A ‘Mosaic Work’: The Poison Mixer’s Body between Monstrosity and Deception

In Kleist's play "Kätchen of Heilbronn", Kunigunde’s prosthetic body constructs the monstrosity of the poisoner at the interplay between visibile and invisibile, truth and deception. Her mastery of estetic effects displays a complexity that defies her rather simple categorization as a fairy-tale witch. Her presence in the play is extremely innovative and modern. When Kleist wrote his play (1807-1808), murders by poison was a very controversial and lively discussed issue. Few years earlier, 1803, in Berlin readers avidly read the alleged memoirs of Countess Charlotte Ursinus, a Berlin privy councilor’s widow who belonged to the highest ranks of the Prussian society. Between 1779 and 1803, she had murdered by arsenic her husband, her lover, her aunt, before she had eventually failed to kill a servant. Bekenntnisse einer Giftmischerin, von ihr selbst geschrieben (this was the name of the book) soon turned out to be a fictional account, presumably written by the well-known journalist and Aufklärer Friedrich Buchholz, who was at that time editor of the Vossische Zeitung for the Unger publishing house. Politically he brilliantly campaigned for the ideals of the Berliner Enlightenment circles against the representatives of the romantic and conservative movements such as Friedrich von Gentz and Adam Müller. Countess Charlotte Ursinus herself is never overtly mentioned in the book, although the memoirs bear many points of resemblance to her story. The main character remains as anonymous and mysterious as the authorship. The book shows the precautions and dissimulation behind a woman's acting or speaking in order to protect her good reputation and to project an image of outer innocence, thus conceiling her deviant personality and moral decline through role-playing and affected behaviour.