Hugo Schenk was hanged in Vienna on April 22, 1884, beside his accomplice Karl Schlossarek. In March 1884 a Vienna court had sentenced both men to death, together with Schenk's brother Karl, for the murders of four women in 1883. All four worked in domestic service. Schenk found them through marriage advertisements in the newspapers, presented himself as an engineer or a nobleman, promised to marry them, and took them away from the city with their savings. None of them came back.
The trial drew crowds in March 1884, the Czech daily Právo recalled in 2021, and newspapers as far away as Baden printed the proceedings. Photographs of the defendants were sold, ballads about the killings circulated as broadsheets for years, and the writer Egon Erwin Kisch returned to the case twice in the twentieth century.
Schenk was born in 1849 in Teschen (Těšín), according to Právo. Kisch, writing from court files, called him the son of a district court judge in Teschen. Právo described his father, Wilhelm Schenk, as a state councillor. The family was respectable, and the son received a good education.
He attended a lower gymnasium and then an artillery school, Právo reported, and served afterward in the 71st Infantry Regiment. The same account describes him as secretive and dishonest as a boy, and repeats a story that he mistreated birds and cats. Kisch wrote that he had a good education and had traveled widely.
Schenk's criminal record began early. In December 1870, at 21, he was sentenced to five years in the prison at Mírov for fraud, and he was released after about two years, according to Právo.
Between prison terms he drifted through a series of jobs. Právo lists work as a charcoal burner, a rag collector and a commercial clerk. In company he passed himself off as a factory director or as an exiled Polish nobleman. Kisch reported that he used the alias "Hermann Siegel, engineer," and that he told at least one woman he was secretly a Polish prince pursued by the tsar for his political work.
From 1881 he placed matrimonial advertisements in the newspapers, presenting himself as a well-traveled engineer. In September 1881 he was arrested for defrauding a woman he had met this way of 1,800 gulden, Právo reported. He was sentenced to two years of hard imprisonment and served them at Stein. He was released in March 1883.
He was married. Kisch, citing the court files, wrote that Schenk had settled his wife in Prague; she later traveled to Vienna to try to win him back, failed, and went to work as a governess in Saaz.
At Stein Schenk met Karl Schlossarek, a locksmith serving a sentence for theft. After his release Schenk proposed that they work together, and he brought in his brother Karl, according to Právo. Hugo was the planner. Schlossarek, by Hugo's own account in court, carried out the violence.
The first plans in the spring of 1883 were robberies, not murders. On April 3, 1883, Schlossarek took a man by train into the Moravian countryside and tried to rob and kill him; the man was wounded but survived and later testified against the defendants, Právo reported. Schenk watched from a distance and afterward treated Schlossarek's own injuries. A second robbery attempt, against another man, also failed, the Durlacher Wochenblatt reported from the trial. Kisch described further plans that came to nothing, including an ambush of a postman between Pöchlarn and Artstetten.
The failures changed the plan. Hugo Schenk told the court in March 1884 that after the attempts on the two men, he and Schlossarek had decided to kill every future victim, the Durlacher Wochenblatt reported. Kisch summed up the principle he drew from the court files: every victim would be robbed and killed, together with anyone who might help solve the crime.
Schenk's victims came to him through the newspapers. Právo described how he went through the advertisements placed by women seeking positions or marriage, and how he answered them in his assumed identities. He looked for women who worked as maids or cooks and had built up savings over years in service. He courted them, promised marriage, persuaded them to give notice and draw out their money, and then took them on a journey out of Vienna.
He ran several courtships at once. The court found that he kept about eight women in reserve as possible brides, Kisch wrote. One of them, a young woman working as a nursemaid in Germany, received six letters and a postcard from him between July and December 1883. Kisch printed them in full decades later, after they were shown to him. She knew nothing of the killings, and in Kisch's telling she was still waiting for Schenk when he wrote.
Josefine Timal was a maid in Vienna. She met Schenk through one of his marriage advertisements, according to Právo, and believed she was going to marry him. She left her position and traveled with him, taking her savings book and a gold watch.
She was killed on May 21, 1883, near Hranice in Moravia, Právo reported; she drowned. Schlossarek took part in the killing. At the trial her death was described at length, the Durlacher Wochenblatt reported.
Josefine Timal's disappearance created a danger. Her aunt, Katharina Timal, also worked in domestic service, in Budweis (České Budějovice), and had saved money. Schenk wrote to her, and she came to meet him.
Kisch, drawing on the court files, wrote that Katharina Timal was killed on July 21, 1883, near Krumm-Nussbaum, on the Danube. Hugo Schenk, Karl Schenk and Schlossarek were all present, according to Kisch. Právo placed the killing on the Danube at night without giving a date. The men took her jewelry and a savings book worth 1,260 gulden, Kisch wrote.
Schenk then wrote, in a forged letter, to another of Katharina Timal's relatives. Právo quoted a line from it in which he wished the recipient "the same fate."
Theresia Ketterl was a cook in the household of a baron in Vienna. Schenk found her through the newspaper advertisements, according to Právo, and courted her in the same way.
She was shot on August 5, 1883, near Lilienfeld, Právo and Kisch both reported. Schenk gave the court his own account of her death, which Kisch recorded as Schenk's claim and not as a finding. Schlossarek had no part in this killing, Kisch wrote. Schenk took her bank deposits, which Kisch gave as 813 gulden and 364 gulden 58 kreuzer, and securities worth about 1,400 gulden. Some of the money went to set up a flower shop in Stettin for a relative of his lover, Kisch reported. Schenk later wrote about Theresia Ketterl in memoirs he composed in prison, the Durlacher Wochenblatt noted during the trial.
Rosa Ferenczy was a maid in Vienna who had saved about 800 gulden, according to Kisch. Schenk courted her through the same kind of advertisement and arranged a trip down the Danube toward Pressburg (Bratislava). His brother and Schlossarek traveled with them; Hugo introduced them to her as his friends, Kisch wrote.
She was beaten to death near Pressburg on December 28, 1883, by Kisch's account; Právo gave the date of departure as December 29. Schlossarek and Hugo Schenk both took part, according to both accounts. Právo quoted a remark Schenk made about her after his arrest, in which he said that he actually felt sorry for her.
Through most of 1883 Schenk kept a lover in Vienna, whom he took on trips along the Danube to Melk and Stein, according to Kisch. He planned to flee to America with her, Právo reported. He had once intended to kill her as well, the same account says, but spared her because she had no money. At the trial she became the main witness for the prosecution.
Schenk did not regard the killings as finished. After his arrest he admitted that he had already chosen five more women, whose savings he expected to bring in as much as 30,000 gulden, Právo reported.
By the turn of the year Vienna police had marked the three men as suspects. They learned that Hugo Schenk would spend the night of January 3, 1884, at Schlossarek's lodging in Vienna, Právo reported, and about a week later they arrested all three. What first drew police attention to them has not been reported.
In custody Schenk at first trembled in his cell, then grew cheerful, Právo wrote, quoting press reports from the time. He told one visitor, in the paper's version, that he had enjoyed enough of the world and was ready to go. He asked the prison doctors for morphine because he could not sleep, and they refused. He began to write his memoirs, which were not published. He also proposed, Právo reported, to petition the court to have his photographs sold for the benefit of the people he had harmed.
The three men were tried in Vienna in March 1884. The Durlacher Wochenblatt, a local paper in Durlach, Baden, described the proceedings before the Vienna jury court in its issue of March 20, 1884; Kisch described the court as a special court sitting as a panel of judges. The presiding judge was Count Lamezan, the Durlacher Wochenblatt reported.
Hugo Schenk was the center of attention. The Baden paper described him as elegant, handsome and calm, giving his evidence almost casually and showing little emotion. He told the court that he had planned the crimes and that Schlossarek had carried them out. "I did not want to murder," he said, in the paper's report. Schlossarek, for his part, told the court that Schenk had proposed other robbery schemes that were never carried out.
The court heard about the failed robbery attempts of the spring of 1883 and the death of Josefine Timal in detail, and about Theresia Ketterl's death through Schenk's own prison writings. The wounded survivor of the April 1883 attack testified against the defendants, Právo reported, and his lover gave the central evidence for the prosecution.
On the final day of the trial the presiding judge read out a letter that Schenk had written from prison to his lover, asking her to obtain poison for him so that he could take it before his execution, the Durlacher Wochenblatt reported. She collapsed in an anteroom of the court and was searched. No poison was found.
All three defendants were found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. The verdict was unanimous, Právo reported. Karl Schenk and Schlossarek were visibly broken by the sentence, according to the Durlacher Wochenblatt. Hugo Schenk said he accepted it and would not appeal. Právo quoted his words: he would not use that right, he accepted the punishment, and he was ready to die.
Hugo Schenk and Karl Schlossarek were hanged in Vienna on April 22, 1884. In Der rasende Reporter, in a profile of a Vienna executioner, Kisch listed the hanging of "the servant murderers Hugo Schenk and Karl Schlossarek" on that date in the register of executions carried out in the city.
The fate of Karl Schenk is reported in different ways. Právo, in 2021, wrote that the first man hanged on April 22, 1884, was Karl Schenk, followed by Schlossarek and then Hugo. Kisch's register of Vienna executions names only Hugo Schenk and Karl Schlossarek for that day, and Kisch's later account of the case, which describes Karl Schenk's part in the killings, does not say what became of him.
Schenk's skull was preserved. In 1994 the Berlin daily taz described it as one of the exhibits at the Kriminalmuseum in Vienna, where the museum's caption said its bones could show the abnormality of the executed criminal.
The case lived on in popular culture. Photographs of the defendants taken in 1884 by the photographer Alois Hynek were circulated, and the killings became the subject of broadsheet ballads in the late nineteenth century, Právo reported.
Egon Erwin Kisch wrote about the case twice. In his collection Der rasende Reporter he recorded the execution in his profile of a Vienna hangman. In Prager Pitaval, published in 1952, he told the story through the letters Schenk sent to the young nursemaid in Germany in the second half of 1883, at the same time as he was courting and killing other women. Kisch reprinted the letters in full and contrasted their tender tone with what the court had established about their author.
Proven by the 1884 verdict: the murders of Josefine Timal, Katharina Timal, Theresia Ketterl and Rosa Ferenczy, for which Hugo Schenk was convicted together with Karl Schlossarek and Karl Schenk, according to the trial reporting and Právo's account. Schlossarek had no part in the death of Theresia Ketterl, Kisch wrote.
Suspected only: any further killings. Schenk admitted after his arrest that he had chosen five more women as victims, Právo reported, and the court found that he kept about eight women in reserve as possible brides, according to Kisch. No other killing has been reported.
Points on which the accounts differ: the date of Katharina Timal's death (July 21, 1883, in Kisch; no date in Právo); the date of the Ferenczy killing (December 28, 1883, in Kisch; a departure on December 29 in Právo); the form of the court (a jury court in the Durlacher Wochenblatt, a special court in Kisch); and whether Karl Schenk was hanged.
1849: Hugo Schenk is born in Teschen (Těšín).
December 1870: sentenced at 21 to five years at Mírov for fraud; released after about two years.
1881: begins placing matrimonial advertisements in newspapers.
September 1881: arrested for a marriage fraud; sentenced to two years of hard imprisonment, served at Stein, where he meets Karl Schlossarek.
March 1883: released from Stein.
April 3, 1883: Schlossarek wounds a man in a failed robbery in Moravia; the man survives.
May 21, 1883: Josefine Timal is killed near Hranice, Moravia.
July 21, 1883: Katharina Timal is killed near Krumm-Nussbaum (date as given by Kisch).
July to December 1883: Schenk writes letters to a young nursemaid in Germany.
August 5, 1883: Theresia Ketterl is killed near Lilienfeld.
December 28, 1883: Rosa Ferenczy is killed near Pressburg (date as given by Kisch).
January 1884: Hugo Schenk, Karl Schenk and Karl Schlossarek are arrested in Vienna.
March 1884: trial in Vienna; all three are sentenced to death. Hugo Schenk declines to appeal.
March 20, 1884: the Durlacher Wochenblatt reports the trial and the sentences.
April 22, 1884: Hugo Schenk and Karl Schlossarek are hanged in Vienna.
1952: Kisch's Prager Pitaval prints Schenk's letters to the nursemaid.
1994: his skull is on display at the Kriminalmuseum in Vienna.