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