Suicide by Proxy: The Unintended Consequences of Public Executions in Eighteenth-Century Germany
Abstract
On May 24, 1704, at about ten in the morning, Agnes Catherina Schickin, a thirty-year-old serving woman from the town of Schorndorf in Württemberg arrived at the village of Krumhard. After asking for and receiving a glass of milk from a local peasant woman, Agnes was on her way out of the village when she saw four, in her words, “beautiful little boys” playing together by the roadside. She approached the children and asked for directions to Schorndorf. When one of the boys, Hans Michael Furch, the seven-year-old son of the local cowherder, said he knew the way, she offered him a gift and asked him to walk with her. The three other boys wanted to come along, too, but she dissuaded them. Agnes and the seven-year-old walked off into the forest alone.