Ernst August Wagner (22 September 1874 – 27 April 1938) was a German teacher and mass murderer. On 4 September 1913, Wagner fatally stabbed his wife and four children in Degerloch. He subsequently travelled to where he fatally shot nine people and wounded eleven others, before he was beaten unconscious by intervening villagers and left for dead.

Wagner cited his fear of being exposed as a zoophiliac as the primary motive. Despite widespread public calls for the death penalty, a team of psychiatrists, including Robert Gaupp, successfully argued that Wagner was not guilty by reason of insanity, the first such instance in Württemberg. He was brought to an asylum in Winnenden, where Wagner wrote several plays and dramas, none of which were ever performed. He died there of tuberculosis in 1938.

The case was of immediate interest due to Wagner's troubled personal life, marked by mental illness and familial issues, which was seen as having heavily contributed to the murders. Wagner's psychological profiling through Gaupp during his 25-year confinement at the asylum became one of his most prominent clinical patient studies. Wagner's case gained renewed attention in the 1990s within German academic spaces as an early example of a mass shooting and perceptions of societal collapse in the late German Empire.

Early life and family

Ernst August Wagner was born on 22 September 1874 in near Ludwigsburg as the ninth of ten children to Luise Christiane Roth (also spelled Louise; 1838–1902) and Jakob Friedrich Wagner (1832–1876). He also had a half-brother and a half-sister. Most of Wagner's siblings died early and by 1913, only two sisters and one brother remained.

His maternal family was from (now part of Ludwigsburg), while his paternal family was from (now part of Steinheim an der Murr). There were contradictory reports regarding the Roth family, which was noted to have had high rates of consanguine marriage through in its genealogy. An unnamed "expert" cited by Württembergische Zeitung claimed that the Roths were prone to "high nervous tension and haughtiness" while Enz-Bote described the family as being well-renowned, with several local officials amongst relatives. Wagner himself wrote that he and other relatives were affected by "Poppenweiler nervous illness", which he cited as a reason for "eradication" of the entire family.

The family first lived with Wagner's paternal grandfather before his father built a one-story house in the north of Eglosheim. Wagner's father was described as "conceited, unhappy, and work-averse", with alcoholic tendencies and known to blame his poor financial situation on others. He died on 21 September 1876, a day before Wagner's second birthday. His mother married Karl Baumhauer on February 1878, but divorced in 1880. Psychiatrist Robert Gaupp described Wagner's mother, whom he never met, as "abnormally sexually excited" and that she had several affairs, erroneously claiming that she remarried within five months of her husband's death rather than two years. On 18 April 1888, Wagner's mother sold the family's farm property to pay outstanding debts, running a small spice shop to provide for her children. Wagner's legal guardian was Ludwig Seyfang, a distance relative of his mother. Gaupp wrote that Wagner experienced depression and suicidal thoughts throughout his childhood due to his status as the "widow's boy".

Wagner attended the local one-room Volksschule in Egolsheim, located in church, graduating basic schooling in spring 1888, being considered the school's best student throughout his attendance. He also served as a sacristan and calcant at St. Katharina, having his confirmation in his last school year. He had his one-year preparatory seminar in Ludwigsburg, learning to play violin and piano for mandatory worship service. Following a medical checkup, which attested full health, he was cleared for training at the private preparatory school in Nürtingen for his aspirant exam. He completed his teacher studies in 1894 at the State Seminar for Didactics and Teacher Education Esslingen.

Career Between 1894 and 1913, Wagner worked permanent teaching positions in twelve school districts in thirteen towns throughout Württemberg. He also intermittently served his mandatory military service, training from August to October 1895 and participating in exercises in 1897, 1901, and 1904. Wagner was an assistant teacher in Renningen, Böblingen, Röthenbach, and for one academic year each, then in Gerstetten and Oberreinbach between 1898 and 1899, and finally at Mittelschule I in Stuttgart, between 1899 and 1900. Between 1900 and 1901, Wagner was a , a form of substitute teacher, in , Plieningen, and Oberweiler. While in Plieningen, Wagner only worked for three months before requesting six months of leave of absence on 12 April 1900, citing a doctor's certificate by his recently deceased primary care physician, which attested to "high-level nervosity, increased heart activity, and highly increased deep tendon reflexes". He was granted two months vacation, which he spent in Switzerland.

Upon his return to duty on 21 June 1900, he was assigned to , Schorndorf, and Lorch. In July 1901, he was assigned as Unterlehrer, a junior teaching position, in Mühlhausen an der Enz (now part of Mühlacker). He frequented the local Adler inn and according to Wagner, sometime in the summer of 1901, while on his way home from a night of drinking beer at the inn, he walked into the innkeeper's barn and sodomized a farm animal. Wagner never divulged the exact details of what happened, with several retrospective reports questioning whether he had invented the story. There were no witnesses and no one in Mühlhausen was aware of the incident, though his mother-in-law later told police that they did own a barn near the route from the inn to Wagner's residence. Regardless, Wagner felt "watched, followed, and mocked" by residents the day after, due to which he bought a revolver to evade a potential arrest. He carried the gun at all times, including at work in school along with 20 rounds of ammunition. That same year, Wagner began a sexual relationship 19-year-old Anna Friedericke Schlecht, the daughter of the Adler innkeeper. In November 1901, Wagner finished his second teaching exam.

In early 1902, Anna Schlecht became pregnant, which exposed their relationship as an unmarried couple. Wagner was solely interested in Anna based on physical attraction to her and consequently did not want to marry her, despite external pressure to do so. Due to the scandal, Wagner was suspended from work from 15 November to 2 December 1902 and transferred to , an isolated village of Lonsee, as a substitute teacher, which Wagner believed was a punitive measure. In early 1903, daughter Klara was born and in July 1903, Wagner was made Hauptlehrer to be the school's primary teacher. On 29 December 1903, Wagner married Anna in Ludwigsburg, partially because Klara was already ten months old. Wagner's belief that his apparent bestiality would be exposed still continued and he claimed that he attended the wedding with two revolvers, a dagger, and fifty rounds of ammunition.

Wagner admitted in his own writings that he viewed Anna as more of a servant than a partner, considering her intellectually inferior. Neighbours stated that Wagner treated his wife well, but that she regularly disagreed on his spending habits and hobby writing. Since age 23, Wagner had written poetry, first imitating the social commentary of Heinrich Heine out of admiration, though he later denounced him after realising he was Jewish. He again started writing in 1904, this time composing dramatic stage plays, which he paid to get published in local newspapers. Wagner wrote that he depicted excessive gore in the plays as a means of letting out his violent fantasies. While he did not gain success from his writings, Wagner often boasted about his literary skills while drunk at bars, comparing himself to William Shakespeare, Friedrich Schiller, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, sometimes demeaning the latter two and proclaiming himself "the greatest German poet" to other teachers. Besides his dramas, Wagner often discussed religion, espousing atheist views on the matter, and his support of free love. His diary contained "muddled things between delusions of grandeur and hatred of women", with references to Otto Weininger and Friedrich Nietzsche.

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. 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.

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. In 1907 and 1909, Wagner bought two Mauser C96 pistols from a Mauser factory in Oberndorf for 100 mark each.

Between 1909 and 1911 he made several requests to be transferred to another school, which was 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, 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 determined the last days of the summer holidays to commit the murders. In the days leading to the murders he wrote several letters to explain his actions.Neuzner, Bernd & Brandstätter, Horst: Wagner - Lehrer, Dichter, Massenmörder. Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn, 1996 (pp. 53-61)

1913 murders

Family murders

In the early morning hours of 4 September 1913, Wagner killed his wife Anna in their bedroom. According to Wagner's later testimony, he had memory gaps of the night's events, but believed that after going to sleep at around 21:00 the previous day, he awoke at least once to see if Anna was still asleep. He again got up at about 5 a.m. and retrieved a blackjack and dagger, which he may have hid under his pillow in advance. Wagner repeatedly hit Anna in the head and once he believed she was unconscious, he stabbed her numerous times in her throat and chest, cutting her carotid arteries and hitting her heart and lungs. Afterwards he successively entered the bedrooms of his two sons, Robert and Richard, and his daughters, Klara and Elsa, and stabbed each of them in their throat and chest. Wagner initially claimed that he had also hit his children with the blackjack, though later he was uncertain of this.

After covering his family members' bodies with blankets, Wagner got out of his blood-soaked nightshirt and washed himself, before packing a bag with three guns (two Mauser C96 pistols and a small revolver), 500 rounds of ammunition, a black veil from his wife and her handbag. He then left his home, leaving a note at his own door that the family was jaunting to Ludwigsburg, as well as another one at the door of his landlady, another teacher surnamed Stepper, ordering three litres of milk and leaving behind 35 pfennig as payment.