February 1, 2022 • 23 mins
The Pappenheimers were an itinerant family from Bavaria. Accused of murder and practicing black magic by just one person, a known thief, the family was tried and executed for having been instruments of the devil. Their trial was of one of the most well-publicized witch trials in German history, and it also exhibited sadistic accounts of torture.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda land Audio in
partnership with I Heart Radio. They were a family accused
of murdering pregnant women for the purpose of making candles
out of those unborn babies, and you couldn't convince anyone otherwise.
(00:24):
You should know now that this show is going to
talk about some very extreme methods of torture that will
be near the end of the show. Welcome to Criminalia.
I'm Maria tre Marquis and I'm Holly Fry. The time
was the end of the sixteenth century and beginning of
the seventeen and the Poppenheimer's were an itinerant family from
(00:44):
Bavaria who took whatever odd jobs they could to get by.
Having been teased and abused because he had been born
out of wedlock pow less, the family patriarch ran away
multiple times during his childhood, and he learned to care
for himself elf by doing odd jobs in local towns. Anna,
the matriarch of the family, was the daughter of a
(01:06):
grave digger and grew up in the Franconian town of Ansbach.
Though her father's occupation was of course something completely necessary,
it was also deemed as a degrading occupation among the locals.
Anna was ridiculed by both children and adults throughout her childhood.
And when Paulas and Anna met and married, he was
(01:27):
a day laborer in the town brickyard and he was
thinking about how one day he would take over his
father in law's work. So Poppenheimer, let's talk about this
family name for a second. It's the name recorded in
their court documents, making them forever the Pappenheimer's, but that
likely wasn't the family's actual real name. They were likely
(01:51):
the game pearls. The word Poppenheimer described what Paulas often
did for a living, He cleaned privies, So maybe think
about it or like a family nickname. And there's also
slang usage that we can't verify, so maybe maybe one
of you can't, but we hear that the word was
Nuremberg slang for garbage man. Far into the twentieth century.
(02:15):
At this time in history, to set the scenes surrounding witchcraft,
there was a strong belief and a healthy fear of
witches and the black magic that they practiced. You have
probably guessed where this is headed. Paulas and Anna, along
with their three sons twenty year old Gumprecht, twenty year
old Jacob, and ten year old Hansel were accused of
(02:37):
crimes of murder and witchcraft in February of six hundred
and the case against them was based entirely on the
accusation of a single person. That person claimed to have
assisted them with murders of seven pregnant women for the
purpose of making candles out of their unborn babies. It
(02:58):
is believed that Paulas may have previously argued with that
man that accused them, but there doesn't seem to be
any solid evidence. After being accused, the Poppenheimer's were arrested
in the middle of the night, taken from their beds,
and then everything that could go wrong did fresh. On
the Bavarian throne there was Duke Maximilian the First, a
(03:21):
young Catholic with a strong anti Lutheran stance, and of
note here the Pappenheimer's were Lutheran. Maximilian wanted to crack
down on all crime in his region, and he believed
the display should be extravagant. The worst the crime, the
worst the punishment. Once they were arrested, the Pappenheimers were
(03:42):
suddenly catapulted into the center of a witch hunt that
was growing across Bavaria. The Duke decided to use them
as a political tool. This was one way he provided
an example of what horrifying things would happen to highwaymen,
grave robbers, and any other thieves among them. We're going
to take a break here for a word from our sponsor,
(04:03):
and when we return we will talk about how the
Poppenheimer's were not guilty, they were scapegoats. Welcome back to Criminalia.
So we're the Poppenheimer's instruments of the devil. Let's talk
(04:23):
about that. We normally would not know anything about the
Poppenheimer family, or at least not very much, especially not
more than four hundred years after they were alive. They
were peasants and the only time their lives would have
been documented would almost surely always have been in a
court record. And because it was high profile, this trial
(04:46):
was well documented, and the archives which can be found
in Munich are rich with details like the names of
the clerks, the lawyers, the jailers and even the judges
who took part. Individuals from the family his own circles,
including glazier Jack Jacob the Poacher and Nine Fingers the
Beggar were also noted as having been in attendance. It
(05:11):
may have been one of the most well publicized witch
trials in German history, but it was a show trial.
What we mean by that very basically is that this
was a public trial in which the judicial authorities had
predetermined the guilt or the innocence of the defendants. The
Pappenheimer's were chosen as a scapegoat by these authorities. Not
(05:33):
only were they peasants, which meant that they wouldn't be missed.
A known thief and liar had named them as criminals
while he was enduring torture before his own execution. But
still they really didn't have a chance, and there were
actually two trials. The first resulted in the death of
four of the Poppenheimer family and two of their accused accomplices.
(05:56):
Those were a farmer named Ulrich Schultz and the tailor
or Schmultz that may be smaltz Uh. It's a little
bit unclear in the historical record which of those spellings
is accurate. For that Taylor, the remaining member of the family,
that is Hansel, who you'll recall, was just ten years
old and five other accused accomplices were all sentenced in
(06:18):
the second trial. After their arrest, the family was taken
to Munich, where they underwent an incredible exhibit of torture
methods so severe that you or I or anyone would
probably confess to every unsolved crime and cold case in Bavaria.
We quote, as many as possible of the unsolved crimes
(06:41):
of the past few years were to be put down
to the account of the accused. A leading official in
the trial was the Duke's counselor. That was a man
named Johann Sigismund Wagner. Johan had long made unsuccessful attempts
to promote which trials in Bavaria, but that kind of
hadn't take and off as Bavarian court chancellor, he hoped
(07:04):
that he finally had his chance. And then there was
Alexander von Hasling. Alexander was a Bavarian general and a
witch hunter who, when Maximilian came to power, was chosen
as the leader of a so called war council. He
was put in charge of managing the Poppenheimer's while they
were imprisoned, and it is believed he really was not
(07:26):
actually interested in their punishment, but followed orders by the
Duke to use extreme measures, every member of the family
was tortured, and under torture they began to tell fantastic
tales of crimes of witchcraft, and they confessed to pretty
much any and all outstanding crimes in the country. Really
(07:48):
no joke. To be clear, this was not the normal
trial or punishment for a family of their stature. For them,
the legal systems should have worked like this. If found guilty,
they would have been sentenced to time in jail and
then evicted from the territory. But all the Poppenheimer's were accused, tried,
(08:10):
and sentenced for the extraordinary crime of having been instruments
of the devil. The official charges went as follows. There
are four to name. One quote of powless game Pearl.
It was said that he had crippled and slain one
hundred young children and ten old people by dint of
(08:30):
vile sorcery. The crowd also heard how he had entered
the sellers of innkeepers and other folks, shamelessly devouring such
victuals and drink as he might lay his hands on.
He had further confessed to having committed ten robberies from churches,
violently slain forty four persons by his hand alone, set
(08:53):
fire to homes or barns eight times, broken into houses
by night fourteen times, pillaging and robbing the tenants, robbed
wayfarers on the highway five times, and committed four other thefts.
Two quote. In like manner, his wife, Anna, being sixty
(09:13):
years of age, has assailed one infants and nineteen old
people with her spells, crippling them and killing them in
godless fashion. She entered sellers on eight occasions, has committed
one murder by her own hand, set fire twice to
the homes of others, has caused four gales and hail storms,
and has poisoned meadows and afflicted cattle so often that
(09:36):
she herself cannot tell the number. Three quote. The elder
of her two sons, called Gumprecht, has caused the death
of thirty children and adults by means of sorcery, has
entered sellers on twelve occasions, burgled and robbed nine churches,
committed twenty four murders, set fire to nine homes, oken
(10:00):
in by night, and robbed folds six times. He has
four times committed highway robbery, poisoned and ruined fields and
cattle without number, and caused strife between god fearing spouses
on four occasions and four quote the other, her son Jacob,
has slain sixty five infants and five adults by sorcery,
(10:24):
has ten times entered sellers, has committed five thefts from churches,
has put to death and murdered thirty three persons by
his own hand, set five fires broken in five times
by night, committed four other thefts, caused ten gales and
hail storms, poisoned fields and beasts twenty six times. According
(10:45):
to accounts of the interrogations, the Poppenheimer's confessed to whatever
authorities were looking for. After intense torture, family members began
to reveal the details from their Satanic indoctrination. They each
confessed to having sex with the devil, and on several
occasions they confessed to aiding the devil for power and money.
(11:08):
They confessed that they had given hair from their head,
their armpit, and their genitals to the devil. Also, and
we're quoting from the records here, a piece of nail
from the big toe that was of their left foot quote,
and powder of children's hands They reported that the devil
quote scratched them on their left side to draw blood,
(11:31):
which he then quote collected in a little box. The
family members described how the devil took out a sheet
of paper, placed it on his knee, and gave each
of them a pen so they could sign the pact.
Because the family had no schooling, the devil guided their
hands as they wrote. Quote. Then he wrapped up in
the paper all the things that they had given him
(11:53):
and took them with him. In total, the family confessed
to hundreds of thefts and murders, and they also admitted
to performing sorcery and black magic. Investigators in the case
claimed to have found potions in their possession, potions made
from the powdered remains of fingers taken from unborn babies. Together,
(12:15):
the family members also named possibly more than four hundred
alleged accomplices, but this was not because they wanted to
give up their friends and acquaintances, but rather it was
a feudal attempt at making the torture stop. Some of
the people who were named were arrested and executed. Some
of the people they named were not actually real people.
(12:37):
During their torture, Anna and possibly Powerless confessed to flying.
Anna claimed that at first she thought that a night
flight was actually a bad dream. She became convinced it
was real when the devil assured her that he had
carried her through the air. And at the time this
seemed like a pretty straightforward confession. Even most theologians at
(12:58):
this period said that which is really did fly, so
of course it made sense that Anna would have. How
this also confessed to having bitten a consecrated communion host
to make it bleed the host. To get us all
on the same page, here is the bread used in
the Christian ritual of the Eucharist, so for Catholics like Maximilian,
(13:20):
it's considered to be the body of Christ, and this
desecration of the consecrated host was blasphemy. Powerless, with this act,
must be, of course, in league with the devil. We
are going to take another break for a word from
our sponsor, and when we're back we will talk about
what went on in a place called Falcon Tower. Welcome
(13:48):
back to Criminal Lea, So please be aware this is
what I was talking about at the beginning of the show.
We're going to talk now about some extreme torture techniques
so the family had pleaded their innocence, but as this was,
as we mentioned, a show trial, they were found guilty.
They were sentenced to execution by being burned alive. The commissioner,
(14:13):
Commissioner van Grek, instructed that Hansel was to be an
eyewitness to his adult famili's execution right ten year old soul.
The family was housed in Falcon Tower, which was a
prison where their torture under Alexander von Haslang's watch began.
In the tower, torture would usually range from being hung
(14:36):
by your wrists to dislocate your joints. There were actually
a few versions of that particular technique do having to
endure such things as maybe torch burnings and and other
things like that. Children were often beaten with a cane
and this was all just the beginning for the family.
When the family was removed from Falcon Tower on their
(14:57):
execution day, according to the sheriff's for court, Hansel did
not have much to say, but the boy appeared quote
lively enough. The sheriff had been assigned the task of
documenting the boy's reactions during the execution, so when they
arrived at the place of the execution, Hansel as recorded
by the local sheriff, said quote, look, look what a
(15:19):
grand wedding for my father and mother. They've got so
many minute arms. The duke doesn't have as many himself,
so he clearly didn't initially understand what was happening. His
demeanor quickly changed, though, when flames engulfed the site, crying
while sitting on the sheriff's horse, saying quote, my mother
is squirming. The family's sentence execution by being burned alive, was,
(15:47):
as I'm sure we all imagine, terrible. But the level
of torture that Happenheimer's are subjected to is frightening, distressing
and tense. And Barstow historian and educator records of their torture,
and we're quoting here because we wouldn't do this the
(16:09):
justice that she does. So First they were stripped so
that their flesh could be torn off by red hot pincers.
Then Anna's breasts were cut off. The bloody breasts were
forced into the mouths of her two grown sons. Church
bells peeled to celebrate this triumph of Christianity over Satan.
(16:29):
The crowd sang hymns, vendors hawked pamphlets, describing the sins
of the victims. Meanwhile, Anna's chest cavity bled as the
carts lurched along. The injured prisoners were in agony. Nonetheless,
they were forced at one point to get down from
the carts and kneel before a cross to confess their sins.
(16:49):
Then they were offered wine to drink, a strangely humane act.
In the midst of this barbaric ritual. One can hope
that between the wine and the loss of blood, the
Poppenheimer's were losing consciousness. They had not been granted the
privilege of being strangled before being burned, but in keeping
with the extreme brutality of these proceedings, they would be
(17:12):
forced to endure the very flames. Further torments awaited. Powerless,
A heavy iron wheel was dropped on his arms until
the bones snapped, then subjected to impalement on a pike.
The four Poppenheimer's were then tied to the stakes. The
brushwood pyres were set aflame, and they were burned to death.
(17:35):
Unsel wasn't only made to watch his parents and two
older brothers torture and execution, He too was sentenced during
a second which trial just a few months later, and
as the rest of his family, he too was burned
alive in November of six A lot of us will
probably come away from this case horrified by the corruption
(17:58):
and brutality of it. The Duke saw this whole thing
is a way to help stabilize the region. But contemporaries
to the Poppenheimer's wouldn't have been as horrified as us.
Not really. Executions were often big events, with a large
turnout and pamphlets describing what had happened at the trial.
They would have agreed, or most probably would have, that
(18:20):
the Poppenheimer's were instruments of the devil, and they also
would have viewed the extreme torture and execution as a
way to cast out the devil and save those souls. Holly,
please tell me that you have a wonderful drink waiting
for us at the end of this. I find it delicious.
(18:43):
You are either going to think that I am a
crazy person or a genius. It is called burned at
the steak, which I hope no one will find too
flipward glib. But there's a very good reason that I
want to invoke fire here. So in thinking about all
of this, I wanted to do something that was very
(19:04):
classically German as a drink, and so I started thinking
about a cure shroyal. Hey talk about that. So it's
essentially that, but with a twist. So I'm going to
tell you the cure Troyal part, which is actually not
what you would do first, but I'm gonna tell you
how you put that together before the thing. So to
(19:25):
have on hand, you will have a half ounce of Kirchwasser,
which is a clear cherry brandy, an ounce of cherry syrup,
or I did mine with a mix of cherry syrup
and vanilla syrup because you know I love vanilla apa
you do, I do. You're gonna want a two or
three syrup e cherries, and you're gonna want three ounces
(19:45):
of champagne or sparkling wine. So that's what makes a
cure Troyal. That's nothing I've invented. That's a pretty standard
approach to it. However, here's the twists. Like I said,
I wanted to do something German that also honored is
not the right word, but references sort of the horror
of this, but in a way that is not horrible
(20:06):
to imbibe. D You're gonna take you know those small
like putting cup sized sealables like a you know, a
gladwear or a rubber made all of the all of
the companies that do them make the small pudding cup size.
You're going to fill that with sea salt, and to
that you are going to add five to six drops
of liquid smoke and you're gonna shake it and shake
(20:29):
it and shake it until the liquid smoke has evenly
distributed throughout it. And if you want, you can let
that sit overnight to make sure it incorporates. But you
are going to use this to rim your glass before
you make your cocktail. For anyone that hasn't ever done
like a salt room before, I'm sure you know how,
just in case you don't, you just dip the rim
(20:50):
and water, and then you dip the rim in a
shallow dish filled with the flavored salt. Then you pour
in your your kirschwasser and your syrup, rop in those cherries,
and then top it off with champagne. So when you
sip this, you get that yummy, fruity, sweet and bubbly
cherry flavored champagne cocktail, but you also get that smoke
(21:14):
sensation it's quite a cool thing. The other thing that
happens is that salt will augment the bubbl nous of champagne,
So it also is just kind of like a fun
reaction that's going on as you sip it as the
salt combines in that right, like the edge of your
mouth is the salt and champagne combine. It's an interesting thing.
Definitely smells like smoke while you're drinking it, which is
(21:36):
kind of fun too. I'm going to use this trick
all the time. Just everybody that comes to my house
should know it because the thing is like it is
very popular for people to use or um to be served.
I wouldn't say to use like smokers have smoked cocktails
in a bar, particularly if it's like a fancy pants
(21:56):
crap cocktails kind of place. Not everyone has a oker
at home. And I wanted an easy way to kind
of give that smoked flavor and sensation. And that is
it for the mocktail version. Super duper easy. You're just
gonna do your cherry syrup with a couple of cherries,
and you can either do like a sparkling grape juice originial,
whichever you prefer, and you can still do the same
(22:19):
liquid smoke rim shockingly delicious. You know it sounds it
sounds wonderful. I'm actually very curious about the smoke rim on.
The drink itself sounds right, I mean a cure. Shroyal
is a classic for a reason. It's it's delicious. Yes,
So hopefully that will take the edge off the knowledge
(22:40):
of what happened to the poor Poppenheimer's because this was
an intense one, Yes, this one. As I've told Maria
this season, I have felt like the heat is on
to make interesting, fun cocktail segments because the stories are
so rough. I know, we always end on an execution
and makes you want to have a drink. Yeah, yes,
(23:02):
So thank you for hanging in with us for the
difficult content and hopefully the cocktail is a little bit
of a save for that, and just for listening to
us tell stories. We will be right back here next
week with another story of witchcraft or sorcery, and we
thank you once again for listening. Criminalia is a production
(23:30):
of Shonda land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio, please visit the
I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows,
Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda land Audio in
partnership with I Heart Radio. They were a family accused
of murdering pregnant women for the purpose of making candles
out of those unborn babies, and you couldn't convince anyone otherwise.
(00:24):
You should know now that this show is going to
talk about some very extreme methods of torture that will
be near the end of the show. Welcome to Criminalia.
I'm Maria tre Marquis and I'm Holly Fry. The time
was the end of the sixteenth century and beginning of
the seventeen and the Poppenheimer's were an itinerant family from
(00:44):
Bavaria who took whatever odd jobs they could to get by.
Having been teased and abused because he had been born
out of wedlock pow less, the family patriarch ran away
multiple times during his childhood, and he learned to care
for himself elf by doing odd jobs in local towns. Anna,
the matriarch of the family, was the daughter of a
(01:06):
grave digger and grew up in the Franconian town of Ansbach.
Though her father's occupation was of course something completely necessary,
it was also deemed as a degrading occupation among the locals.
Anna was ridiculed by both children and adults throughout her childhood.
And when Paulas and Anna met and married, he was
(01:27):
a day laborer in the town brickyard and he was
thinking about how one day he would take over his
father in law's work. So Poppenheimer, let's talk about this
family name for a second. It's the name recorded in
their court documents, making them forever the Pappenheimer's, but that
likely wasn't the family's actual real name. They were likely
(01:51):
the game pearls. The word Poppenheimer described what Paulas often
did for a living, He cleaned privies, So maybe think
about it or like a family nickname. And there's also
slang usage that we can't verify, so maybe maybe one
of you can't, but we hear that the word was
Nuremberg slang for garbage man. Far into the twentieth century.
(02:15):
At this time in history, to set the scenes surrounding witchcraft,
there was a strong belief and a healthy fear of
witches and the black magic that they practiced. You have
probably guessed where this is headed. Paulas and Anna, along
with their three sons twenty year old Gumprecht, twenty year
old Jacob, and ten year old Hansel were accused of
(02:37):
crimes of murder and witchcraft in February of six hundred
and the case against them was based entirely on the
accusation of a single person. That person claimed to have
assisted them with murders of seven pregnant women for the
purpose of making candles out of their unborn babies. It
(02:58):
is believed that Paulas may have previously argued with that
man that accused them, but there doesn't seem to be
any solid evidence. After being accused, the Poppenheimer's were arrested
in the middle of the night, taken from their beds,
and then everything that could go wrong did fresh. On
the Bavarian throne there was Duke Maximilian the First, a
(03:21):
young Catholic with a strong anti Lutheran stance, and of
note here the Pappenheimer's were Lutheran. Maximilian wanted to crack
down on all crime in his region, and he believed
the display should be extravagant. The worst the crime, the
worst the punishment. Once they were arrested, the Pappenheimers were
(03:42):
suddenly catapulted into the center of a witch hunt that
was growing across Bavaria. The Duke decided to use them
as a political tool. This was one way he provided
an example of what horrifying things would happen to highwaymen,
grave robbers, and any other thieves among them. We're going
to take a break here for a word from our sponsor,
(04:03):
and when we return we will talk about how the
Poppenheimer's were not guilty, they were scapegoats. Welcome back to Criminalia.
So we're the Poppenheimer's instruments of the devil. Let's talk
(04:23):
about that. We normally would not know anything about the
Poppenheimer family, or at least not very much, especially not
more than four hundred years after they were alive. They
were peasants and the only time their lives would have
been documented would almost surely always have been in a
court record. And because it was high profile, this trial
(04:46):
was well documented, and the archives which can be found
in Munich are rich with details like the names of
the clerks, the lawyers, the jailers and even the judges
who took part. Individuals from the family his own circles,
including glazier Jack Jacob the Poacher and Nine Fingers the
Beggar were also noted as having been in attendance. It
(05:11):
may have been one of the most well publicized witch
trials in German history, but it was a show trial.
What we mean by that very basically is that this
was a public trial in which the judicial authorities had
predetermined the guilt or the innocence of the defendants. The
Pappenheimer's were chosen as a scapegoat by these authorities. Not
(05:33):
only were they peasants, which meant that they wouldn't be missed.
A known thief and liar had named them as criminals
while he was enduring torture before his own execution. But
still they really didn't have a chance, and there were
actually two trials. The first resulted in the death of
four of the Poppenheimer family and two of their accused accomplices.
(05:56):
Those were a farmer named Ulrich Schultz and the tailor
or Schmultz that may be smaltz Uh. It's a little
bit unclear in the historical record which of those spellings
is accurate. For that Taylor, the remaining member of the family,
that is Hansel, who you'll recall, was just ten years
old and five other accused accomplices were all sentenced in
(06:18):
the second trial. After their arrest, the family was taken
to Munich, where they underwent an incredible exhibit of torture
methods so severe that you or I or anyone would
probably confess to every unsolved crime and cold case in Bavaria.
We quote, as many as possible of the unsolved crimes
(06:41):
of the past few years were to be put down
to the account of the accused. A leading official in
the trial was the Duke's counselor. That was a man
named Johann Sigismund Wagner. Johan had long made unsuccessful attempts
to promote which trials in Bavaria, but that kind of
hadn't take and off as Bavarian court chancellor, he hoped
(07:04):
that he finally had his chance. And then there was
Alexander von Hasling. Alexander was a Bavarian general and a
witch hunter who, when Maximilian came to power, was chosen
as the leader of a so called war council. He
was put in charge of managing the Poppenheimer's while they
were imprisoned, and it is believed he really was not
(07:26):
actually interested in their punishment, but followed orders by the
Duke to use extreme measures, every member of the family
was tortured, and under torture they began to tell fantastic
tales of crimes of witchcraft, and they confessed to pretty
much any and all outstanding crimes in the country. Really
(07:48):
no joke. To be clear, this was not the normal
trial or punishment for a family of their stature. For them,
the legal systems should have worked like this. If found guilty,
they would have been sentenced to time in jail and
then evicted from the territory. But all the Poppenheimer's were accused, tried,
(08:10):
and sentenced for the extraordinary crime of having been instruments
of the devil. The official charges went as follows. There
are four to name. One quote of powless game Pearl.
It was said that he had crippled and slain one
hundred young children and ten old people by dint of
(08:30):
vile sorcery. The crowd also heard how he had entered
the sellers of innkeepers and other folks, shamelessly devouring such
victuals and drink as he might lay his hands on.
He had further confessed to having committed ten robberies from churches,
violently slain forty four persons by his hand alone, set
(08:53):
fire to homes or barns eight times, broken into houses
by night fourteen times, pillaging and robbing the tenants, robbed
wayfarers on the highway five times, and committed four other thefts.
Two quote. In like manner, his wife, Anna, being sixty
(09:13):
years of age, has assailed one infants and nineteen old
people with her spells, crippling them and killing them in
godless fashion. She entered sellers on eight occasions, has committed
one murder by her own hand, set fire twice to
the homes of others, has caused four gales and hail storms,
and has poisoned meadows and afflicted cattle so often that
(09:36):
she herself cannot tell the number. Three quote. The elder
of her two sons, called Gumprecht, has caused the death
of thirty children and adults by means of sorcery, has
entered sellers on twelve occasions, burgled and robbed nine churches,
committed twenty four murders, set fire to nine homes, oken
(10:00):
in by night, and robbed folds six times. He has
four times committed highway robbery, poisoned and ruined fields and
cattle without number, and caused strife between god fearing spouses
on four occasions and four quote the other, her son Jacob,
has slain sixty five infants and five adults by sorcery,
(10:24):
has ten times entered sellers, has committed five thefts from churches,
has put to death and murdered thirty three persons by
his own hand, set five fires broken in five times
by night, committed four other thefts, caused ten gales and
hail storms, poisoned fields and beasts twenty six times. According
(10:45):
to accounts of the interrogations, the Poppenheimer's confessed to whatever
authorities were looking for. After intense torture, family members began
to reveal the details from their Satanic indoctrination. They each
confessed to having sex with the devil, and on several
occasions they confessed to aiding the devil for power and money.
(11:08):
They confessed that they had given hair from their head,
their armpit, and their genitals to the devil. Also, and
we're quoting from the records here, a piece of nail
from the big toe that was of their left foot quote,
and powder of children's hands They reported that the devil
quote scratched them on their left side to draw blood,
(11:31):
which he then quote collected in a little box. The
family members described how the devil took out a sheet
of paper, placed it on his knee, and gave each
of them a pen so they could sign the pact.
Because the family had no schooling, the devil guided their
hands as they wrote. Quote. Then he wrapped up in
the paper all the things that they had given him
(11:53):
and took them with him. In total, the family confessed
to hundreds of thefts and murders, and they also admitted
to performing sorcery and black magic. Investigators in the case
claimed to have found potions in their possession, potions made
from the powdered remains of fingers taken from unborn babies. Together,
(12:15):
the family members also named possibly more than four hundred
alleged accomplices, but this was not because they wanted to
give up their friends and acquaintances, but rather it was
a feudal attempt at making the torture stop. Some of
the people who were named were arrested and executed. Some
of the people they named were not actually real people.
(12:37):
During their torture, Anna and possibly Powerless confessed to flying.
Anna claimed that at first she thought that a night
flight was actually a bad dream. She became convinced it
was real when the devil assured her that he had
carried her through the air. And at the time this
seemed like a pretty straightforward confession. Even most theologians at
(12:58):
this period said that which is really did fly, so
of course it made sense that Anna would have. How
this also confessed to having bitten a consecrated communion host
to make it bleed the host. To get us all
on the same page, here is the bread used in
the Christian ritual of the Eucharist, so for Catholics like Maximilian,
(13:20):
it's considered to be the body of Christ, and this
desecration of the consecrated host was blasphemy. Powerless, with this act,
must be, of course, in league with the devil. We
are going to take another break for a word from
our sponsor, and when we're back we will talk about
what went on in a place called Falcon Tower. Welcome
(13:48):
back to Criminal Lea, So please be aware this is
what I was talking about at the beginning of the show.
We're going to talk now about some extreme torture techniques
so the family had pleaded their innocence, but as this was,
as we mentioned, a show trial, they were found guilty.
They were sentenced to execution by being burned alive. The commissioner,
(14:13):
Commissioner van Grek, instructed that Hansel was to be an
eyewitness to his adult famili's execution right ten year old soul.
The family was housed in Falcon Tower, which was a
prison where their torture under Alexander von Haslang's watch began.
In the tower, torture would usually range from being hung
(14:36):
by your wrists to dislocate your joints. There were actually
a few versions of that particular technique do having to
endure such things as maybe torch burnings and and other
things like that. Children were often beaten with a cane
and this was all just the beginning for the family.
When the family was removed from Falcon Tower on their
(14:57):
execution day, according to the sheriff's for court, Hansel did
not have much to say, but the boy appeared quote
lively enough. The sheriff had been assigned the task of
documenting the boy's reactions during the execution, so when they
arrived at the place of the execution, Hansel as recorded
by the local sheriff, said quote, look, look what a
(15:19):
grand wedding for my father and mother. They've got so
many minute arms. The duke doesn't have as many himself,
so he clearly didn't initially understand what was happening. His
demeanor quickly changed, though, when flames engulfed the site, crying
while sitting on the sheriff's horse, saying quote, my mother
is squirming. The family's sentence execution by being burned alive, was,
(15:47):
as I'm sure we all imagine, terrible. But the level
of torture that Happenheimer's are subjected to is frightening, distressing
and tense. And Barstow historian and educator records of their torture,
and we're quoting here because we wouldn't do this the
(16:09):
justice that she does. So First they were stripped so
that their flesh could be torn off by red hot pincers.
Then Anna's breasts were cut off. The bloody breasts were
forced into the mouths of her two grown sons. Church
bells peeled to celebrate this triumph of Christianity over Satan.
(16:29):
The crowd sang hymns, vendors hawked pamphlets, describing the sins
of the victims. Meanwhile, Anna's chest cavity bled as the
carts lurched along. The injured prisoners were in agony. Nonetheless,
they were forced at one point to get down from
the carts and kneel before a cross to confess their sins.
(16:49):
Then they were offered wine to drink, a strangely humane act.
In the midst of this barbaric ritual. One can hope
that between the wine and the loss of blood, the
Poppenheimer's were losing consciousness. They had not been granted the
privilege of being strangled before being burned, but in keeping
with the extreme brutality of these proceedings, they would be
(17:12):
forced to endure the very flames. Further torments awaited. Powerless,
A heavy iron wheel was dropped on his arms until
the bones snapped, then subjected to impalement on a pike.
The four Poppenheimer's were then tied to the stakes. The
brushwood pyres were set aflame, and they were burned to death.
(17:35):
Unsel wasn't only made to watch his parents and two
older brothers torture and execution, He too was sentenced during
a second which trial just a few months later, and
as the rest of his family, he too was burned
alive in November of six A lot of us will
probably come away from this case horrified by the corruption
(17:58):
and brutality of it. The Duke saw this whole thing
is a way to help stabilize the region. But contemporaries
to the Poppenheimer's wouldn't have been as horrified as us.
Not really. Executions were often big events, with a large
turnout and pamphlets describing what had happened at the trial.
They would have agreed, or most probably would have, that
(18:20):
the Poppenheimer's were instruments of the devil, and they also
would have viewed the extreme torture and execution as a
way to cast out the devil and save those souls. Holly,
please tell me that you have a wonderful drink waiting
for us at the end of this. I find it delicious.
(18:43):
You are either going to think that I am a
crazy person or a genius. It is called burned at
the steak, which I hope no one will find too
flipward glib. But there's a very good reason that I
want to invoke fire here. So in thinking about all
of this, I wanted to do something that was very
(19:04):
classically German as a drink, and so I started thinking
about a cure shroyal. Hey talk about that. So it's
essentially that, but with a twist. So I'm going to
tell you the cure Troyal part, which is actually not
what you would do first, but I'm gonna tell you
how you put that together before the thing. So to
(19:25):
have on hand, you will have a half ounce of Kirchwasser,
which is a clear cherry brandy, an ounce of cherry syrup,
or I did mine with a mix of cherry syrup
and vanilla syrup because you know I love vanilla apa
you do, I do. You're gonna want a two or
three syrup e cherries, and you're gonna want three ounces
(19:45):
of champagne or sparkling wine. So that's what makes a
cure Troyal. That's nothing I've invented. That's a pretty standard
approach to it. However, here's the twists. Like I said,
I wanted to do something German that also honored is
not the right word, but references sort of the horror
of this, but in a way that is not horrible
(20:06):
to imbibe. D You're gonna take you know those small
like putting cup sized sealables like a you know, a
gladwear or a rubber made all of the all of
the companies that do them make the small pudding cup size.
You're going to fill that with sea salt, and to
that you are going to add five to six drops
of liquid smoke and you're gonna shake it and shake
(20:29):
it and shake it until the liquid smoke has evenly
distributed throughout it. And if you want, you can let
that sit overnight to make sure it incorporates. But you
are going to use this to rim your glass before
you make your cocktail. For anyone that hasn't ever done
like a salt room before, I'm sure you know how,
just in case you don't, you just dip the rim
(20:50):
and water, and then you dip the rim in a
shallow dish filled with the flavored salt. Then you pour
in your your kirschwasser and your syrup, rop in those cherries,
and then top it off with champagne. So when you
sip this, you get that yummy, fruity, sweet and bubbly
cherry flavored champagne cocktail, but you also get that smoke
(21:14):
sensation it's quite a cool thing. The other thing that
happens is that salt will augment the bubbl nous of champagne,
So it also is just kind of like a fun
reaction that's going on as you sip it as the
salt combines in that right, like the edge of your
mouth is the salt and champagne combine. It's an interesting thing.
Definitely smells like smoke while you're drinking it, which is
(21:36):
kind of fun too. I'm going to use this trick
all the time. Just everybody that comes to my house
should know it because the thing is like it is
very popular for people to use or um to be served.
I wouldn't say to use like smokers have smoked cocktails
in a bar, particularly if it's like a fancy pants
(21:56):
crap cocktails kind of place. Not everyone has a oker
at home. And I wanted an easy way to kind
of give that smoked flavor and sensation. And that is
it for the mocktail version. Super duper easy. You're just
gonna do your cherry syrup with a couple of cherries,
and you can either do like a sparkling grape juice originial,
whichever you prefer, and you can still do the same
(22:19):
liquid smoke rim shockingly delicious. You know it sounds it
sounds wonderful. I'm actually very curious about the smoke rim on.
The drink itself sounds right, I mean a cure. Shroyal
is a classic for a reason. It's it's delicious. Yes,
So hopefully that will take the edge off the knowledge
(22:40):
of what happened to the poor Poppenheimer's because this was
an intense one, Yes, this one. As I've told Maria
this season, I have felt like the heat is on
to make interesting, fun cocktail segments because the stories are
so rough. I know, we always end on an execution
and makes you want to have a drink. Yeah, yes,
(23:02):
So thank you for hanging in with us for the
difficult content and hopefully the cocktail is a little bit
of a save for that, and just for listening to
us tell stories. We will be right back here next
week with another story of witchcraft or sorcery, and we
thank you once again for listening. Criminalia is a production
(23:30):
of Shonda land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio, please visit the
I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows,
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Maria Trimarchi
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