Ernst August Wagner

Ernst August Wagner was born on 22 September 1874 in Eglosheim near Ludwigsburg as the ninth of ten children, as well as one half-brother and half-sister. Most of his siblings died early, so that in 1913 only two sisters and one brother remained. After his father, a poor peasant with drinking problems, died one day before Ernst Wagner's second birthday, the indebted family was forced to sell their farm. His mother tried to make a living by running a small shop; she soon remarried, but due to her many affairs, the marriage ended in divorce when Ernst was seven years old.

Ernst Wagner, who was known as the "widow's boy" in the village, had depression and suicidal thoughts;[1] he was quite intelligent and did well enough at school to earn a public stipend. In this way, despite his poverty, he was able to study and become a teacher.

After his qualifying exam, he worked as an auxiliary teacher at several schools in Württemberg from 1894 to 1901, though in April 1900 he was suspended for six months because of "severe nervousness and irritability". He then went to Switzerland for two months, where he tried to sell some of his poems to newspapers.

In July 1901, Wagner was assigned a teaching position in Mühlhausen an der Enz, where he stayed until 1902. Sometime in the summer of 1901, while drunk, he sodomized an animal. He then became increasingly wary and suspicious that others might be aware of his deed, and began to see signs and hints that the villagers of Mühlhausen were mocking him for this act of bestiality. For this reason, he bought a revolver, which he always carried with him from that point on so that he could evade a potential arrest.

That same year, Wagner began an affair with Anna Friedericke Schlecht, the daughter of a local innkeeper. He hated the Schlecht family, thinking that his future father-in-law despised him, and tried to avoid marrying Anna, but marriage became a foregone conclusion when she became pregnant by him and gave birth to a daughter, Klara, in the spring of 1902.

In December 1902, Wagner's mother, to whom he felt deeply attached, died. He took his final examination as a teacher and was transferred to Radelstetten, a poor and isolated village. Although he was embittered to be ordered to such a place, it also temporarily eased his feelings of constant persecution, even though the incident of sodomy continued to haunt him. On December 29, 1903, he and Anna Schlecht married in Ludwigsburg, mostly due to pressure from outside, as their daughter Klara was already ten months old. However, he neither loved his wife nor feigned love, and while he treated her kindly, he considered her more of a servant, because of her intellectual inferiority.[1]

In the summer of 1904 he once again went to Switzerland, trying twice to commit suicide there, once by drowning himself and by jumping off a bridge, though both attempts failed, because he was, according to his own words, too weak. In the following years his wife bore four more children, concluding in July 1909 with Rudolph Alfred. Wagner was said to have been unhappy about the births of his children and complained about the financial stress of feeding his family; he was seemingly indifferent to the interruption of his birthday in 1909 by infant Rudolph's death.[1]

Some time in 1906 or 1907, thinking that the people from Mühlhausen had passed on their knowledge about his crime, the feelings of being ridiculed and watched by others returned, and as a consequence he began to make plans to take revenge on those whom he deemed to be the cause of his misery, the villagers, and especially the men, of Mühlhausen.[1] In autumn 1907 he bought the first Mauser pistol, the other one following in 1909 and, with his bicycle, which he loved more than anyone or anything else, he made extensive journeys through the surrounding area and sharpened his shooting skills in remote forests.

Between 1909 and 1911 he made several requests to be transferred to another school, which was finally granted, so that on 1 May 1912 he began his work at a school in Degerloch, a suburb of Stuttgart. At that time he also decided to go ahead with his plan to avenge the derision he had to endure, as even at his new workplace he saw hints of people "knowing", and initially chose the spring of 1913 to put it into practice, but finally determined the last days of the summer holidays for his revenge.[1] In the days leading to the murders he wrote several letters to explain his deed.[2]

He was the first person in Württemberg to be found not guilty by reason of insanity after several psychiatric assessments diagnosed him with paranoia.[5] He was brought to an asylum in Winnenthal, where he wrote several plays and dramas and lived for another 25 years. He died there of tuberculosis in 1938.

• Bremen school shooting, another German mass shooting by a teacher committed the same year

• Foerster, Klaus (Hrsg.): Wahn und Massenmord. Perspektiven und Dokumente zum Fall Wagner. Verlag Sindlinger-Burchartz, Frickenhausen 1999, ISBN 978-3-928812-19-1.
• van Raden, Rolf: Patient Massenmörder. Der Fall Ernst Wagner und die biopolitischen Diskurse. Unrast-Verlag, Münster 2009, ISBN 978-3-89771-754-1 (Edition DISS Bd. 25)
• Blom, Philipp: Der taumelnde Kontinent – Europa 1900–1914. München: Carl Hanser-Verlag 2009, S. 421-452 (chapter: 1913 – Wagners Wahn).

• Mad teacher kills 15, wounds 16, The New York Times (September 6, 1913)
• Man who slew 15 insane, The New York Times (February 5, 1914)
• Massenmörder Wagner irrsinnig, Vorarlberger Volksblatt (February 6, 1914)
• Der Massenmord in Mühlhausen - Die Beerdigung der Opfer, Reichspost (September 9, 1913)
• Die Bluttat des Lehrers Wagner - Das letzte Verhör mit dem Mörder, Die Neue Zeitung (10 September 1913)
• Ernst Wagner - Ein Lehrer, Dichter und Massenmörder muehlhausen-enz.de, 2011, Quelle Wikipedia!