidity and brutality ; this gang ought to have stayed in the dark and gloomy corners in which it belongs..."
To the "intellectually and morally backward elements of the nation," and to the "flock of unscrupulous people," now belonged, according to the notions of philosopher Nathan, the owner of the "Vaterländische Verlagsanstalt" [Native Country Publishing Institute] in Berlin, the editor and publisher Oberwinder.
After the end of the Cleves jury-court trial, he self-published a brochure under the title: Der Fall Buschhoff. -- Die Untersuchung über den Xantener Knabenmord [The Buschhoff Case. -- The Investigation of the Xanten Boy-Murder], in which Oberwinder pilloried, in summary form again, the impossibility of the entire proceedings.
He was straightaway and promptly dragged before a Berlin court on grounds of libelling the state's attorneys Brixius and Baumgardt and sentenced to two months' imprisonment!
This "Oberwinder trial," which can be described as a continuation of the Xanten murder trial, threw a significant as well as revealing spotlight upon the whole conduct of the proceedings against Buschhoff.
As "witnesses," among others, of all people, Chaplain Bresser from Xanten, the Head Rabbi Horwitz "including his wife" (Cleves), and the synagogue head Oster (Xanten) were summoned to this trial!
The accused upheld before the court his attacks against the examining judge Brixius and the state's attorney Baumgardt in full compass and stated besides that the sins of omission in Xanten were of a still more serious nature than he had earlier accepted.
-- Oberwinder:
"I am at least of the opinion that the persons entrusted with the investigation of the Xanten murder were biased.
I am of the opinion, and found it confirmed when I was in Xanten, that Baumgardt made no thorough investigation, but instead only a promenade through the Buschhoff house. What also demonstrates the prejudice of the officials of the investigation, (261) is the treatment of the prosecution witness Mölders, who was simply insulted and twice was summoned, in order to get him to make a different statement. Respectable citizens were even accused of having taught their children untrue claims, which could cost a man his head...
That was simply bias out of fear of the power of Jewry. The trial was a downright pyramid [colloquial expression for a confusing mess]."
President: "What you are saying about the individual passages (of the Cleves documents), I know of course. I've studied the case for six days and have almost been driven crazy."
-- Oberwinder:
"I believe it! I would like to say a few words about the attempts at collusion Such have been made. Dr. Hirsch-Hildesheimer has been with the Justice Minister, other rabbis have been with the Minister of the Interior.
"The attorney-at-law Fleischhauer had his people everywhere, who brought him information, even a detective bureau in Berlin.
"The people who first saw the murdered child -- there were fourteen of them -- were not questioned in the preliminary investigation.
"State's Attorney Baumgardt didn't want to know anything about a sack -- to him that was all news!
-- The viewing of the scene had to be ordered first by the Justice Minister, and it amounted to the opposite [of what had been claimed], despite the statement under oath by Brixius.
"The investigation was conducted only with reluctance...
"On the 24th of September, 1891 the first state's attorney, Baumgardt, stated publicly in Cleves that the investigation against Buschhoff had not yielded the least bit of evidence. The populace of Xanten naturally became very angered by that."
The hearing of evidence in the Oberwinder trial began with the questioning of the first State's Attorney Baumgardt. He stated:
"I reject the reproach of rudeness as untrue and false. That, someone would have to prove to me first. I am chivalrous toward everyone, not just toward Jewish girls. At any rate I protest in advance, because of my official position, against any possible sort of inquisitorial questioning, as if I should have to justify myself against blame..."
The President of the Berlin Court of Justice expressed his unconcealed astonishment over the fact that no alternate charges of participation, instigation, or aiding and abetting had been given to the Cleve jurors. (262)
Baumgardt, who in this trial was sitting on the witness stand, gave in response to this as the revealing main reason, that consideration for his superior, the Chief State's Attorney, had kept him from doing so!
Oberwinder's defense lawyer, attorney-at-law Dr. Schwindt , stated in open court session:
"From the question of Graf Loë it emerges that at least one portion of the jury was of the view that there was at least aiding and abetting. In such a case it is the duty of the state's attorney, if the President does not do it, to move for related charges [to be included in the charge to the jury]."
In the opinion of Dr. Schwindt, in this case these alternate charges simply had to have suggested themselves to the state's attorney! Dr. Scwindt explained:
"The evidence has been produced that State's Attorney Baumgardt entered upon the investigation only with reluctance and neglected the most rudimentary criminological rules...
But it is a matter of course, that, when a murder occurs, the first state's attorney must appear himself; in any case there can be no justification for the fact that he sent an assessor who had been handed over to him for training."
The further, very serious recriminations of this legal authority we shall pass over here.
The assistant judge, district court councilor Curtius, likewise expressed himself very clearly:
"The stated time of the proof of alibi in the Buschhoff trial seems, of course, very cute in the documents, but I consider it very risky to base the innocence of Buschhoff upon it in advance.
"I find it striking that a prosecutor, who indeed filed the charges and accordingly must be convinced of the guilt of the accused, before one single witness has spoken, forms such a favorable judgement in advance concerning the value of the statements of the accused, who was, after all, charged on the basis of circumstantial evidence...
but on what account, still before the statements of the witnesses, do the jurors vote in favor of the accused?"
-- Baumgardt:
"If it was a result of my words, then it happened unintentionally."
Curtius:
"So, unintentional. Thank you very much...
But after all, you had to have been convinced of the guilt of Buschhoff at [the time of] his arrest.
The arrest certainly could not have occurred against your will and the charges have been filed against your convictions...
"I would like to find out when the moment was, when your (263) soul became convinced of the innocence of Buschhoff, between the point in time of Buschhoff's arrest and the beginning of the jury-court proceedings, how you expressed this directly for the first time, when you began to speak.
You did not work on the completion of the questioning of the accused."
Baumgardt: "I didn't want to confuse the picture given by Buschhoff ..."
-- Despite these scandalous methods of the Cleves jury-court proceedings, confirmed subsequently before one other court, the publisher Oberwinder was sentenced through the state attorney's office of the district court, Berlin I, to two months' imprisonment.
The extent of the punishment was justified by the fact that
"added to this, is the necessity to protect the authority of the court, which has been critically shakenby the accused (Oberwinder)..."
-- Therefore, it was not Baumgardt, Brixius and their comrades who had brought the worst discredit upon German jurisprudence through their servility to the Jews, but instead a man who had pointed his finger at the untenable conditions in just these same courts!
At this time the Staatsbürgerzeitung had written to the German people a response from the soul:
"The authority and the respect of the court are best preserved by pure neutrality, impartiality, painstaking exactitude and unshakable justice. Woe to the folk whose court would have to be protected through harsh punishment; its fate would be pitiable!
In the Buschhoff trial those typical phenomena came to light, whose ever more frequent appearance must fill the heart of every friend of the Fatherland with anxious sorrow. The worst thing of all is the ever-sharpening dissimilarity of the natural idea of the law of our folk with the standards of the law becoming accepted by us and their operation.
That is the consequence of the fact that our law did not originate from out of our national way of viewing things, but a foreign law has been transplanted to our soil, and this foreign law, which is still influenced and shaped by a currently and unfortunately prevailing alien spirit, will never be comprehensible to our folk.
Indignation flares up to bright flames, however, when on the basis of this law things happen as they (264) have more and more often in most recent times.
And when, in addition to this, circumstances are such that in these events the alien element living among us is obviously given the advantage over those who belong to our folk, it is no wonder that the universal dissension becomes greater and greater..." -- Buschhoff-Xanten/Cleves and Oberwinden-Berlin:
Two trials which produced, on the one hand the release of a Jewish ritual-slaughterer denounced by the voice of the people as a ritual-murderer, and on the other hand the condemnation of a German, who was making an effort to uncover indefensible conditions at the risk of his existence -- in itself a thoroughly logical development of the "administration" of justice in Wilhelmic Germany!
Once again, Stoecker lifted his voice in the House of Deputies:
"I consider this entire discussion (of the Buschhoff case) all the more necessary, when in spite of this uneasiness of public opinion due to such trials, we face the fact that in the Ministry of Schelling the career of justice has expanded unusually for Jewry.
This ministry will be described in history as a ministry under which the Jews, contrary to the awakening sentiments of the German people, have bestridden higher rungs of the justice career than ever before That this disturbs us, there is no doubt.
This is not the thinking of "anti-Semitic, agitating circles," this is the thinking which moves our whole folk, up to the circles of the most level-headed jurists and advocates. (Vigorous opposition from the Left.) If you deny this, you do it against your better convictions."
(Unrest and shouting from the Left.)
Copyright 2001 by R. Belser. Reproduction in whole or in part without express written permission of the translator is not permitted. All rights reserved.