Winfried Schuldig’s acquittal turns on the disappearance of a crucial witness and leaves a second, more troubling question open: what happened to Elisabeth Gertraud Bräuer? Bräuer had been the principal witness in the case against Schuldig after Stern died from injuries allegedly inflicted with a chair back. When she could not be found before the main trial, the case proceeded without her; the court ultimately acquitted Schuldig for lack of evidence. The account then links that failure of proof to the unresolved question of Bräuer’s death without establishing who killed her.

The case and its missing witness

Schuldig was initially suspected in a case of bodily injury resulting in death. The accusation concerned a dispute between him and Stern on January 19, 1970. According to Bräuer’s account, Schuldig struck Stern on the head several times with a chair back; Stern was dead the following morning. Bräuer was the principal witness against Schuldig, making her absence from the trial consequential to the prosecution’s case.

Immediately before the main hearing, Bräuer was untraceable. The trial therefore went ahead without her testimony. Her disappearance did not itself establish what had happened to her, nor did the account show that Schuldig was responsible for it. But it changed the evidentiary circumstances: the witness whose account connected Schuldig to the fatal assault was no longer available to give evidence in court.

Sawatzki’s testimony

Anneliese Sawatzki testified about her relationship with Schuldig, whom she had met in Hamburg in March 1970 while staying at a convalescent home for mothers. She said that they drank together at the Rode in Groß Borstel, after which she went with him to his garden house. She later moved in with him. Her account described a relationship in which his behavior changed when he was drunk: she said he beat her with a piece of wood, leaving bruises across her body, and that she believed it was the same chair back used in the attack on Stern. She also testified that Schuldig could not find peace over the incident and wept when they spoke about it. These were Sawatzki’s claims in court, not a finding that independently proved the earlier assault.

Sawatzki further described financial control and violence. She said Schuldig demanded most of the money she received, often waiting outside her workplace on payday, and that fear led her to hand it over. She also testified that he pressured her to take part in sexual acts she refused. Her evidence portrayed repeated abuse rather than a single isolated confrontation, while remaining distinct from direct proof of the charge involving Stern.

She recounted a particularly severe assault on November 10, 1971, after she and Schuldig had been drinking whiskey in the garden house. According to her testimony, he struck her twice on the head with an ox-whip, tore off her clothes, and continued attacking her. He pinned her down and pressed his knees into her stomach while threatening to finish her. She managed to break free of his hold; he then calmed down and told her to leave. The examination had to be stopped because she was exhausted and could no longer continue, with her questioning due to resume the following day.

Acquittal and unresolved questions

The court acquitted Schuldig because the act could not be proved against him. The account does not describe a conviction or establish that Sawatzki’s testimony resolved the case. Instead, the outcome follows the central evidentiary loss: Bräuer, the principal witness to the fatal assault on Stern, was absent, and the remaining material was insufficient for proof.

The acquittal closes the courtroom question without closing the narrative’s larger mystery. The account immediately asks who else could have killed Bräuer. That question is left unanswered: it supplies neither an identified killer nor evidence that Schuldig murdered her. The juxtaposition makes the acquittal consequential beyond the case against him. A witness whose testimony had once placed Schuldig at the center of another man’s death is missing, and the legal failure to prove the charge leaves both her fate and the identity of her killer unresolved.