Tour · Düsseldorf · cold_case
The Strangled Duchess - Schlossturm
The Schlossturm is the last stone left of Düsseldorf's medieval castle, and the place where Duchess Jakobe of Baden was found dead in her chamber on the morning of 3 September 1597 in what remains one of Germany's oldest unsolved cold cases.
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Stand in Burgplatz and look up at this pale round tower: it is the only part of the great Ducal Palace of Jülich-Cleves-Berg that survived the catastrophic fire of 1872. Inside these walls, in September 1597, Jakobe of Baden, the young wife of the mentally ill Duke Johann Wilhelm, was found dead. Eyewitness accounts suggested she had been strangled or suffocated in the night, the day after she had received guests and appeared in good spirits. The prime suspects were members of the Catholic court faction, above all her sister-in-law Sibylle, who wanted a new, fertile duchess to save the dynasty. No charges were ever brought. Jakobe was buried in secret eight days later. She was not reinterred with public dignity until 1820, in the nearby church of St. Lambertus. The legend of the White Lady, a pale figure said to drift near the old castle walls, is still told in Düsseldorf today. Four centuries on, no one has ever been held responsible.
Fatti principali
- 429 years unsolved — Jakobe of Baden's death on 3 September 1597 has remained officially unexplained for over four centuries, making it Düsseldorf's oldest cold case.
- 1585 wedding year — Jakobe married Duke Johann Wilhelm in one of the grandest spectacles the Rhineland had ever seen, an eight-day celebration with engravings distributed across Europe.
- 1820 year of reburial — More than two hundred years after her hasty secret burial, Jakobe was finally reinterred with public ceremony in St. Lambertus church, about 120 metres from the tower where she died.