Andreas Bichel was a woodcutter who lived on the edge of Regendorf, a village near Regensburg in Bavaria. In 1808 he confessed to killing two young women: Barbara Reisinger, 18, who died in 1806, and Katarzyna Seidel, 17, who died in January 1808. The Royal Court of Appeal at Neuburg sentenced him to death on February 4, 1809.
The case is known less for its scale than for the way it was recorded. Anselm von Feuerbach, the jurist who later became the chief editor of the Bavarian penal code of 1813, wrote up the proceedings in his collection of remarkable criminal cases. Bichel's story appears in the version of that collection published in 1827, and later editions reprinted it. Feuerbach's account, in turn, is the basis of nearly everything that is told about Bichel today.
Regendorf lies near Regensburg in Bavaria. Bichel lived at the edge of the village with his wife, and he worked as a woodcutter. A Swiss radio feature broadcast in 2023 described how he was regarded: as a good neighbor, an honest man in his dealings and a gifted storyteller. His date of birth and the details of his early life are not on record.
Barbara Reisinger came from Losenrieth. She was 18 and died in 1806. Katarzyna Seidel, 17, was from Regendorf itself and had two sisters, Teresa and Walburga. She died in January 1808. The exact day of neither death is on record.
Although the two deaths were about a year and a half apart, they came to light together. The inquiry that began in May 1808 started with Katarzyna, after her sisters went to the court, and widened to include Barbara only after Bichel's own admissions.
On May 19, 1808, Katarzyna's sister Walburga recognized a piece of cloth as belonging to Katarzyna. A local tailor told her that Bichel had brought it to him. The sisters went to the district court at Burglengenfeld the same day.
On May 20 officials questioned Bichel, and further belongings of both young women were identified as having passed through his hands. Bichel said he had bought the cloth at a market in Regensburg. He denied knowing Katarzyna, though he conceded having seen her in the company of a young man. Witnesses, however, placed Katarzyna at his home in January 1808. His wife was found to have sold other belongings of the two young women.
Barbara Reisinger's family had parted with her belongings earlier. Bichel had collected them from her parents, telling them she had asked him to fetch them.
Bichel was arrested. At first he offered an explanation that put the blame on strangers: he said unknown vagrants had left the women at his home. The court did not accept it. He then admitted that Katarzyna had died at his hands in a quarrel, but he denied any part in the death of the second woman, whom he said he did not know.
The investigating judge continued to question him under the procedure Bavaria had introduced in 1806, the year torture was abolished in the kingdom under Feuerbach's influence. Bichel at first denied any knowledge of Barbara Reisinger. Some days later he asked to be heard again and confessed to both killings.
He told the court that he had wanted the women's belongings to sell. His wife, he said, had taken no part. Whether Katarzyna Seidel and Barbara Reisinger were his only victims is not known.
The file in the case passed to the Royal Court of Appeal at Neuburg, which gave its judgment on February 4, 1809. Bichel was sentenced to death. The date on which the sentence was carried out is not on record.
Feuerbach first published a collection of criminal cases under the title Merkwürdige Criminalrechtsfälle in 1808, with a second volume in 1811. In 1827 he issued a revised version, Aktenmäßige Darstellung merkwürdiger Verbrechen, which contains more than thirty cases of killing. Bichel's case is among them; in the 1849 Frankfurt edition it fills pages 43 to 56.
In his preface Feuerbach argued that a courtroom could teach law as well as a lecture hall, and the Bichel story is an example of that approach: it follows the file from the first complaint to the judgment, and it shows the investigating judge at work. The Polish legal historian Wacław Uruszczak, who retold the story in 2015, called Feuerbach's stories a valuable source for the study of the causes of crime and saw in them early traces of attention to the victims.
The details of the case are known through Feuerbach's account, which was written to illustrate procedure. The physical evidence, the witness statements and the confession form its documented core.
Bichel's motive is on record only as he stated it: the belongings of the women. Local belief and later retelling have attached legend to the case, and none of it rests on the court record. Whether Katarzyna Seidel and Barbara Reisinger were his only victims is not known. The spelling of the village (Regendorf or Regensdorf) and of the family name Seidel varies between retellings.
1806: Barbara Reisinger, 18, of Losenrieth, dies; the day is not on record.
1806: Bavaria abolishes torture in criminal procedure under Feuerbach's influence.
January 1808: Katarzyna Seidel, 17, of Regendorf, dies.
May 19, 1808: her sister goes to the district court at Burglengenfeld.
May 20, 1808: officials question Bichel at Regendorf.
May 1808: Bichel is arrested; he first blames vagrants, then admits Katarzyna's death, then confesses to both killings two days after a further hearing.
1808: Feuerbach publishes the first volume of Merkwürdige Criminalrechtsfälle.
February 4, 1809: the Royal Court of Appeal at Neuburg sentences Bichel to death.
1811: second volume of the Criminalrechtsfälle.
1813: Bavarian penal code, with Feuerbach as chief editor.
1827: revised collection, Aktenmäßige Darstellung merkwürdiger Verbrechen.