Jeffrey Freedman

Jeffrey Freedman, a history professor at Yeshiva University, explores a 240-year-old crime. Nearly forgotten today, it was in its time sensational news throughout German-speaking Europe. Congregants, among them many of the leading citizens, filled Zurich's main church on the yearly day of penance and thanksgiving. No sooner had the pastor sipped the communion chalice when he fell ill. Doctors and botanists analyzed samples, concluded that the wine had been poisoned. Passionate sermons followed in all the city’s churches in the following weeks. The effect was similar to that caused by acts of terror in our time. Suspicion, denunciation, arrests, interrogations, but the event remained unsolved.
The author places the sensational crime in the broader context of how news was reported and discussed in German-speaking Europe. Unlike France or England, Germany was splintered into multiple political units, and there was no one city comparable to Paris, London, or Edinburgh in which the intelligentsia gathered in the same coffee houses or visited the same salons. This decentralization magnified the importance of the written word. In addition to newspapers, intellectuals pursued lively private correspondence. The book trade, centered on yearly fairs in Leipzig, flourished as well.
Beyond this, Freedman explores how the German-language Aufklärung differed from the French Enlightenment, the Siècle des Lumières. Theological topics were not dismissed outright, but were exposed to the same standards of reason applied to other areas of inquiry. The scandal of the communion wine became a hotly discussed topic. If indeed the wine had been poisoned in an attempt to kill Zurich’s elite, it was inconceivable. Who would even think of such an act, much less try to carry it out? The problem this posed came to a head in a contentious debate between one of Zurich’s leading intellectuals, Johann Caspar Lavater, prominent pastor now primarily remembered for his propagation of the “science” of physiognomy, and Friedrich Nicolai, Berlin book dealer and editor of the equivalent in its time of today’s New York Review of Books. Lavater fulminated on the absolute evil that this act demonstrated, Nicolai countered with skepticism and reason. The question of how to understand evil is one that challenged the presumptions of the Enlightenment. Freedman’s exploration of the strengths and weaknesses of the positions of each is, in my opinion, the strongest part of the book, particularly in the way he shows the relevance of each for understanding radical evil in our day.
A tragic coda to the affair followed three years later when this unsolved crime was briefly added to the charges against Johann Heinrich Waser, a pastor who had made himself unloved by the authorities by exposing misappropriation of funds and other abuses of their power. Even though he almost certainly played no part in the communion wine incident, the hint that he might have proved useful in creating a public climate that would accept his execution, a sad miscarriage of justice. The ubiquitous Lavater shows up here as well, delegated with the task of hearing Waser’s confession. One senses how little comfort the condemned man received; Lavater, on the other hand, got another best-seller out of it, his account of Waser’s last hours.
Freedman offers his own suggestion of what happened to the communion wine. It can’t, of course, be proven, so long after the fact, but strikes me as likely. Nonetheless, this tale of crime, political crisis, and philosophical grabbling with the problem of evil provides interesting reading. Also, it’s more accessible than many books written by academics. A very good read.… (plus d'informations)