different realities and reactions experience again. To improve her chances to go to heaven she decided to murder somebody, thereby to be executed. She asked a fellow inmate if she could murder her. She agreed on the condition that it would not be too painful. The plan was executed and so was Ewa Margareta K.435 In 1753 Daniel Völkner returned home to Germany at sixteen years of age after working as a soldier in Denmark. Soon he enrolled in one of the regiments of Mecklenburg and after a while he reached the decision to murder a child. Eventually he cut the throat of a small girl and went to the gaol himself and confessed what he had done. His idea to commit a murder and then having enough time to prepare himself for a happier life in heaven was said to be due to his religious enthusiasm, ”Schwärmerei”. One indication of the theological milieu that was Völkners are his books brought by a comrade to prison: Wahren Christenthum and Das Paradiesgärtlein by Johann Arndt, Geistreiches Gesangbuch by Johann Anastatius Freylinghausen, and ”das hällische goldne Schatzkästlein”, probably Güldene Schatz-Kästlein der Kinder Gottes by Karl Heinrich von Bogatzky.436 It might also refer toGüldenes Schatzkästleinby Martin Hyller. However that might be, all these writers were either part of the pietistic movement or may well, in the cases of Arndt and Hyller, be seen as forerunners to it. In 1786 Katharine Häuslerin, a married woman in a village close to Donauwörth in Bavaria, blessed her two children and signed them with a cross and then threw them in the Danube to drown. She then returned to the town and confessed. Her motive was fear of her husband, a hard man, because of a theft she had committed, consisting of milking a cow that was not theirs. He had already beaten her for the theft and she expected more violence. She considered running away and when she talked to her seven years old daughter and asked her if she wanted to stay with her father, the girl had said that she would rather die. The woman then got the idea that the children, apart from the daughter they also had aten 435 Gnothi sauthon 1788 VI:3:35 sqq, Hasenest 1757 p92 sqq. Whippings at the admission and release were also the rule at other prisons, such as the one in Vienna, Stuart 2023 p270 sq. 436 Gnothi sauthon 1783 I:2:10sqq. 127
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