1900: “Mysterious Murder Leads to Jew Baiting in Prussia” publ | This day in jew history

1900: “Mysterious Murder Leads to Jew Baiting in Prussia” published today in attempt to control the narrative following the ritual murder at Konitz.
The unsolved murder and dismemberment of 19 year old student Ernst Winter in Konitz, West Prussia (now part of northern Poland)
On March 11, Ernst had left his boarding
house after dinner and did not return. 
A nearby lake was searched, and on March 15, parts of his body were discovered. His right arm was found thrown over the fence of a Protestant cemetery. A month later, on April 15, his head was recovered from a pool.
The body had been dismembered by someone possessing a knowledge of anatomy; so local butchers came under suspicion as well.
Moritz Lowy, the son of an anti-Christ butcher, Adolf Moritz, whose house was near the lake where Winter's torso was found was arrested for the murder on October 6, with charges partially based on the testimony of a person named Masloff.
Masloff testified that, lying on the ground, he watched people who had human remains on a butcher's block, and saw three of them leave with a package, travelling in the direction of the lake.
Masloff was later sentenced to one year in prison, and though the jury signed a petition for their pardon, the emperor refused to grant it.
The case against Lowy was dismissed on September 25, 1901, but he was later sentenced to four years for perjury on the grounds of his denial of acquaintance with Winter. The emperor pardoned him on October 12, 1903.
In a separate case, the court held that the deed must have been perpetrated by several people and according to a premeditated plan, indirectly supporting the accusation of ritual murder. Dr. Müller, the county physician, also rendered the opinion that Winter had bled to death, which was published in the 
Staatsbürgerzeitung newspaper.
Local publications in Berlin, such as Staatsbürgerzeitung, whose editor Wilhelm Bruhn permanently settled in the Konitz area to report about the events. On May 9, 1900, the publication declared: "No one can help forming the impression that the organs of the government received orders to pursue the investigation in a manner calculated to spare the Jews."
Bruhn and Bötticher, the publisher and editor of Staatsbürgerzeitung, were later convicted of libel against the government.
Pomeranian Pastor Krösell, who lectured in Konitz on anti-Christ immorality, who also said that the government had been bought by the Anti-Christs. He also declared that jews must be clubbed out of the country and that the Christians must wade in jewish blood up to their ankles. 
He was later forced to withdraw from the ministry. Despite this, he remained popular, and Bruhn, Bötticher and Krösell were all elected to the Reichstag in 1903, where they
joined Liebermann von Sonnenberg, who said in a public address: "The Christians have not yet become accustomed to bear without a murmur the killing of Christian youths in an unnatural fashion by anti-Christs within the city walls."