Gertraud Bräuer

Gertraud Bräuer is a hairdresser whose death links an unresolved earlier murder case to the book’s later account of Fritz Honka’s killings. Her fingerprint identified her after death, while her absence from the trial of Winfried Schuldig left the question of who had killed her unanswered in court.

Identity and Circumstances

Bräuer was 42 when she died, 1.75 meters tall, and of slim build. After her fiancé’s death, she led an unsettled life. She preferred men who had their own homes; she would live with one for a time and keep house for him. The account describes this arrangement as part of her circumstances, not as evidence about her death.

A fingerprint from her right little finger matched a print in the local collection. The record belonged to Bräuer, who had previously been fingerprinted in connection with a theft investigation. This match established her identity through an official record, even as the circumstances of her killing remained uncertain.

The Schuldig Trial

Bräuer could not be found shortly before the main hearing in the case against Winfried Schuldig, so the trial proceeded in her absence. Anneliese Sawatzki was among the witnesses who testified. Bräuer’s absence meant that she could not appear in person during proceedings described in the account.

The court acquitted Schuldig for lack of evidence. The narrative leaves the resulting question explicit: if the charge against him could not be proved, who had killed Bräuer? Her case thus remains unresolved at this stage, rather than being closed by the acquittal.

Place in the Later Account

The book later names Bräuer as a hairdresser strangled at the end of 1970, in its account of the killings associated with Honka. That retrospective placement gives her death a significance beyond the earlier trial: the unresolved question surrounding Schuldig is set beside the later identification of Bräuer as one of Honka’s victims.

The contrast is central to how her story is presented. A fingerprint secures her identity, but the trial fails to establish responsibility for her death; the later account restores her to the sequence of Honka’s crimes. Bräuer’s brief, concrete profile and her absence from the courtroom also keep attention on the limits of the record: the evidence identifies who she was, while the earlier proceedings could not establish who killed her.