Johann Eichhorn killed five young women in and around Munich between 1931 and 1938, and in the same years committed a long series of rapes and attempted rapes in the western suburbs of the city. Four of the five women he killed were attacked while cycling: he pulled them from their bicycles, assaulted them and shot them. The first, a 16-year-old girl he had met at the Oktoberfest, he strangled.
For a decade the police did not identify him. He worked for the state railway, was regarded by colleagues as reliable and by neighbors as a caring husband and father, and belonged to the Nazi party. He was caught by chance on January 29, 1939, when passers-by stopped him attacking a 12-year-old girl and held him for the police. Over months of interrogation he admitted the killings one by one. He was tried behind closed doors by the Munich Special Court at the end of November 1939, sentenced to death on November 30, and executed by guillotine at Stadelheim prison the next day. The case later became the basis of a novel, Andrea Maria Schenkel's Kalteis (2007).
Eichhorn was born on October 8, 1906, in Aubing, then a separate village on the western edge of Munich and today part of the city. His parents, Johann and Magdalena Eichhorn, were day laborers, according to the archivist Christoph Bachmann, writing in the Historisches Lexikon Bayerns, the online historical encyclopedia of Bavaria. Werner Sabitzer, head of the Vienna Police Museum, writing in 2019, describes him as the eldest child of a large family.
He trained as a locksmith (Schlosser). From 1934 he worked as a shunter (Rangierer) for the Deutsche Reichsbahn, the national railway. Colleagues considered him dependable. In his own neighborhood, Bachmann writes, he was seen as a hardworking, orderly man; Sabitzer says neighbors knew him as a caring father. Both writers describe the same split: by day an inconspicuous working life, and at night the search for victims.
Eichhorn himself later described his sexuality and his relationships with women as disturbed, Bachmann records. Sabitzer reports that Eichhorn told investigators he became sexually aroused only when he used violence.
Bachmann, who drew on the Munich prosecutors' and police files held in the Staatsarchiv München (the Bavarian State Archive in Munich), dates Eichhorn's first sexual offenses to the summer of 1928, when he tried to rape a girl and then a woman working as a harvest hand. Sabitzer describes the same period from the side of the police: from 1928 a series of brutal rapes took place in the west of Munich, in which an unknown man threatened young women with a pistol or a knife, choked them and raped them or tried to.
Both writers state that his first victims were his own two sisters. Bachmann writes that the violent fantasies, which had subsided for a time, returned in 1931, and that from then on he raped his sisters repeatedly. Neither sister is named in the published accounts.
Katharina Schätzl was 16 and came from Wolnzach, north of Munich. She was the daughter of a mason (Maurerstochter), Bachmann writes. She is the only one of the five women whose family background the sources record.
She met Eichhorn at the Oktoberfest, the Wiesn, in October 1931. Bachmann writes that Eichhorn walked her home. Sabitzer's account says that she met him at the festival on October 11, 1931, and that some days later the two went on a bicycle trip together. Near the monastery of Kloster Schäftlarn, in the Isar valley south of Munich, he attacked her. He pulled her from her bicycle, raped her and strangled her, then put her body in the Isar. It was carried downstream and washed ashore at Grosshesselohe, on the southern edge of Munich.
Bachmann gives October 11, 1931, as the date of the murder itself; Sabitzer gives it as the date they met. After this killing, Bachmann writes, Eichhorn committed sexual offenses continually, and the exact number of his victims can no longer be established.
Anna Geltl was 26 and recently married, the wife of a hairdresser, according to Bachmann. On May 30, 1934, she was cycling in the Forstenrieder Park, a forest on the edge of Munich, when Eichhorn attacked her. He knocked her from her bicycle and shot her. Bachmann writes that he tried to rape her and buried her in a pit he had dug in advance; Sabitzer writes that she was raped and shot, and that the killer then mutilated her body with a knife. Sabitzer gives May 30, 1934, as the day her body was found.
Berta Sauerbeck worked as an office clerk (Kontoristin). Sabitzer gives her age as 25, Bachmann as 26. On the night of September 8 to 9, 1934, she was cycling home from a party along the Lerchenauer Strasse in Milbertshofen, in the north of Munich, when she met Eichhorn by chance. He pulled her from her bicycle, shot her in the head (Sabitzer: in the back of the head) and attacked her. He then put her, still alive and badly wounded, into a refuse pit and covered her, and she died there.
In 1935, Bachmann writes, Eichhorn met a woman named Josefa. They had two children, both sons according to Sabitzer, and married in December 1937. Sabitzer dates the marriage to 1935. Sabitzer reports that Eichhorn told investigators his wife had tolerated violence during sex.
Eichhorn was by then a party member. Sabitzer describes him as a member of the NSDAP; neither he nor Bachmann gives a joining date.
Rosa Eigelein was 25 and worked as a seamstress (Näherin). Shortly before his wedding, Bachmann writes, Eichhorn attacked her in a field between Germering and Puchheim, west of Munich. He pulled her from her bicycle. When she fought off his attempt to rape her, he shot her. He left her where she lay, by a road at the edge of a meadow, and made no attempt to hide her. Sabitzer writes that he also mutilated her body with a knife.
Sabitzer dates this killing to 1937. Bachmann does not give a date, writing only that it happened shortly before the wedding, which he places in December 1937.
Maria Jörg was a domestic servant (Hausangestellte). Sabitzer gives her age as 21; Bachmann gives it as 23. Bachmann writes that Eichhorn killed her in the Forstenrieder Park on September 29, 1938, following the pattern of his earlier attacks. Sabitzer gives September 29, 1938, as the day her body was found, near a forester's house outside Munich.
Sabitzer records that all five women he killed showed marks of strangulation. Wolfgang Krüger, who researched the case for a book on serial killers in the Third Reich, says three of the five were also mutilated, according to a 2016 report on the book in the Cellesche Zeitung.
The killings attracted wide attention. Sabitzer writes that the Munich police set up a special commission (Sonderkommission) because of them, but that for years the investigators could not find the man responsible. Bachmann writes that the police never identified Eichhorn as a suspect at all, because he kept his double life carefully hidden. Krüger's research, as reported by the Cellesche Zeitung, describes a railway worker who went looking for women before and after his shifts.
The surviving victims of the rapes did not lead the police to him either. Sabitzer notes that one woman he attacked lost consciousness for four hours and barely survived. She, like the other survivors, is not named in any source.
The case was solved by accident. On January 29, 1939, Eichhorn attacked a 12-year-old girl. Passers-by who happened to come along caught him in the act and held him until the police arrived, Sabitzer writes. Bachmann puts it the same way: it was only by chance that the authorities came upon the whole series of crimes. Eichhorn was 32. The published accounts do not give her name.
A police appeal for information in the Eichhorn case, issued by the Kriminalpolizei in 1939, survives in the police headquarters records in the Staatsarchiv München and is reproduced in the Historisches Lexikon Bayerns. The lexicon does not say what the appeal asked of the public.
Eichhorn did not confess at once. Bachmann writes that in pretrial custody he admitted the individual murders gradually and reluctantly, over months of questioning. In the interrogations he called himself "like a wild animal" (wie ein wildes Tier), and he said that after the 70th rape he had stopped counting, according to Sabitzer. Investigators were able to prove 90 rapes against him.
In his cell, Sabitzer writes, Eichhorn told a fellow prisoner that he had killed five women and raped at least 70. The cellmate later gave evidence against him at the trial as a witness for the prosecution. Eichhorn called the cellmate's account false.
A psychiatric expert examined him before trial. Sabitzer, quoting the report's conclusions, writes that the expert found Eichhorn of above-average intelligence but described him as an ethically and morally degenerate psychopath, unstable, weak-willed and extraordinarily driven by sexual urges. The expert found him fully responsible for his actions.
Before the trial Eichhorn wrote a farewell letter to his family. Sabitzer quotes one line: "Since I have committed grave wrongs, I must also expect terrible consequences" (Nachdem ich schweres Unrecht begangen habe, muss ich auch mit furchtbaren Folgen rechnen). In the letter he said he did not want to see his former wife or his sons again. By then the marriage had ended in divorce.
The trial opened in Munich on November 29, 1939, before the Sondergericht München, the Munich Special Court, Sabitzer writes. The charges were five murders and 90 rapes. The public was excluded. Sabitzer writes that the case was an embarrassment to the National Socialist rulers because the offender was a member of the NSDAP. Neither writer says how the newspapers of the day covered the trial, or whether they covered it at all.
At the trial Eichhorn withdrew his confession. He claimed to have committed only 37 sexual offenses, said he could remember nothing of what he did while in the grip of his urges, and denied what the cellmate had said. After speaking with his defense lawyer, however, he admitted the murders in court. He told the court, Sabitzer writes, that he had denied them earlier out of shame before the families of the women he had killed.
The court gave its judgment on November 30, 1939, and sentenced Eichhorn to death. The date is confirmed by the register of executions kept by the Reich Ministry of Justice, now in the Bundesarchiv (the German Federal Archives), which lists "Eichhorn, Johann," born October 8, 1906, in Aubing, with the offense recorded as murder, the court as the Sondergericht München, the file reference III g11 7867/39, the judgment date November 30, 1939, and the date of death December 1, 1939.
The sources disagree on the exact counts of which he was convicted. Bachmann writes that the Special Court sentenced him to death by the guillotine for five murders and 90 rapes. Sabitzer writes that he was sentenced to death for four murders, and that the first killing, of Katharina Schätzl in 1931, was not classed as murder but as a sexual crime resulting in death. Neither writer explains the difference, and the ministry register records only the general heading of murder. All the sources agree that he killed five women.
Eichhorn was beheaded with the guillotine (the Fallbeil) on December 1, 1939, the day after the verdict, in the Munich-Stadelheim prison, which Bachmann calls the Strafvollstreckungsgefängnis München-Stadelheim.
His former wife, Josefa, divorced him and changed her surname, Bachmann writes. Sabitzer adds that she and the two sons took a new name and left Aubing.
Much of what is known about the case comes from official files. Bachmann's account cites the files of the Munich public prosecutors (Staatsanwaltschaften 9199 to 9225), of the Munich police headquarters (Polizeidirektion 8008 to 8011) and of the Munich prison administration (JVA München 158), all held by the Staatsarchiv München. The Reich Justice Ministry's register of executions, in the Bundesarchiv, records his sentence as entry E 201 on sheet 169 of the murder register for 1939.
Physical evidence survives too. Two of the knives he used are on display in the museum of the Munich police, the Polizeimuseum at the police headquarters on Ettstrasse, Sabitzer writes; his article illustrates them with a photograph credited to the museum. The city of Munich's official guide to the museum lists the Eichhorn case among the historical criminal cases in its exhibition, alongside the 1972 Olympic attack. Visits are by guided tour only, and the exhibition is not open to children under 14.
The writer Andrea Maria Schenkel based her second crime novel, Kalteis (Edition Nautilus, 2007), on the Eichhorn case, as the Munich paper Hallo München noted in 2012. The novel follows Kathie, a young woman who leaves village life for Munich in the late 1930s, while dark-haired young women are vanishing in and around the city; the killer, renamed Josef Kalteis, is a serial rapist and murderer. Schenkel tells the story through invented interrogation records, witness statements and other voices, the method of her first book, Tannöd.
The reviews summarized by the literary review digest Perlentaucher show how the real case was understood by critics in 2007. Michael Rutschky in the taz praised Schenkel's handling of the historical case and described it as 90 rapes and five murders. The Süddeutsche Zeitung's reviewer gave different figures, about a hundred rapes and four murders. Reviewers disagreed on whether leaving the Nazi setting in the background was a strength (the Süddeutsche Zeitung) or left the period thin (the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the taz). Kerstin Eschrich, reviewing the book in Jungle World, wrote that the novel's Kalteis is a party member, and that the authorities in the novel want his execution carried out quickly and with little publicity; she wrote that the case was authentic but the names were changed. That is a description of the novel, not a documented fact about the real proceedings.
An English translation, Ice Cold, was published in 2010 by Quercus under its riverrun imprint.
Proven by final judgment: Eichhorn was sentenced to death by the Munich Special Court on November 30, 1939, for murder, and executed on December 1, 1939. All sources agree he killed five women.
Disputed: whether the court convicted him of five murders and 90 rapes (Historisches Lexikon Bayerns; the charges as described by Sabitzer) or of four murders, with the 1931 killing of Katharina Schätzl classed as a sexual crime resulting in death (Sabitzer, 2019, in two publications).
Admitted but not fully tested: his statements that he stopped counting after the 70th rape, and the cellmate's account of five killings and at least 70 rapes, which Eichhorn disputed. Bachmann writes that the full number of his sexual offenses cannot be determined.
Details that vary between sources: the date of the first killing (October 11, 1931, per Bachmann, or some days after a meeting on that date, per Sabitzer); whether Anna Geltl was raped or he only tried to (Sabitzer, Bachmann), and whether he buried her (Bachmann); Berta Sauerbeck's age (25 or 26); Maria Jörg's age (21 or 23); the year of Eichhorn's marriage (1935 per Sabitzer; met in 1935 and married in December 1937 per Bachmann); and the year of Rosa Eigelein's death (1937 per Sabitzer; shortly before a December 1937 wedding per Bachmann).
October 8, 1906: Johann Eichhorn is born in Aubing, west of Munich, to the day laborers Johann and Magdalena Eichhorn.
Summer 1928: first recorded sexual offenses; a series of rapes in western Munich begins.
1931: violent fantasies return; he repeatedly assaults his two sisters.
October 1931: Katharina Schätzl, 16, of Wolnzach, whom he met at the Oktoberfest, is killed in the Isar valley near Kloster Schäftlarn; her body washes ashore at Grosshesselohe.
1934: he starts work as a shunter for the Deutsche Reichsbahn.
May 30, 1934: Anna Geltl, 26, is shot in the Forstenrieder Park.
Night of September 8 to 9, 1934: Berta Sauerbeck is shot in Milbertshofen and left in a refuse pit, where she dies.
1935: he meets Josefa; the couple have two sons.
1937: Rosa Eigelein, 25, is shot between Germering and Puchheim.
December 1937: he marries Josefa (Bachmann; Sabitzer gives 1935).
September 29, 1938: Maria Jörg is killed in the Forstenrieder Park area.
January 29, 1939: passers-by catch him attacking a 12-year-old girl in Aubing; he is arrested.
1939: over months of interrogation he admits the killings; a cellmate reports his admissions; a psychiatrist finds him fully responsible.
November 29, 1939: trial opens before the Munich Special Court, closed to the public.
November 30, 1939: sentenced to death.
December 1, 1939: executed by guillotine at Munich-Stadelheim.
2007: Andrea Maria Schenkel publishes Kalteis, a novel based on the case.
2010: the English translation, Ice Cold, is published.
2012: the Historisches Lexikon Bayerns publishes Christoph Bachmann's account drawn from the State Archive files.
2019: Werner Sabitzer's account appears in VEKO and Öffentliche Sicherheit.