The Jew’s Beech-Tree (original: Die Judenbuche) was written by Annette von Droste-Hülshoff. Von Droste-Hülshoff (1797-1848) was a poet and novelist. The Jew’s Beech-Tree is an early detective novella.

Frederick Murgel is the son of a poor bourgeois family in the remote village of B., which is near a forest-covered mountain chain. Poaching and stealing wood in the forests is common, despite the fact that the forests provide most of the wealth for the region and are guarded with great vigilance. The village of B. is the most arrogant of all the communities in the area, and the wood thieves who live within the village are brazen in their thefts. The villagers do not care overmuch about what the thieves do, or even how many foresters they beat or kill. Frederick’s father had killed his first wife through his drinking–she died of a broken heart–and his second marriage was almost as unhappy. When Frederick was nine years old his father was found dead in the woods by Franz, the brother of Frederick’s mother Margaret. When Frederick is twelve Margaret’s younger brother Simon, a disagreeable and quarrelsome man, visits the house. Simon has heard that Frederick is a clever boy and wants to informally adopt him, so that he can spend the majority of his time with Simon. Margaret reluctantly agrees to this. Simon and Frederick walk into the woods together, and Simon shows Frederick the tree where “Uncle Franz and Huelsmeyer found your father, when without confession and extreme unction he had gone to the Devil in his drunkenness.”¹ Frederick, who idolizes his father, is devastated by this, and when he returns to his mother’s house he is changed and acts differently toward his mother. He tries to give his mother money he received from Simon for helping him “work,” which Margaret (knowing what sort of “work” Simon does) is loath to accept, but eventually does (the family is quite poor).

From that time forward Frederick is rarely at home. He is usually helping his uncle with various schemes, some legal and some illegal. By the time Frederick is eighteen he has grown strong and mature, “now dressed up and jolly as a recognized village beau and leader of the young folks, and again as a ragged boy slinking along, lonely and dreamily, behind his cows, or lying in a forest clearing, apparently thoughtless, scratching the moss from the trees.”²During this period a particularly bold and cunning group of thieves is active in the forest leveling huge tracts of wood. The thieves are clearly working with ship-owners and are clever enough to always evade and outwit the foresters who search for them. One day Frederick hears them working in the forest but ignores what he hears, and when a forester quizzes him about the noises Frederick declares ignorance. The forester is unpleasant to Frederick during the conversation. Later that day the forester is found murdered. Frederick is among those questioned, but the identity of the murderer is never discovered, and the thieves are blamed for it.

After this Frederick changes for the worse, and the villagers realize that he is capable of anything. Four years later, during a fair, Aaron, a Jewish butcher from a nearby town, demands (in front of the rest of the village) that Frederick pay him the money he owes. Frederick is humiliated by this and leaves the fair. The Baron von S. attends this party, and on the way home he runs into two servants who claim to have heard the ghost of Frederick’s father moving around the forest. A few days later the wife of Aaron runs into the Baron’s house crying for justice–her husband has been murdered. The Baron investigates the murder and orders that Frederick be taken into custody, but Frederick cannot be found. The Jews in the area are interested in the trial, even offering substantial rewards if Frederick is found. An inscription in Hebrew is found on the beech tree where the murder was committed. Six months later a Jewish man in another town confesses that he beat another Jew named Aaron to death in the woods, and the Baron concludes that Frederick was innocent.

Twenty-eight years pass, and an old, ragged man limps into the village of B. He claims to have come out of Turkish slavery, and people recognize him as John Nobody, a man who disappeared from town at the same time as Frederick Mergel. John does not know what happened to Frederick and is struck by the news that Frederick was not responsible for Aaron’s death: “‘So all was in vain,’ he said musing, ‘all in vain–so much suffering!’”³ Simon and Margaret have both died, and much is changed since John left. When the Baron questions John about his life, John tells a long, sad story–he was a Turkish slave for twenty-six years. A short time later John disappears into the forest and does not return. Two weeks later he is found hanging from the beech tree. A scar on his body identifies him as Frederick Mergel. The inscription in Hebrew on the tree reads, “When thou comest near this spot, thou wilt suffer what thou didst to me.”⁴

The Jew’s Beech-Tree is an interesting Proto-Mystery. Although it is not widely known in England and America, detective fiction was widespread in Germany in the nineteenth century (see: Detectives). The Jew’s Beech-Tree is the most famous of the German kriminalgeschichte, or “criminal stories.” Given its age, it is perhaps unsurprising that The Jew’s Beech-Tree is different in some ways from the current conception of mystery fiction. The focus of the story is not on the crime, the detective, or the resolution of the crime. Instead, The Jew’s Beech-Tree uses the pattern of other kriminalgeschichte and the Pitaval narratives (see: Proto-Mysteries) and follows Frederick’s life from his birth until his death, exploring his eventual motives for crime and what produced them. The death of Aaron is not the central element of the plot--it is only one part of it. As well, the village, Margaret, and the Baron S. all assumes greater importance than Frederick at different points in the story. And the ostensible detective is the local ruler first; he is a detective only as part of his job. However, Aaron’s death is a murder, which is the central crime in nearly all modern mysteries. The Baron leads a lengthy investigation of the crime, although he is not responsible for its solution or for Frederick’s punishment. Droste-Hülshoff includes a misleading clue halfway through The Jew’s Beech-Tree in the form of the confession by “Ragged Moses” to having killed a Jew named Aaron.

The Jew’s Beech-Tree is much more entertaining than similar English stories based on the Newgate Calendar (see: Proto-Mysteries). Droste-Hülshoff avoids the stodgy stiffness of English writers of the time and tells the story in a straightforward way, with only a few philosophical asides or descriptions of scenery. By modern standards the plot rambles, covering a number of subplots and using a rotating cast of characters, but Droste-Hülshoff’s intent is to examine both those who know Frederick and his environment, something she succeeds at. The only flaw in the story is its ending, which while symbolically appropriate and necessary for the traditional resolution of a mystery is ill-fitting with the otherwise realistic feel of the story. But that is a twenty-first century critical judgment. By the standards of 1842 a supernatural moment is not out of place in a realistic mystery, as for Droste-Hülshoff and her readers God and the supernatural would always be present, even if He waited too long to act.

Print: Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, The Jew’s Beech Tree: A Moral Portrait From Mountainous Westphalia, transl. by Jolyon Timothy Hughes. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2014.

¹ Annette Elizabeth von Droste-Hulshoff, “The Jew’s Beech-Tree,” translated by Lillie Winter, in The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Masterpieces of German Literature Translated Into English, Kuno Francke, ed. (New York: German Publication Society, 1913), 457.

² Droste-Hulshoff, “The Jew’s Beech-Tree,” 463.

³ Droste-Hulshoff, “The Jew’s Beech-Tree,” 489.

⁴ Droste-Hulshoff, “The Jew’s Beech-Tree,” 496.