Ernst August Wagner

Ernst August Wagner
Ernst August Wagner in 1909
Born	Ernst August Wagner 22 September 1874 Eglosheim, Kingdom of Württemberg, German Empire
Died	27 April 1938(1938-04-27) (aged 63) Winnenthal, Gau Württemberg-Hohenzollern, Nazi Germany
Occupation	Teacher
Criminal penalty	Involuntary commitment
Details
Date	4 September 1913
Locations	Degerloch & Mühlhausen an der Enz, German Reich
Killed	14
Injured	12 (Including Wagner)
Weapons	Blackjack Dagger Two Mauser C96

Ernst August Wagner (22 September 1874 – 27 April 1938) was a German teacher and mass murderer. On 4 September 1913, Wagner fatally stabbed his wife and four children in Degerloch. He subsequently travelled to Mühlhausen an der Enz where he fatally shot nine people and wounded eleven others, before he was beaten unconscious by intervening villagers and left for dead.

Wagner cited his fear of being exposed as a zoophiliac as the primary motive. He was the first person in Württemberg to be found not guilty by reason of insanity after several psychiatric assessments had diagnosed him with paranoia. He was brought to an asylum in Winnenthal, where Wagner wrote several plays and dramas, none of which were ever performed. He died there of tuberculosis in 1938.

The case was of immediate interest due to Wagner's troubled personal life, marked by mental illness and familial issues, which was seen as having heavily contributed to the murders. Wagner's case gained renewed attention in the 1990s within German academic spaces as an early example of a mass shooting and perceptions of societal collapse in the late German Empire, as well as for Wagner's psychological profiling at the asylum through Robert Gaupp.

Ernst August Wagner was born on 22 September 1874 in Eglosheim near Ludwigsburg as the ninth of ten children, as well as one half-brother and half-sister. Most of his siblings died early, so that in 1913 only two sisters and one brother remained. After his father, a poor peasant with drinking problems, died one day before Ernst Wagner's second birthday, the indebted family was forced to sell their farm. His mother tried to make a living by running a small shop; she soon remarried, but due to her many affairs, the marriage ended in divorce when Ernst was seven years old.

Ernst Wagner, who was known as the "widow's boy" in the village, had depression and suicidal thoughts;^[1] he was quite intelligent and did well enough at school to earn a public stipend. In this way, despite his poverty, he was able to study and become a teacher.

After his qualifying exam, he worked as an auxiliary teacher at several schools in Württemberg from 1894 to 1901, though in April 1900 he was suspended for six months because of "severe nervousness and irritability". He then went to Switzerland for two months, where he tried to sell some of his poems to newspapers.

In July 1901, Wagner was assigned a teaching position in Mühlhausen an der Enz, a village in Oberamt Vaihingen (now part of Mühlacker), where he stayed until 1902. Sometime in the summer of 1901, while drunk, he sodomized an animal. He then became increasingly wary and suspicious that others might be aware of his deed, and began to see signs and hints that the villagers of Mühlhausen were mocking him for this act of bestiality. For this reason, he bought a revolver, which he always carried with him from that point on so that he could evade a potential arrest.

That same year, Wagner began an affair with Anna Friedericke Schlecht, the daughter of a local innkeeper. He hated the Schlecht family, thinking that his future father-in-law despised him, and tried to avoid marrying Anna, but marriage became a foregone conclusion when she became pregnant by him and gave birth to a daughter, Klara, in the spring of 1902.

In December 1902, Wagner's mother, to whom he felt deeply attached, died. He took his final examination as a teacher and was transferred to Radelstetten, a poor and isolated village. Although he was embittered to be ordered to such a place, it also temporarily eased his feelings of constant persecution, even though the incident of sodomy continued to haunt him. On December 29, 1903, he and Anna Schlecht married in Ludwigsburg, mostly due to pressure from outside, as their daughter Klara was already ten months old. However, he neither loved his wife nor feigned love, and while he treated her kindly, he viewed her more of a servant, considdering her intellectually inferior.^[1]

In the summer of 1904, he once again went to Switzerland, trying twice to commit suicide there, once by drowning himself and by jumping off a bridge, though both attempts failed, because he was, according to his own words, too weak. In the following years, his wife bore four more children, concluding in July 1909 with Rudolph Alfred. Wagner was said to have been unhappy about the births of his children and complained about the financial stress of feeding his family; he was seemingly indifferent to the interruption of his birthday in 1909 by infant Rudolph's death.^[1]

Some time in 1906 or 1907, thinking that the people from Mühlhausen had passed on their knowledge about his crime, the feelings of being ridiculed and watched by others returned, and as a consequence he began to make plans to take revenge on those whom he deemed to be the cause of his misery, the villagers, and especially the men, of Mühlhausen.^[1] In the autumn of 1907, he bought the first Mauser pistol, the other one following in 1909 and, with his bicycle, which he loved more than anyone or anything else, he made extensive journeys through the surrounding area and sharpened his shooting skills in remote forests.

Between 1909 and 1911 he made several requests to be transferred to another school, which was granted, so that on 1 May 1912 he began his work at a school in Degerloch, a suburb of Stuttgart. At that time he also decided to go ahead with his plan to avenge the derision he had to endure, as even at his new workplace he saw hints of people "knowing", and initially chose the spring of 1913 to put it into practice, but determined the last days of the summer holidays for his revenge.^[1] In the days leading to the murders he wrote several letters to explain his deed.^[2]

On 4 September 1913 at about 5 a.m., Wagner knocked his sleeping wife unconscious by hitting her on the head with a blackjack, before stabbing her numerous times in her throat and chest with a dagger, cutting her carotid arteries and hitting her heart and lungs. Afterwards he successively entered the bedrooms of his two sons, Robert and Richard, and his daughters, Klara and Elsa, and stabbed each of them in their throat and chest. Wagner initially claimed that he had also hit his children with the blackjack, though later he was uncertain of this. All of his victims died of massive haemorrhaging.

After covering his family members' bodies with blankets, Wagner got out of his blood-soaked nightshirt and washed himself, before packing a bag with three guns (two Mauser C96 pistols and a small revolver), 500 rounds of ammunition, a black veil from his wife and a belt. He then left his home, leaving a note at his own door that the family was jaunting to Ludwigsburg, as well as another one at the door of Mrs Stepper, the proprietor of the house he was living in, ordering milk and leaving behind 35 pfennige as payment.

He cycled towards Stuttgart and took a train to Ludwigsburg, where he bought a backpack, before making his way to his brother's home in Eglosheim, arriving there at about 11 a.m. As his brother was not at home, Wagner chatted a while with his wife, telling her he wanted to spend the night at their home after fetching his children from Mühlhausen, and, as it could get late, the house should stay accessible to him during the night. In an unobserved moment he hid 228 rounds of ammunition in a haystack in the garden. Wagner, accompanied by his nephew and niece, walked to the next train station, where he took a train to Bietigheim at about 1 p.m. From there he took off towards Großsachsenheim, where he mailed letters to several people, among them some of his relatives, including one to his sister simply reading "Nimm Gift!" ("Rest assured!"; lit. 'Take poison!'), another addressed to theologist and philosopher Christoph Schrempf, as well as a newspaper. Subsequently, he returned to Bietigheim, where he had his bicycle checked by a mechanic and mailed two copies of his autobiography, one again to Christoph Schrempf. At about 7 p.m. he left for Mühlhausen an der Enz.^[3]

Wagner reached the hills near Mühlhausen at about 11 p.m., where he girdled himself with the belt, put a cap on his head and took the two Mauser C96s, as well as a handbag containing ammunition, the black veil and a file. His bicycle and the small revolver were later found hidden in a corn field. Next Wagner set out to cut the telephone lines to the village, but as the poles looked too high to him and due to heavy rain that had set in by that time, he dropped that part of his plan and immediately went into Mühlhausen, where he set fire to four barns. The lower part of his face hidden with the veil he began walking through the streets, shooting at any male person that crossed his path. Wagner later claimed that his female victims were accidentally hit.

In total he spent about 80 rounds and shot 20 people, instantly killing eight of them, as well as two animals, and several buildings burned to the ground, before the villagers, with help of the military, managed to extinguish the fires. A ninth person, Jakob Knötzele, was mortally wounded and died a few hours after the shooting had ended. At one point Wagner forgot to reload his weapons and thus three men were able to strike him down with hoes and sabres. He suffered several wounds in his face and right hand, and his left hand was smashed and nearly cut off. Knocked unconscious, he was disarmed and left for dead, but at 2 a.m. a police officer found him lying on the street, still breathing. When he regained consciousness, Wagner immediately confessed to killing his family, and stated that he would have committed suicide in the end, but as this was now impossible, he would appreciate if he would be sentenced to death and decapitated.

Finally, in the evening of 5 September 1913, Wagner, who uttered concerns that he might get ill if he had stayed too long in Mühlhausen, was brought to a hospital in Vaihingen, where his left forearm was amputated and his other wounds treated.^[4]

Wagner presented a manifesto directed at "his people", in which he justified the murders as both vengeance and as part of a greater plan to eradicate half of the population based on their "physical constitution". Psychiatrist Norbert Nedopil pointed out an earlier writing of Wagner from 1909, in which he proclaimed himself "the first National Socialist", before the term was used in Nazism. In the 1909 document, Wagner voiced a hatred of the "ill and weak" and wrote that he saw himself as the "executioner", saying he wanted to kill 25 million fellow Germans in order to maintain a "pure, healthy region".^[5] He excluded himself from this group as Wagner considered himself a "good person" if one were to "factor out sexuality".^[6] Wagner himself stated that he was motivated by shame for his past bestiality, telling court officials that he planned to murder everyone in Mühlhausen since he thought they might make fun of him, but maintained that he only killed his family out of "mercy" so they would not be affected by his later killings.^[6]

Following his trial in Heilbronn, Wagner was the first person in Württemberg to be found not guilty by reason of insanity after several psychiatric assessments diagnosed him with delusions of paranoia.^[7]

Wagner was interned at Landesheilanstalt Winnenthal (now Klinikum Schloß Winnenden). He wrote a 300-page autobiography, in which Wagner claimed to have also planned to hijack a train for Ludwigsburg, with a stop in his hometown of Egolsheim to kill his brother's family, in order to break into the Ludwigsburg Palace to kill himself by self-immolation on the bed of Duchess Olga of Württemberg.^[8]

Having previously written plays under a pseudonym since 1904, Wagner continued writing verse drama until 1922. Even though none of the works were ever performed, Wagner referred to himself as "the greatest German dramatist".^[9] Knowledge of the plays remained limited to the asylum, which kept the scripts and advertisements Wagner printed at the asylum workshop, but Wagner nevertheless accused other writers of plagiarizing his work, at one point printing an antisemitic poster against Franz Werfel.^[10] By 1925, Wagner openly told his psychiatrists that he blamed Jews for all his problems.^[11] In 1930, with the rise of the Nazi Party, Wagner began calling himself "the first National Socialist in Winnenthal" in support and while he attempted to join the party via letter application, he received no responses.^[12]

Throughout his confinement, Wagner was the subject of several case studies, remaining known in forensic psychiatric literature as "Hauptlehrer Wagner" ("Headteacher Wagner"). Wagner was also recorded for a series of attempted suicides, believed to have been a means of attention seeking as these never resulted in serious injury. He contracted tuberculosis days after the final attempt and died as a result in 1938.^[5][8]

The funeral of the Mühlhausen victims was attended by over 5,000 people.^[8] The event was organised by the Württemberg branch of Deutscher Kriegerbund, as four of the victims, Christian Widmayer, Friedrich Geissinger, Jakob Knötzle and Christian Vogel, were military veterans. The funeral of the Wagner family the following day was also attended by several thousands, with several people being hospitalised for fainting out of grief during the cemetery march.^[9]

The murders were subject to sensationalist press reports across Europe. Wagner was seen in a unique light compared to other mass murderers, who typically had prior criminal histories or otherwise negative reputations, as those who examined him described Wagner as mild-mannered and polite.^[8] However, modern psychiatrists noted that colleagues of Wagner additionally described him as an arrogant and overly sensitive man with a superiority complex.^[5]

The shooting in Mühlhausen led to calls for gun control, as firearm purchase and ownership were unrestricted in Württemberg at the time. A law change, Regelung des Verkehrs mit Waffen und Munition, was planned in 1913, but delayed due to World War I; the Weimar Republic government introduced gun permits in 1928. Wagner's bicycle is known to have remained in use by police officers for several years.^[9]

Der Tagesspiegel wrote, in light of the 2009 Winnenden and Wendlingen shootings and the 2011 Norway attacks, the former of which took place near the former Winnenthal clinic, Wagner's case can be seen as a precursor to modern mass killings in their extensive planning and desire for attention.^[8]

• Bremen school shooting, another German mass shooting by a teacher committed the same year

• Foerster, Klaus (Hrsg.): Wahn und Massenmord. Perspektiven und Dokumente zum Fall Wagner. Verlag Sindlinger-Burchartz, Frickenhausen 1999, ISBN 978-3-928812-19-1.
• van Raden, Rolf: Patient Massenmörder. Der Fall Ernst Wagner und die biopolitischen Diskurse. Unrast-Verlag, Münster 2009, ISBN 978-3-89771-754-1 (Edition DISS Bd. 25)
• Blom, Philipp: Der taumelnde Kontinent – Europa 1900–1914. München: Carl Hanser-Verlag 2009, S. 421-452 (chapter: 1913 – Wagners Wahn).

• Mad teacher kills 15, wounds 16, The New York Times (September 6, 1913)
• Man who slew 15 insane, The New York Times (February 5, 1914)
• Massenmörder Wagner irrsinnig, Vorarlberger Volksblatt (February 6, 1914)
• Der Massenmord in Mühlhausen - Die Beerdigung der Opfer, Reichspost (September 9, 1913)
• Die Bluttat des Lehrers Wagner - Das letzte Verhör mit dem Mörder, Die Neue Zeitung (10 September 1913)
• Ernst Wagner - Ein Lehrer, Dichter und Massenmörder muehlhausen-enz.de, 2011, Quelle Wikipedia!