We all desire to live in a state that protects and upholds our civil rights. The fact that we live in a state governed by the rule of law today is not a given; it has been a struggle throughout history.
The arbitrary justice system of the Nazi era was characterized by amateurism and contempt for humanity. Readers of the book "Rat Weed in the Laboratory" can, to a certain extent, understand the suffering it caused. It's an important contribution, full of empathy, and a warning against political extremism.
The author Johannes Bollen was available for an interview and gave us insights into his thoughts while writing the book.
In your new book, "Rat Weed in the Laboratory," you reconstruct a historical case. What exactly is the historical core of your case?
It's not, as in typical crime stories, about the question "Who did it?" or, more appropriately in this case, "Was he the one or wasn't he the one?" The focus is on how the Oldenburg judiciary during the middle Nazi period dealt with an anonymous complaint and an alleged poisoning among farmworkers. But it's also about answering the intriguing question of who wrote the mysterious letter that set the case in motion, and why.
What was your personal motivation for dealing with this Oldenburg court case?
The immediate prompt was an inquiry from an elderly gentleman who, as a regional historian, asked me to help him find the birth date of a relative. During the conversation, he mentioned the rumor that she had died as a result of a crime. Research at the Lower Saxony State Archives in Oldenburg revealed that documents relating to this case from the years 1935 to 1937 had indeed been preserved. When I first opened the extensive criminal file, I could hardly believe my eyes – it may be one of the best-documented criminal cases from the Nazi era in Oldenburg. The file fascinated me because it provides a direct and authentic insight into the Nazi era.
In addition, the poisoning case occurred in the community of Lindern, with whose history I feel personally connected, and also has strong links to the former state hospitals in Wehnen, in whose immediate vicinity I live today.
How did you conduct your research into the case?
The most important work initially took place in the archive's reading room. The documents in the file were completely disorganized, and I had to laboriously reconstruct the sequence of events. At first glance, it presented a gripping crime story involving a complaint, the arrest of a suspect, the exhumation and autopsy of a body, interrogations, confrontations, nighttime interrogations, rumors, false accusations, a confession, a recantation, an attempted escape, misleading clues, and much more of what makes a crime thriller exciting. I found unusually detailed, albeit heavily propagandistic, reports on the four-day criminal trial in the NSDAP party newspaper and other aligned publications from 1937. It was clear that the case was very important to the local party officials. The head of the NSDAP district press office was also an associate judge in the criminal trial and was therefore directly involved.
But it quickly became clear that the events were incomprehensible without clarification of the background. The case touches on a multitude of levels that required research – for example, the integration of the Oldenburg judiciary into the Nazi Reich judiciary, the so-called "Kreuzkampf" (Cross Fight) in southern Oldenburg, the history of Nazi forced sterilization, other murder cases in an alleged "series," but also the everyday life, life, and today's almost incomprehensible poverty of the rural lower classes in southern Oldenburg. Researching the people involved became particularly fascinating – I looked at personnel and denazification files and other biographical material, and the characters became increasingly real and vivid. The granddaughter of the local police officer investigating at the time helped me with useful details. From her, I learned, for example, that he wrote his reports on a "Triumph" typewriter.
Which aspects of police and judicial arbitrariness were you keen to highlight in your text?
The central aspect is the dogged determination with which the public prosecutor, under intense pressure to succeed, wanted to guillotine the alleged murder victim's severely mentally handicapped husband at all costs, even though the crime could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt – it was sufficient that he could be "believed" to have committed it in the sense of the typical Nazi criminal justice system. For this to happen, however, the crime had to formally meet the criteria for the definition of murder.
Another important aspect is the disturbing lack of concern with which the renowned Berlin forensic pathologist Müller-Heß readily declared these characteristics to be given, for example, through his oral "criminal psychological report" on the defendant, which he compiled "from the file" in a very short time using common stereotypes of poisoners. He demonstrably only saw the "assessed" person for the first time during the trial and presumably never exchanged a word with him. His reconstruction of the crime also reveals the distortion of the investigating judge's findings, creating the impression of a murder that had been planned well in advance and carried out with deliberate care.
The fact that the expert himself was probably not entirely comfortable with all of this is shown by the fact that he later surprisingly called for a pardon for the convicted man – as expected, in vain.
How did you manage to put yourself in Anton Stienken’s shoes, his character and his thoughts?
Most of his surviving statements can naturally be found in the interrogation transcripts, but the letters he wrote to his relatives from prison are considerably more authentic. They are difficult to read, as writing in High German initially represented a virtually superhuman effort for him, who had only reached the third grade of elementary school. But occasional phrases flashing up among the platitudes, such as "A day is as long as a month, and a month as long as a year," and his desperate escape attempt, reveal how much he suffered from the agonizing boredom of solitary confinement and the separation from his family.
What decisive role did Berlin laboratory analysis ultimately play in this case?
It was not for nothing that the relieved prosecutor, Public Prosecutor Grube, wrote to Professor Müller-Heß after the trial: "As you can see from the newspaper reports, the expert opinion you submitted was of extraordinary importance. It formed the basis for the assessment of the case." Indeed, it was not the public prosecutor's office that brought Anton Stienken to the guillotine, but rather the expert witness Victor Müller-Heß. He was the central figure in the entire trial, dazzling the courtroom with an impressive demonstration of his equipment, and was subsequently hailed as a scientific genius by the party press.
His laboratory tests postulated significant arsenic findings in all exhumed body parts of Maria Stienken, and he concluded from the concentration of the poison that her husband had systematically administered it to her in varying doses over a long period of time. The prosecution completely ignored the contrary finding of the Oldenburg State Institute of Hygiene (LHI), which found no arsenic in a liver sample from Maria Stienken. It is noteworthy that the obviously suspicious investigating judge commissioned the LHI to conduct further parallel tests, which, however, never took place because the samples had been transported from Oldenburg to Berlin during his absence. Thus, Professor Müller-Heß's analysis remained unchallenged and led to the death sentence.
What would a reading with you in the Oldenburg region look like? When and where will the premiere reading take place?
I will be reading selected passages from the book for the first time on March 6, 2025, starting at 7 p.m. This premiere reading will take place at the invitation of the Lindern Local and Family History Working Group in the parish hall at the site of the event, in Lindern (Cloppenburg district). To illustrate and contextualize what I have heard, I will show pictures and provide factual explanations. Afterward, I will, of course, be available to answer questions from the audience. However, nothing will be revealed yet; it will remain reserved for the reading of the book.
The next reading date is Tuesday, April 8, 2025. I will then present the book starting at 7 p.m. at the invitation of the Leseforum Oldenburg eV in Oldenburg at the restaurant “Mephisto” (Artillerieweg 56).
The interview was conducted by the publisher, C. Leeck. Machine translated from German.
Wuppertal, March 2025.
The book is available directly here – also as an e-book!
The book "Rattenkraut im Labor" is available in bookstores and from our publishing house, as a printed book (ISBN 978-3-910347-64-9) and as an EPUB (ISBN: 978-3-910347-65-6).
