"A horrible act of a madwoman" was the headline of the Freisinger Tagblatt 118 years ago: A tragedy occurred in Hallbergmoos at the time.
Hallbergmoos
- local researcher Karl-Heinz Zenker has immersed himself deeply in Hallbergmoos history and has found something horrifying: "A gruesome act of a madwoman" was the headline of the Freisinger Tagblatt 118 years ago: The place was in turmoil because a mother had five on New Year's morning in 1903 Had killed children.
(By the way: Everything from the region is now also available in our regular Freising newsletter.)
Special widow
Karl-Heinz Zenker has published the finds that he discovered in the Freising City Archives in what is now the 74th collection sheet.
In the newspaper articles the crime is described in all gruesome details: Maria Heilmeier had lost her husband two years earlier.
The carpenter was killed in an accident at work on a construction site in Achering.
His wife Maria and the children Rosina, Therese, Helene, Amalie and Ludwig (four to ten years) stayed behind.
Maria was very hardworking, but also special, it was said.
Often excited, extremely stingy, greedy and suspicious.
She had also tried to kill herself by trying to swallow sewing needles.
Delusional avarice
Her avarice went so far that she also neglected her children and feared that they would use up the money and that she would then have to live in need and misery.
But there was no reason for that, after all, Maria received 50 Marks * accident pension every month and owned a property on Freisinger Sonnenstrasse.
On New Year's Eve she didn't want to cook anything for her children, so after consulting with Mayor Korbinian Buchschmid, Pastor Eicher arranged for the five children to get something to eat from the landlord.
When Pastor Eicher wanted to tell the children about this after the service, the news of a horrific deed was already waving through the town.
Maria Heilmeier had killed all of her children on New Year's morning.
The first at the scene were the couple Paulus, back from the service they heard a thud in Heilmeier's ground floor apartment.
They hurried down the stairs, where they saw a terrible picture.
Next to the front door were the bodies of Rosina and Therese, their severed heads in the corner of the room.
The other three children had skull injuries and they all died in the afternoon.
Three days later they were buried on the church wall opposite the church portal.
First Helene, Amelie and Rosina and then Ludwig and Therese.
Pastor Eicher speaks of a bloody act on five well-behaved and well-brought up children, "horrific and horrific, as we have never seen them and the New Year's Day has been indelibly engraved in our memories".
Arrested in a straitjacket
Maria Heilmeier resisted her arrest, had to be gagged and put in a straitjacket in order to take her to the district hospital in Freising.
She uttered screams and wild threats, and tried to injure herself on the way to the insane asylum in Gabersee **.
The collection sheet is available from
Karl-Heinz Zenker
(Tel. 08 11/36 90).
* 50 Reichsmarks from 1903 are equivalent to around 335 euros today.
Karl-Heinz Zenker picked out some prices from 1900: 1 liter of beer 24 pfennigs, 1 kilo of butter 1.86 marks, 1 kilo of coffee 4.18 marks and 1 liter of milk 20 pfennigs.
** The Wasserburg-Gabersee psychiatric hospital was built in 1883 as a “district insane asylum” for patients from the entire Upper Bavaria district.
Part of the house is now a museum; two thirds of the patients were euthanized during the Nazi era.
Today there is the kbo-Klinikum Inn-Salzach for psychiatry, psychotherapy, psychosomatic medicine, geriatrics and neurology.
Eva Oestereich
