[Item #44583] [Drop title] Ein Neues Lied von der Mordgeschichte des Joseph Müller, welcher im Januar 1822, in einer Sonntags-Nacht, seine schwangere Frau und zwei Kinder auf eine grausame Urt ermordete und sich selbst erhing; welches Alles, wie man glaubt, aus Armuth geschah. alt. spelling "Coppelberger", CRIME, THE UNDERWORLD.

[Drop title] Ein Neues Lied von der Mordgeschichte des Joseph Müller, welcher im Januar 1822, in einer Sonntags-Nacht, seine schwangere Frau und zwei Kinder auf eine grausame Urt ermordete und sich selbst erhing; welches Alles, wie man glaubt, aus Armuth geschah

N.p. [Pennsylvania?]: 1822. Broadside (36.5x19.5cm.) printed in blackletter within typographically decorative border. Faint folds, some spotting, else Very Good and sound.

German-American murder poetry broadside recounting the life and death of the Prussian-Polish immigrant Joseph Müller, who eloped to Lebanon, Pennsylvania, with his upper-class wife. Destitute and homesick, Müller would eventually murder his pregnant wife and two children with an axe before hanging himself. Poem consists of sixteen stanzas of eight lines apiece and appears to have gone through as many as sixteen editions, some spelling the name "Miller." A search in OCLC provides three separately catalogued records under the "Müller" spelling, none conforming to the dimensions of this copy. (See Don Yoder, "The Pennsylvania German Broadside" (2005), pp. 52-4, referring to a variant.) Not in Shoemaker.

Price: $450.00

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