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SILVIO PELLICO AT SPIELBERG " 256

GERMAN AND AUSTRIAN PRISONS

PRINCIPAL PRISONS

The Bruchsal in Baden--The Moabit in Berlin, the prison Stein--Penal methods in force--Adoption of solitary confinement not universally accepted--Bruchsal opened in 1848--Penal methods employed--The annex where prisoners are kept in association--The Protestant brotherhood and their work in the Moabit prison--Munich--The work of Obermaier--Bavarian penal code--Capital Punishment--Long Trials--Case of Riembauer--Hans Leuss' account of Celle and his imprisonment there--Flogging--The "bed of lathes"--Zwickau in Saxony--Humane treatment in force--Heilbronn--Prison reform in Austrian and Hungarian prisons--Three new prisons erected in Austria-Hungary.

The cellular prison at Bruchsal in the grand-duchy of Baden was commenced in 1841 and opened on October 10, 1848. It stands at the northeast of the town of Bruchsal, on the highway to Heidelberg, in a pleasant part of the country, enjoying a mild and healthy situation. Hills rise in the background, while in front stretches the plain of the Rhine, with its rich fields and wealthy villages. Immediately adjoining the prison are two larger and two smaller buildings containing official abodes for the superior and lower officers of the penitentiary. The main building is a stately edifice, on an elevated site, and the entire group is surrounded by a wall. This wall, of considerable thickness and height, is a regular octagon, flanked by turrets at the angles, which serve above as sentry boxes for the military posts and below as dark cells. The soldiers who guard the penitentiary walk about on the wall, which is four hundred feet long and encloses a plot of ground of more than seven acres.

The discipline imposed at Bruchsal is very severe in character and it has been found that the rule of isolation cannot be persisted in for much more than four years. Only nine per cent. of the prisoners could support so long a term; and the director has reported that after three years of cellular confinement the muscular fibres become so weakened that it is almost impossible to expect hard work from those subjected to it. Bruchsal has an annex or auxiliary establishment where association is the rule for certain prisoners: First, those who have undergone six years of cellular confinement, unless they elect to remain in the cell; second, those who are above seventy years of age; third, those whose bodily or mental health unfits them for separation. Industrial and other education go hand in hand at Bruchsal; the earnings of the inmates at many various trades are substantial and the prisoners value the teaching of the schoolmaster. The trades are various, to avoid interference with private labour. The contract system is not employed, but the prison authorities manufacture goods on their own account. All needful attention is paid in the Bruchsal prisons, whether cellular or associated, to hygiene, diet, clothing, bedding and so forth.

In Prussia, long before the establishment of Bruchsal, the method of solitary confinement found many advocates, and, beginning in 1846, several large, separate cell prisons were built. The first, the Moabit, which was organised by Dr. Wichern, the famous creator of the Hamburg Raue Haus, is a cellular prison on the "wheel" or radiating plan, with four wings and 508 cells in all. An interesting feature of the Moabit is its management by a Protestant brotherhood, that of the Raue Haus, or Hamburg reformatory, whose members are regularly trained for this useful work on lines laid down by Dr. Wichern. All the brothers do not devote themselves to prison management, however, but are sent as required to various fields of labour.

At Moabit it soon became evident that the separate system was not suitable, and that secret intercourse among the convicts was not preventable. The doors of the cells were therefore left open during working hours, and a number of convicts worked in company. In church, during exercise, and in school no isolation took place, but silence was always enforced. On the whole, the Prussian authorities were not in favour of prolonged isolation. As to the general result, it has been thought that the cellular system lessened the number of reconvictions, but that the experience had no lasting effect upon hardened or habitual criminals. On the other hand, first offenders, or those who had been tempted by opportunity or carried away by passion, were believed to have been returned to society changed and reformed after a period of cellular confinement. Progress continued to be made, although the introduction of a new system of criminal procedure in 1849 led to such an increase in the number of sentences that much overcrowding of the prisons followed. Attention was in consequence directed rather toward providing further accommodation than to experiments in treatment. Such reforms as were urgent, including the separation of the sexes in different buildings, were accomplished, while the building of new prisons went steadily on and the fine specimens of the Stadtvogtei in Berlin, the cellular prisons at Ratibor in Silesia and Rendsburg in Schleswig-Holstein, a cellular police prison at Altona and similar institutions in other provinces, showed that improvement did not tarry by the way in Prussia.

Bavaria has four cellular prisons in all; one at N?rnberg and three others intended to serve the district courts of justice and filled mostly with prisoners not yet tried. Other prisons are conducted on the collective system. Many of them are ancient convents and castles, little suited for the purpose to which they have been converted. Crime is very prevalent, owing to a generally low standard of morality, the neglect of education and the rough manners and customs of the population. The peasants in many parts of the country are in the habit of carrying long stiletto-like knives at public houses and dancing places, and murderous conflicts, after nasty quarrels, when grave injuries are inflicted, are very common.

This practice of requiring confession in capital cases doubtless had its origin in the influence of the Church and the doctrine of the confession as necessary to absolution.

All this time he is kept in the dark as to the exact nature of the accusation laid to his charge, and it is illegal for him to seek enlightenment. He is not furnished with a copy of his own evidence or of that of the witnesses for or against him. Pitfalls are laid for him by his unexpected confrontation with an accomplice. If he obstinately refuses to speak, he is sentenced to bread and water. If it is a murder charge, he is brought face to face with the bleeding corpse, or it may be that the decaying remains are exhibited to him. The most curious feature in the proceedings is their prolixity.

Criminal trials in Bavaria have lasted for years. The reports in one leading case, that of the priest-murderer Riembauer, filled forty-two folio volumes. The most minute and searching investigation was made of the secret motives and inmost feelings of the accused, as well as his open actions. Feuerbach has written an account of remarkable crimes and lengthy trials in Germany, and among others tells the story of Francis Riembauer. He was a parish priest whose first worldly venture was the purchase of a farm near the village of Lauterbach between Ratisbon and Landshut, where he lived with the former owners, a widow, Mrs. Frauenknecht, and her two daughters, Magdalena and Catherine. All were esteemed by their neighbours. Riembauer passed for a model of apostolic zeal and charity. Though the son of humble parents, he had a fine person and was an eloquent preacher. In 1808, after passing with great distinction the examination for ecclesiastical preferment, he obtained the benefice of Priel, sold the farm and moved with the Frauenknecht family to his new parsonage.

Soon after the change, the mother and the elder daughter Magdalena died. Riembauer then endeavoured to persuade Catherine, the remaining daughter, to continue to live with him as his housekeeper in her sister's place. She refused, however, and left him to take a position as a domestic in another family. It was noted that for some time afterward she was subject to periods of great gloom and depression. Finally she confided to a friend, and then confessed to a priest, that she was the possessor of a dreadful secret: that Riembauer had murdered a woman; that she and her mother and sister had witnessed the deed; and that he had also appropriated the entire fortune of her family. The priest to whom she confessed counselled silence, but wrote Riembauer in an attempt to bring about the restoration of the fortune, with no result.

Catherine was bright and clever and she was not satisfied to let the matter rest there, but laid the whole story before the tribunal of Landshut. She was then seventeen years old, but as the Bavarian law would not allow her to be sworn until she was eighteen, it was not until the following year, 1814, that her deposition was taken. She testified that several years before a woman had called at their house to see Riembauer, who was then absent. A few months later the woman returned, and at that time the priest took her up to his room. She had not been there long when the sound of crying reached the family below. They hastened up-stairs and heard Riembauer say, "My girl; repent your sins, for you must die." And on looking through the keyhole, they were horrified to behold the man bending over the woman in the act of choking her.

When Riembauer came out, he told them that this woman had borne him a child and had asked him for money, threatening to denounce him to his ecclesiastical superiors if he refused, and that he had killed her. Catherine's mother and sister threatened to reveal his secret but were prevailed upon to keep silence out of respect for his office, and soon after both died very suddenly and under suspicious circumstances.

Riembauer was arrested as a result of Catherine's accusation, and gave his own version of the murder, acknowledging that he knew the woman whom he said he had promised a position as cook, but stating that Mrs. Frauenknecht and her daughter Magdalena had committed the crime. He knew nothing, of course, at that time of the deposition against him.

During a period of three years, examination followed examination. He was confronted with the skull of his victim, and every possible method was tried to shake his testimony, but it was not until October, 1817, that Riembauer, broken physically and mentally, confessed to having murdered Anna Eichstaedter. His confession contained the statement of a remarkable "code of honour" which he professed to follow. "My honour, my position," he said, "my powers of being useful, all that I valued in the world, was at stake. I often reflected on the principle laid down by my old tutor, Father Benedict Sattler, in his 'Ethica Christiana' ... 'that it is lawful to deprive another of life, if that be the only means of preserving one's own honour and reputation. For honour is more valuable than life; and if it is lawful to protect one's life by destroying an assailant, it must obviously be lawful to use similar means to protect one's honour.'"

On the 1st of August, 1818, he was declared guilty of murder and sentenced to indefinite imprisonment in a fortress. The regular punishment for murder was death, but in this case the learned jurist Feuerbach admitted that had the court not accepted Riembauer's confession, he could not have been convicted, because the evidence, though strong, was purely circumstantial. It was proved that the woman had visited him; that an umbrella marked with her initials was in his possession; that she had been buried under a shed on his farm, and that the floor of his room was stained with blood and showed the result of efforts to remove the stains with a plane; yet the court held that evidence was lacking as to marks on the body for sufficient proof of the actual manner of death.

The use of physical torture was abandoned in 1806, and then only with a strong protest from judges of the old school, who parted with great reluctance with so simple and expeditious a method of obtaining evidence.

Curiously enough, the accused persons in the Bavarian courts were generally moved to confess. Many reasons for this are given. Some few confessed from remorse, others could not beat off the pertinacious interrogatories of the judge, not a few were anxious to end the long period of acute anxiety and suspense, and many were exasperated beyond measure by the strict discipline and compulsory silence enforced in Bavarian prisons. Rather than be condemned to perpetual silence, the accused would speak out even to his own undoing.

Capital punishment was legal in Bavaria and was inflicted by decapitation with a sword, or breaking on the wheel from the feet upwards. But where conviction rested on circumstantial evidence only, or assumed guilt was not borne out by actual confession, imprisonment for life in chains was substituted, and it was a terrible penalty. The sentence annihilated civil existence; it was moral if not physical death. The culprit lost all rights as a husband, father or citizen; he was deprived of property, freedom and honour; nothing remained but bare life passed in slavery and chains. There was no recovery even if error were proved. He did not get back what he had lost, and if his wife married again he could not recover his property. It was not capital punishment, but it was death in life.

In the progressive national development of Prussia, as wars were waged and fresh territory acquired, prison reform obtained attention. In Hesse-Cassel, prisons were in a very backward state and many were condemned as unfit for habitation. In Hanover alone conditions were more satisfactory. The journalist Hans Leuss served a term of three years' imprisonment in 1894 in one of the chief prisons, that of Celle-on-the-Aller, which he graphically describes in his autobiography.

"It lies on the river bank. The front looks toward the avenue which in Celle forms the approach to the station. The external aspect of the terrible house is not unpleasing; neither does the appearance of the inside give the most distant conception of the conditions under which the prisoners live, nor of their situation, so that visitors are rather favourably impressed than otherwise. On arrival we were led into the vestibule of the building and drawn up in line, while an official cross-examined us. Until noon, one formality after another had to be gone through. We were first taken to the bathroom where, after being plunged into hot water, we had to sit on the edge of the bath while the barber shaved us. I shook so with cold that he had to let me return to the water while he finished his operations, and we dressed standing on a cold floor in our prison gaol. We next went before the governor and other officials, and then partially stripped again and had to cross a cold passage to the doctor's room, who in my case found both lungs affected. I have always ascribed to the hardships endured on that first day in Celle the severe chest complaint from which I suffered during my imprisonment, and the effects of which I still feel.

"These disagreeable preliminaries over, a cell was allotted to me. I was put under a warder who was the most hated by the prisoners, the most trusted by the authorities. He had a diminutive body, a large and powerful hand, a bitter and suspicious countenance. He made my life a burden and yet I pitied him. The deep lines of care on his face convinced me he was wretched and made me sorry for him in my heart. We were twenty-four prisoners in the middle 'cell passage' as the 'station' was officially called. All conversation was prohibited to us. I was set to cane chairs. The prison diet was poor and the lack of fat contained in it reduced me to a state of complete emaciation. I learned nothing of my surroundings. The first person who spoke a kind word to me was a humane warder who encouraged me, although this was not necessary as my courage always triumphed over every hardship; yet it did me good and I was gratified by the man's kind intention in assuring me he had seen several educated men endure long times of punishment without being broken down.

"One day the door opened and a man entered whose appearance filled me with surprise. He was a giant of spare build with a long dark beard, delicately modelled, sympathetic hands and the countenance of a real saint. He resembled neither a clergyman nor a fanatic, but was evidently of a nature as gentle as his mind was vigorous. A man whose outward semblance was unforgettable, how much more his soul, which stands as clear in my recollection as does his tall stature. This was the prison chaplain. The advantage of becoming acquainted with this representative of the noblest form of humanity would alone suffice to compensate me for the terrible sufferings I endured in the course of those few years. Parson Haase has lived nearly a century as the confidant of the sufferers in prison. His powerful but healthy mind was ever impressed with the infinite misery around him. He became a friend of the prisoners, gave them his confidence and received theirs. I owe this man more than I can say. After him, and thanks to him, the most humanising influence in the gaol was the library, which became a priceless boon. This chaplain was a liberal-minded man who did not limit his choice to books of devotion when making the yearly additions, but he provided the prisoners with works to amuse as well as improve, selected after careful consideration of the varied tastes and requirements of their readers. With books of travel and adventure were scientific manuals and works of still higher pretensions to suit the better educated, and which helped them to escape from mental breakdown and served to counteract the deteriorating effects of cellular incarceration. The chaplain's assistant-librarian at Celle was an ex-murderer who had killed an intimate friend, a bookseller, whom he robbed. It was a senseless crime, the discovery of which was certain, and its cause was never explained.

"Religious exercises were strictly observed at Celle. The chapel was constructed on the well-known plan of providing separate boxes like lairs for each individual. All turned towards the altar which was adorned with a copy of Guido's crucifixion. The services were given well and on a regular date there was a church 'visitation day' when a high dignitary preached a stirring discourse, with no other effect than that of starting a controversy among his prison congregation as to whether his cross was of gold or silver. Other subjects formed the staple conversation. One was always deeply interesting, the news that corporal punishment had been ordered and that a prisoner was to be strapped to the block."

Hans Leuss animadverts strongly upon the discipline at Celle and quotes several cases from official reports in which much cruelty was exercised. One was of a man well advanced in years, who suffered from misdirected acquisitiveness and frequently found himself in gaol, where he constantly misconducted himself and was punished by long committals to the dark cell. In the end his health gave way, but the trouble was not diagnosed and he was very harshly treated. One morning he declared he was unable to leave his bed, but he was nevertheless dragged up and into the exercising yard where he was unable to walk and fell to the ground. The governor, believing the illness was feigned, would have flogged him but was reluctant to order corporal punishment for so old a man, and had him put into the straight-jacket. Then the doctor interposed, being in grave doubt as to his mental condition, and took him into the hospital for observation, and he died that same afternoon, of senile decay. It is horrible to think that the coercion of this poor old creature was carried so far that he was nearly flogged, and that he was actually confined in a straight-jacket so short a time before his death.

Another prisoner in Celle was adjudged to be feigning insanity and subjected to very harsh treatment; to douches and the jacket by the order of the medical officer. He was suffering really from religious mania, which took the form of exaggerated reverence for holy things; he raved of them all night, abused Dr. Martin Luther and perpetually asked to be flogged until he died for the glory of the faith. He constantly sought to enter into disputation with the chaplain upon whom he greatly imposed. No one thought he was mad, and his punishment continued unceasingly until one night he hanged himself.

A third case of medical shortsightedness is reported from Celle, where an habitual criminal, with a long record of crimes and punishments, came under a new sentence for robbery. He was ill and would eat nothing, and the doctor prescribed a blister. He did not mind, declared he could not work and went for days without food. The doctor thought it was catarrh of the stomach and decided that the man was quite fit for light labour, but the governor only admonished him as he seemed really weak from want of nourishment. Still the medical reports were against him, and he was charged again with malingering, which took him for five days to the dark cell. He did not improve, however, although it was presently admitted that he was out of health and he was taken at last into hospital, the doctor having diagnosed the disease as hemorrhage of the kidneys. He rapidly grew worse, ice and port wine were ordered, but not very regularly given to him. Within six weeks of his first arrival he suddenly died. The post mortem examination revealed an advanced cancer in the liver.

The practice of flogging was long retained in Prussian prisons, and is still employed as a disciplinary measure. The prisoner was strapped over a block by his hands and feet and the implement used was a stick, the buttock piece of an ox, a leather whip or a rod with which the prescribed number of strokes were laid on. A stalwart flagellator usually acted as executioner, and the strokes were regulated by the clock--one a minute. This punishment was in former times administered in the most terribly cruel manner and permanent injuries to the spine often resulted. A choice selection of whips of various sizes and description may be seen in the strong room of Prussian prisons, most of them of hard cutting leather unevenly plaited. Hans Leuss asserts that at Celle prisoners detected in the manufacture of false coins were always flogged severely.

The power of inflicting the lash is vested in the hands of the governors of prisons and superior authorities. The former can order up to thirty, the latter up to sixty stripes. The assent of the higher prison officials to the governor's decree is required, but is a pure formality. It is little likely that the sanction of a majority of the subordinates would ever be refused to the governor. The administration of a prison is bureaucratic, and the governor is nearly always a military officer and thoroughly imbued with the importance of his very responsible position, which gives him power over hundreds of human beings. The subordinate officials are usually selected from the ranks of non-commissioned officers. Both the chaplain and the doctor may and do raise objections to the governor's orders. The doctor can enforce his objection on the ground of health if he believes the man to be punished is not a fit subject, but for this reason only. Any other excuse he may offer is liable to be disregarded by his colleagues; if the majority of the superior officials are not with him, the governor can still have the punishment carried out. As a matter of fact, their consultation only occupies a few minutes and is a pure formality, the governor alone deciding. Up to 1902 the infliction of corporal punishment was not at all rare.

Among the German States, Saxony has held a rather exceptional position. A system of classification of prisoners was introduced by a minister named Lindeman as far back as 1840, and ten years later the penitentiary of Zwickau was opened, in which reformation was pursued by individual treatment on humane and careful lines, with education and industrial employment. The dietaries were ample and must be said to have erred on the side of over-indulgence, in that Saxon prisoners had at one time a choice among ninety different dishes for dinner and twenty-eight for breakfast and supper. The discipline enforced was generally mild. Corporal punishment was allowed by the rules and also the bed of lathes, but neither of them has been applied for many years past. Industry was encouraged by the hope of reward, pleasanter labour, and remission of a part of the sentence in the form of leave of absence or conditional release. Many excellent prisons exist similar to Zwickau above mentioned, such as Waldheim, Hubertusburg and others. All of them are kept up to a high standard and improvements are constantly in progress. Separation by night is the general rule while dangerous or incorrigible convicts are completely isolated.

In the Kingdom of W?rttemberg the cellular plan of prison construction was adopted in 1865 and the first building, that of Heilbronn, was occupied in 1872. Other places of durance are mostly on the collective system as at Stuttgart, Ludwigsburg and Gotteszell, but means of isolation and separation by night is practised generally. Discipline is firm but not harsh, and corporal punishment is excluded from the penalties for misconduct. Deterrence is held to be the primary object of imprisonment, but moral reformation is not overlooked.

A few words may be inserted here as to penal institutions in other German states. Thus in the grand-duchy of Hesse the principle of herding the prisoners together prevails, although efforts have been made to introduce the isolated cell system. The chief prisons are the "Marienschloss" and those in Darmstadt and Mainz. The national penal institution of Dreibergen serves both of the grand-duchies of Mecklenburg as their chief prison. Peculiar interest attaches to it in view of the almost forgotten fact that here a sort of transition stage was instituted for convicts with long sentences who were during the latter part of their term removed from the isolation cells and sent out to such work as was calculated to develop their physical powers.

In the history of prison management, Oldenburg earned an excellent reputation through the remarkable individuality of Hoyer, for years the director of the house of correction at Vechta. He advocated cell isolation until the latter years of his life, when he declared himself in favour of the Irish system. His plan of forming settlements for convict labour on waste lands was discontinued, as the results were unfavourable, and a modified form of solitary confinement was reinstated. A portion of the Thuringian states was under Prussian and Saxon jurisdiction with regard to their prison system. The rest formed a combination among themselves for the building of prisons to be used by them in common. The principal one was in Ichtershausen.

The improvement of penal institutions was undertaken by Austria in the early forties and a special commission was appointed to examine into the merits of various systems recommended, with the result that solitary confinement was recognised as the most suitable form of punishment for all prisoners awaiting trial and for those sentenced for a year or less. But before this could be put into practice in the new prisons, the political situation changed and the projected reforms were delayed. The old system was not changed, but efforts were made to provide further accommodation to meet the great increase in the number of sentences. Much energy was devoted to the work and considerable outlay, which produced prisons large enough to contain thirteen thousand inmates. The entire prison administration was entrusted to religious orders and even prisons for male offenders were placed under the superintendence of nuns, a cardinal error resulting in much mischief. Under the minister of justice, in 1865, reforms were again instituted; he assumed the supreme control, and prison management was made to conform to the spirit of the then prevailing liberal views. The system of imprisonment hitherto in force throughout Austria remained untouched for the time being. Among other reforms, corporal punishment and chains were abolished.

In 1868 the penal institutions of Garsten and Karthaus came under government inspection, the contracts with the religious orders ceased, and in 1870 all male prisons were put under direct state control. A new male prison for three hundred inmates was opened at Laibach in Carniola and another at Wisnicz to accommodate four hundred. In April, 1872, the system of solitary confinement was partially introduced, but the progressive principle of prison treatment was kept steadily in view. After a period of cellular confinement, prisoners lived and laboured in association, care being taken to separate the worst from the less hardened offenders. Juveniles were segregated and, of course, the women, the whole number falling into three principal divisions,--the first offenders, the possibly curable and the hopeless, habitual criminals.

A prominent feature in the modern administration of these institutions has been the employment of prisoners approaching the time of their release in a state of semi-liberty, at a distance from any permanently established prison. The first experiment was made in 1886, when a party was sent to improve the bed of a river in Upper Carinthia. They went from the Laibach prison and were followed by reinforcements in the following year. Similar public works were undertaken in 1888-9 in Upper Carniola, Carinthia, Upper Styria and Galicia, for the construction of canals and roads and the opening up of rivers. In some cases the prisoners took with them a portable shed-barrack, in others they built huts in the neighbourhood of their works. The labour performed was cheap and effective, the discipline maintained excellent, and the prisoners are said to have much benefited, morally and physically, by the trust reposed in them and by the healthfulness of their daily occupations. The building of the reformatory at Aszod was undertaken by convicts, a number of whom, to the great alarm of the villagers, arrived on the newly bought lands, where they lodged in huts without bolts or bars. Their conduct, however, was exemplary. It has been claimed, not without reason, that this method of employing prisoners has been most successful.

A large operation was undertaken in the district of Pest-Pilis-Solt, where the torrential river Galga does considerable damage at flood time. Owing to the demands of harvest and agricultural works, free labour was not to be had in the summer, when alone the river was low enough to admit of interference, and the local authorities having two large prisons within easy access sought for a concession of prison labour. It was granted, and two sets of prisoners commenced at either end of the river valley. These were specially selected men; they encamped at the places where they were busy, being supplied with canvas tents by the military authorities; they ministered to their own needs and cooked their own food, which was brought in the raw state from the neighbouring prison. Excellent results followed their employment for three consecutive years. Not only was a work of great public utility completed, but the prisoners conducted themselves in the most exemplary manner. Although they were held under no restraint in the midst of a free population, there was not a single attempt at escape during the entire three years; there was no misconduct, and discipline was easily maintained by the mere threat of relegation to the prison. The prison administration has in consequence decided that it is now unnecessary to construct special intermediate prisons; places where men, as in the old Irish farm of Lusk, might be suffered to go half free while proving their fitness for complete liberty.

Strait-waistcoats are also used for the refractory, and a very effective but cruel gag,--an iron hoop with a brass knob like a door handle. The knob is forced into the mouth and the hoop passed over and locked behind the head.

FRIEDRICH VON DER TRENCK AT MAGDEBURG

Two barons Von der Trenck--Friedrich a cornet of the Gardes du Corps--Favoured by the Princess Amelia--Incurs the displeasure of Frederick the Great--Sent to the fortress of Glatz--Escaped to Bohemia and passed into Russia--Re-arrested at Danzig and sent to Magdeburg--Plans for escape--The grenadier Gefhardt a faithful friend--Communication established with friends outside--Funds obtained--Plot discovered--Removed to the Star Fort and loaded with irons--Terrible suffering--Attempt to cut through the doors discovered--His prison is strengthened but his courage is unbroken--Fresh plans made--A new tunnel begun--Plot discovered--The sympathy of the Empress-Queen of Austria aroused--Released on Christmas Eve, 1763--Married and settled in Aix-la-Chapelle--His death on the scaffold during the French Revolution.

There were two barons Von der Trenck, Franz and Friedrich, in the middle of the 18th century, both intimately associated with the prisons of their respective countries, for although cousins, Franz was an Austrian, and the other, Friedrich, a Prussian. Both were military officers. Franz was a wild Pandour, a reckless leader of irregular cavalry, who for his sins was shut up for life in the Spielberg, the famous prison fortress near Br?nn, where he committed suicide. Friedrich, after enjoying the favour of Frederick the Great and winning the rank of cadet in the Gardes du Corps, was eventually disgraced and imprisoned in the fortress of Magdeburg, where he was detained for ten years and treated with implacable severity. Friedrich von der Trenck was richly endowed by nature; he was a gallant young soldier with good mental gifts and a handsome person which enabled him to shine in court society and achieve many successes. He was fortunate enough to gain the good graces of the king's sister, the Princess Amelia of Prussia, who greatly resembled her celebrated brother both physically and mentally. She possessed the same sparkling wit, the same gracious vivacity and, like Friedrich, was a distinguished musician. She was a warm votary of art, science and literature and was always surrounded and courted by the most cultured German princes. All her contemporaries describe her beauty with enthusiasm. So far, she had declined the many proposals of marriage, which, as a matter of course, she had received. Her heart belonged to the cornet of the Gardes du Corps, and a secret understanding existed between them. The lovers were at first cautious, but soon became bolder, and the king's suspicions were aroused. At first he tried fatherly remonstrances, but in vain. The extraordinary liaison became the talk of the hour. A lieutenant of the Prussian Foot Guards taunted the favoured lover about his relations with the princess, they quarrelled, and a duel followed. The king was furious, and a catastrophe was imminent, but was avoided by the outbreak of war. Then this gay and reckless courtier allowed himself to be drawn into a correspondence with his cousin in Vienna, the notorious colonel of the Pandours, and the measure of the king's wrath overflowed. Trenck was cashiered and sent to the fortress of Glatz. The king wrote with his own hand to the commandant of the fortress on the 28th June, 1745, "Watch this rogue well; he wished to become a Pandour under his cousin." Undoubtedly Frederick intended to keep Trenck imprisoned for a short time only, but he was detained for a whole year, during which time he made more than one attempt to escape.

"Now to augment my misfortune, it happened that General Fouquet was at that time commandant in Glatz. He was a well known misanthrope, had fought a duel with my father and been wounded by him, and the Austrian Trenck had taken his baggage from him in 1744. He was therefore a great enemy to the Trenck name, and consequently made me remain in the filth for some hours as a public spectacle to the garrison, then had me pulled out and confined in my cell, allowing no water to be taken to me for cleaning purposes. No one can imagine how I looked; my long hair had got into the mud, and my condition was really pitiable until some prisoners were permitted to wash and cleanse me."

When he finally escaped from Glatz, he went to Bohemia, to N?rnberg and to Vienna, whence he passed into Russia and entered the service of the czar for a time. Then he again travelled through northern Europe and returned to Vienna, where he was coldly received, and he started once more for Russia, but was intercepted at Danzig and again arrested in 1753, after which he suffered a more severe imprisonment for nearly ten years, characterised with such inhuman treatment that it must ever tarnish the reputation of the monarch who posed as a poet and a philosopher, the friend of Voltaire. Frederick the Great would hardly have earned his ambitious epithet had it depended upon the measure he meted out to his turbulent subject, Friedrich von der Trenck. He hated him cordially and persecuted him cruelly, behaving with a pitiless severity, and exhibiting such a contemptible spirit of revenge that he has been hopelessly disgraced by the enlightened verdict of history.

Von der Trenck has told his own story in one of the most remarkable books published in the eighteenth century, as the following excerpts will show. He was taken into custody at Danzig, despoiled of all his cash and valuables, and carried in a closed coach under escort to Lauenberg, and thence via Spandau to Magdeburg, where he was lodged in the destined prison. "It was a casemate," according to his own account of the cell, "the forepart of which was six feet wide and ten feet long, and divided by a separation wall in which were double doors with a third at the entrance of the casemate. The outer wall was seven feet thick, with one window giving upon the top of the magazine, sufficient for light, but I could see neither the heaven nor the earth. It was barred inside and outside, and there was a narrow grating in the middle, through which nothing could be seen. Six feet beyond my wall stood a row of palisades which prevented the sentry or any one from coming near enough to pass anything in. I had a bed with a mattress, the bedstead clamped down to the floor so that I might not drag it to the window and climb upon it to look out. A small stove and night table were fixed in like manner near the door.

"I was not ironed, and my daily ration was one pound and a half of ammunition bread and a jar of water. I had an excellent appetite, but the bread was mouldy and I could barely touch it. Through the avarice of the town major, the supplies were almost uneatable and for many months following I suffered torture from raging hunger.... I begged for an increase, but prayers and entreaties were of no avail. 'It is the king's order,' I was told; 'we dare not give you more.' The commandant, General Borck, cruelly reminded me that I had long enough eaten patties out of the king's silver service, I must learn now to be satisfied with ammunition bread."

Von der Trenck turned his thoughts at once to the possibilities of escape. He soon found that he was left very much to himself; his food was brought every day and passed in to him through a slit in the door; but his cell was actually opened only once a week for the visit and inspection of the major of the fortress. He might work, therefore, for seven days without fear of interruption, and he proceeded forthwith to execute a plan he had formed of breaking through the wall of his cell into an adjoining casemate, which he learned from a friendly sentry was unoccupied and unlocked. This sentry and another spoke to him through the window, despite strict orders to the contrary. They gave him a good idea of the interior arrangements of the fortress, and told him that the Elbe was within easy reach. He might cross it by swimming or by a boat, and so gain the Saxon frontier.

Thus encouraged, he devoted himself with unremitting energy to his gigantic task of making a practicable hole in the wall. He found bricks in the first outward layers, and then came upon large quarry stones. His first difficulty was to dispose of the debris and material produced by the excavation; after reserving a part to replace and so conceal the aperture formed, the rest he gradually distributed when ground down into dust. The quarry stones gave infinite trouble, but he tackled them with the irons extracted from his bedstead, and he got other tools from his sentries,--an old ramrod and a soldier's clasp knife. The labour of piercing this wall of seven feet in thickness was incredible. It was an ancient building, the mortar was very hard, and it was necessary to grind the stones into dust. It lasted over six months, and at length the outer layer of bricks on the side of the adjoining casemate was reached.

Fortune now favoured Von der Trenck in the discovery of a veteran grenadier among his guards, named Gefhardt, who proved to be of inestimable service then and afterwards, and a devoted ally. Through the sentries' good offices, Trenck was enabled to communicate with his friends outside, and through Gefhardt he made the acquaintance across the palisades of a Jewish girl of Dessau, Esther Heymannin, whose father was serving a sentence of ten years' imprisonment in Magdeburg. With splinters cut from his bed board, the prisoner manufactured a long staff which reached from his window beyond the palisades, and by means of it obtained writing materials, a knife and a file. This was effected by Esther with the assistance of two friendly sentries. Trenck wrote to his sister, who resided at Hammer, a village fourteen miles from Berlin, begging her to hand over a sum in cash to the girl when she called; he wrote another letter to the Austrian ambassador in Berlin, enclosing a bill on his agent in Vienna, for Trenck, although in the Prussian service, was of Austrian extraction and owned estates in that country. The girl succeeded in her mission to Hammer and took the money to Berlin, where the Austrian minister's secretary, Weingarten, assured her that a larger sum was on its way from Vienna, and that if she would return to Berlin after carrying her first good news to Magdeburg, it would be handed over to her. But on approaching the prison, the wife of one of the sentries met her with the sad news that both men had been arrested and lay in irons awaiting sentence, and Esther, rightly judging that all was discovered, hurriedly fled to Dessau. It may be added that the thousand florins to come from Vienna were retained by the Austrian secretary, and although Trenck years later, after his release, made constant applications to both Count Puebla and Weingarten, he never recovered the money. Weingarten had acted the traitor throughout and it was on his information, extracted from the Jewish girl, that the plot to escape became known. The consequences were far reaching, and entailed cruel reprisals upon Von der Trenck's friends. The two sentries, as has been said, were arrested, tried and condemned, one to be hanged and the other to be flogged up and down the streets of Magdeburg on three successive days. Trenck's sister was cruelly persecuted; she was fined heavily and plundered of her fortune, a portion of which was ingloriously applied to the construction of an entirely new prison in the Star Fort of the Magdeburg fortress, for the special confinement of her brother.

Von der Trenck, as his measures for evasion had become ripe, was on the point of breaking prison when a more terrible blow fell upon him. The new prison in the Star Fort had been finished most expeditiously, and orders were suddenly issued for his removal after nightfall. The major and a party of officers, carrying lanterns, entered his cell. He was roused and directed to put on his clothes, and manacles were slipped on his hands and feet, but not before he had managed to conceal the knife on his person; he was blindfolded, lifted under the arms and conveyed to a coach, which drove through the citadel and down toward the Star Fort, where it had been rumoured he was to be beheaded. He was thrown into his new place of durance, and forthwith subjected to the pain and ignominy of being loaded with fetters; his feet were attached to a ring in the wall about three feet high by a ponderous chain, allowing movement of about two feet to the right and left; an iron belt as broad as the palm of a hand was riveted around his naked body, a thick iron bar was fixed to the belt, and his hands were fastened to the bar two feet apart. "Here," says Trenck, "was I left to my own melancholy reflections, without comfort or aid, and sitting in gloomy darkness upon the wet floor. My fetters seemed to me insupportable, until I became accustomed to them; and I thanked God that my knife had not been discovered, with which I was about to end my sufferings forthwith. This is a true consolation for the unfortunate man, who is elevated above the prejudices of the vulgar, and with this a man may bid defiance to fate and monarchs.... In these thoughts I passed the night; the day appeared, but not its brightness to me; however, I could, by its glimmerings, observe my prison. The breadth was eight feet, the length ten; four bricks were raised from the ground and built in the corner, upon which I could sit and lean my head against the wall. Opposite to the ring to which I was chained was a window, in the form of a semicircle, one foot high and two feet in diameter. This aperture was built upwards as far as the centre of the wall which was six feet thick, and at this point there was a narrow grating, secured both without and within with strong close iron bars from which, outward, the aperture sloped downward and its extremity was again secured with strong iron bars. My prison was built in the great ditch, close to the rampart, which was about eight feet broad on the inside; but the window reached almost to the second wall, so that I could receive no direct light from above and had only its reflection through a narrow hole. However, in the course of time my organs became so accustomed to this dimness that I could perceive a mouse run, but in winter, when the sun seldom or never shone in the ditch, it was eternal night with me. On the inside, before the grating, was a glass window, the middle pane of which might be opened to let in the air. In the wall my name, 'Trenck,' might be read, built with red bricks; and at my feet was a gravestone, with a death's head and my name inscribed upon it, beneath which I was to have been interred. My gaol had double doors made of oak; in front of them was a sort of antechamber, with a window, and this was likewise fastened with two doors. As the king had given positive orders that all connection and opportunities of speaking with sentries should be debarred me, that I might not have it in my power to seduce them, my den was built so as not to be penetrated; and the ditch in which the prison stood was crossed on each side by palisades twelve feet high, the key being kept by the officer of the guards. I had no other exercise than leaping up and down on the spot where I was chained, or shaking the upper part of my body till I grew warm. In time I could move about four feet from side to side, but my shin bones suffered by this increase of territory.

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