Hinterkaifeck was a small farmstead situated between the Bavarian towns of Ingolstadt and Schrobenhausen, approximately 70 kilometres (43 mi) north of Munich, that has become infamous as the scene of one of the most gruesome and puzzling crimes in German history. On the evening of 31 March 1922, the six inhabitants of the farm were killed with a mattock. The murders remain unsolved.
The six victims were parents Andreas Gruber (63) and Cäzilia (72); their widowed daughter Viktoria Gabriel (35); Viktoria's children, Cäzilia (7) and Josef (2); and the maid, Maria Baumgartner (44).
Hinterkaifeck was never an official place name. The name was used for the remote farmstead of the hamlet of Kaifeck, located nearly 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) north of the main part of Kaifeck and hidden in the woods (the prefix Hinter, part of many German place names, means behind), part of the town of Wangen, which was incorporated into Waidhofen in 1971.
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History
Built around 1863, the yard (previously the area was open farmland) was completely demolished less than a year after the murders. Hinterkaifeck was officially never a separate district with this name, but only an unofficial house name. It did not belong to the eponymous place Kaifeck (about a kilometre south), but to the village Gröbern as house number 27 ½ of the municipality Wangen. The house name is a historical name only, as the site has hosted no structure since the demolition. The eponymous Kaifeck is an Einödhof, or single farm settlement, located just over one kilometer to the south of the "murder farm" on the municipal road to Schrobenhausen. Today the former land of Hinterkaifeck is an agricultural area.
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Summary of the crime
On April 4, 1922, after none of the inhabitants of Hinterkaifeck had been seen for some time, three men went to the property. Upon investigation, they found the bodies of Andreas Gruber, his wife Cäzilia Gruber, his daughter Viktoria Gabriel, and his granddaughter Cäzilia, murdered in the barn. Shortly after they found the chamber maid, Maria Baumgartner, and the youngest family member, Viktoria's son Josef, murdered in the home. To this day, the murder is unsolved.
