37 pages • 1 hour read
Helmut Walser SmithThe Butcher's Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2002A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 6-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary: “The Killer”
In January 1901, Ernst Winter’s bloodstained clothes—including vest, jacket, pants, coat, and handkerchief—begin to turn up in various places in town. Investigators discover semen stains on the pants and vest, indicating that Winter was killed while engaging in sexual activity. Theories about a sexual murder begin to circulate, including that Winter frequented sex workers or was assaulted by male pederast. The police make inquiries among the Konitz underworld—with particular attention to a triangle involving Marie Sawischewski and her lovers Johann Gast and August Pikarski—but find no definite links to Winter.
A handkerchief that was discovered in the ditch along with Winter’s head leads in the direction of a schoolteacher named Weichel. A strong man with an alcohol addiction and a violent streak, Weichel shows a suspicious interest in the case and, during a drinking bout in a bar, even confesses that he was the murderer. However, the police interpret this as merely a ploy for attention by a desperate man.
A new detective, Inspector von Kracht, is appointed to lead the investigations. Unlike Inspector Braun, he is a believer in the ritual murder myth and fixes his attentions back on the Lewys, theorizing that the sack in which Winter’s torso was found made its way to Adolph Lewy by way of the tailor Otto Plath and Lewy’s sister. However, this line of reasoning is unconvincing, and the police begin to believe that an obsessive focus on indicting Jews is slowing the investigation.
The police fix their attention back on Gustav Hoffmann, believing that his alibi is not airtight (notably, his activities during the hour preceding the murder are not accounted for). The district attorney Lautz details a scenario whereby Hoffmann might have committed the murder.
According to Lautz’s scenario, Hoffmann caught Ernest Winter and his daughter Anna making love to each other in his shed near the Mönchsee around 6:00 pm. Anna fled. Fearing the prospect of damage to the family’s reputation, Hoffmann strangled or suffocated Winter in hot-blooded anger. Aware of the need to hide all evidence of the crime, he decided to dispose of the body in the same way as he handled meat in his butcher’s shop: by cutting up the parts individually, wrapping them in packing paper, and binding the packages with string. This he did later in the evening, after having dinner with his family. The job took longer than he expected, and, in panic, he threw some of the packages into the river, and hid the others. Eventually, he took them to the places where they were eventually found.
Lautz asks the police for the case against Hoffmann be reopened, but they refuse. Lautz dies shortly thereafter, and the investigation continues under Chief Prosecutor Schweigger.
Epilogue Summary
In the Epilogue, Smith discusses the aftermath of the case and an alternate theory for the murder put forth by Inspector Braun.
A year after the murder, a committee erects a monument to Ernst Winter laced with an implication of Jewish guilt, while postcards are issued with crude antisemitic propaganda urging citizens to “watch over your siblings” and “protect your children” (210). However, the belief among Germans that the Jews had murdered Ernst Winter begins to wane (210). The Kaiser pardons Moritz Lewy after he has served two years in prison, and Moritz’s return home passes without incident.
The case continues to fascinate the public, and various new hypotheses are put forth. One, probably by Inspector Braun, implicates Bernhard Masloff as the murderer. According to this theory, Winter came to the Masloff apartment and seduced Masloff’s wife Martha. Masloff and his brother-in-law returned unexpectedly and beat Winter to death, later cutting up his body in the cellar.
Several clues support this scenario. Stuck to Winter’s severed head was found a scrap of a newspaper, the Taglische Rundschau, that Masloff’s former employer, a farmer named Borrmann, subscribed to. While doing farm work for Borrmann, Masloff learned how to slaughter sheep, and the way Winter’s body was cut up suggests the work of someone who slaughtered animals on occasion. Moreover, the string tying the package came from the shop of the tailor Plath, which Anna Ross frequented. On examination, it transpires that Ross is able to make a knot very similar to the one on the string holding the package.
Other evidence, including the route taken by Masloff and Ross on their daily errands, suggests that they could easily have carried the body to the Mönchsee and deposited Winter’s head and left arm in their respective hiding places. When, in 1907, a neighbor of the Masloffs reports hearing them incriminating each other, Braun pleads to the new district attorney to pursue charges against the Masloffs, but he refuses. The district attorney is none other than Schweigger.
After World War I, Konitz falls into Polish hands and is renamed Chojnice. The German population decreases due to migration westward to the Weimar Republic. German and Polish people in the town become polarized around their respective ethnic identities. The Jews that remain side with the Germans, believing that antisemitism is now worse among the Polish community.
When the Nazis invade the Polish border in September 1939, the Germans of Konitz turn on their Polish and Jewish neighbors. A bloody massacre ensues in which citizens, a priest, and scores of psychiatric patients are killed. Today, Chojnice is a drab town that shows few signs of the drama that enveloped it in 1900—except that the house of Adolph Lewy still stands three doors down from Gustav Hoffmann’s, and both in the shadow of a Catholic church.
Chapter 6-Epilogue Analysis
The final leg of the case provides a respite from antisemitism. Indeed, for the first time, readers see the police coming to the realization that an obsessive preoccupation with blaming the Jews is slowing down the investigation process. Instead, they focus on Winter’s sexual life as possibly providing a background to his murder. This proves to be a more fruitful path for investigation, since Winter was known to boast of his sexual prowess and for being a “ladies’ man.” Yet the police find themselves unable to believe that a respectable middle-class citizen like Winter would associate with the so-called underworld class. Thus, social biases color the police officials’ attitude to the case. Yet for the first time they consider turning their attention to Hoffmann as a plausible suspect, and Lautz builds a compelling case against him. Later, Inspector Braun builds a scenario incriminating Masloff with Ross as an accomplice.
Smith leaves open the possibility that either Hoffmann or Masloff may have committed the murder. Both appear to have compelling motives and could have carried out the crime. Smith states that “it is no longer inconceivable that a respectable man could commit a horrible deed” (205). In other words, the kind of social prejudice that in 1900 held back the police from seriously considering Hoffmann as a suspect is less prevalent. Readers learn in this chapter the severe consequences of antisemitism but are also relieved to learn that the indictment of the Jews in the Winter murder has tapered off.
Smith points out that Chief Prosecutor Schweigger’s surname translates as “silencer,” which is oddly appropriate to the role he plays in the story, since he effectively shuts down all further inquiry on the case.
In the Epilogue, Smith brings the story forward to World War II, showing how the antisemitism of 1900 lay dormant and then boiled over in the actions of the Nazis. He portrays how ordinary Germans and Poles were all too willing to betray and destroy their Jewish neighbors, and that this had been prepared by centuries of intolerance, exacerbated by Collective Narratives and The System of Othering.
The book concludes with the image of modern-day Konitz (Chojnice) and the triangle of Lewy’s house, Hoffmann’s house, and the Catholic church—three entities that are still standing and played a key role in the story.
