The Albrecht sisters and their prison cellar – 28 men went missing in the Black Forest in 1899

In the remote hills of the Black Forest, deep in southern Baden, trappers vanished without a trace between 1897 and 1892. Sisters Magdalena and Friederike Albrecht, reclusive distillers living on their late father’s old farm, resided about 25 km from the nearest village. In the autumn of 1899, a half-starved, dying trapper stumbled down into the valley, rambling about underground chambers and a breeding program. District Sergeant Ernst Riedel stumbled upon a horror that defied all human comprehension.

Beneath the old Albrecht farm stretched an underground labyrinth of passages and chambers where men were chained—test subjects in a delusional divine plan to create a pure bloodline of the mountains. How could such terror flourish unnoticed? What darkness arises when faith and isolation merge into a single, deadly fever?

The region around the upper reaches of the Kinszig River, near the border with Württemberg, was a stretch of land that seemed to lie beyond the reach of civilization at the end of the 19th century. Dense beech and spruce forests covered mountains so steeply that even in broad daylight, hardly any sunlight penetrated the valleys.

Scattered farmsteads lay between dark ravines and moss-covered rocks. Small islands of human existence in a sea of ​​green shadow. There was no telegraph line, no railway winding through this wilderness, and the nearest police station was days away. If someone disappeared in these mountains, they usually stayed gone forever, swallowed up by a landscape that had claimed human lives for centuries.

After the war of 1707 and the difficult years of economic hardship, the region remained backward, resistant to the modernization that had long since taken hold in the rest of the Reich. For many families struggling to survive there, the forest offered one of the last sources of income: the fur trade. Every autumn, the men ventured into the most remote valleys, along the rushing streams, in search of beavers, martens, and otters.

They sold their pelts at the small trading posts scattered in the villages from Trieberg to Haslach. A dangerous, solitary life, but one they knew well. It was in this harsh environment that the Albrecht sisters had established their lives. Their father, Johann Albrecht, had been a well-known moonshiner.

Deep in a forest clearing, he had operated an illegal distillery, producing schnapps from corn and cherries, which he secretly sold in the surrounding villages. When he died in a hunting accident in the winter of 1895, Magdalena and Friederike inherited the farm, a hundred-hectare property surrounded by dense forest. The two women continued their work, far removed from any oversight, leading a secluded life that the villagers considered peculiar but harmless.

A traveling merchant, Georg Wittmann, encountered them in the autumn of 1896 during one of his journeys. He later recalled the visit with unease. The farmstead appeared to have grown out of the rock itself. A gray, weathered building, with several sheds behind it and a dark opening embedded in the hillside, which Wittmann took to be an earth cellar.

Magdalena, the elder sister, handled all the business. Friederke, on the other hand, didn’t speak a word. She simply stood in the doorway, staring at him with fixed, bright eyes, and Wittmann felt a chill he couldn’t explain. What particularly puzzled him were the sisters’ purchases. Despite their poverty, they bought high-quality fabrics, good tools, and iron fittings—things that went far beyond what was necessary. Magdalena always paid with shiny silver coins.

She was particularly insistent on heavy chains and sturdy hooks, which she explained she needed for protection against wolves. Widmann considered this a quirk. But that same year, the first disappearances began. In October 1897, trapper Robert Fink did not return from his hunting season.

His family in Württemberg waited in vain throughout the winter, believing it to be an accident or that he had moved further west. But when there was no sign of him in the spring, they reported him missing. Men often disappeared in these mountains, having fallen, frozen to death, or been torn apart by animals. No one was surprised when someone didn’t return.

The mountains took what they wanted. But by the spring of 1899, seven men had vanished without a trace in the same area. All experienced trappers, all knew the terrain, and none left any traces, no campsite, no equipment, no body. In the spring of that year, the files of the missing men landed on the desk of District Sergeant Ernst Riedel in the county town of Willingen.

Riedel, a man of 42 years

His voice carried the calm and hardness of a man who saw more than he would ever reveal. He had served 15 years in the army after returning as a young soldier from the war of 1970 with a leg injury that left him with a limp for the rest of his life.

Yet nothing escaped his eyes—cold, watchful, relentless. He was a man who saw patterns where others suspected coincidence. Seven experienced men, all vanished in less than two years. All in an area of ​​barely 50 square kilometers along the upper Kindsig Valley. Riedel knew this was no coincidence.

He spent weeks going through every report, speaking with relatives, studying old maps. Soon a pattern emerged. All the men had disappeared near the remote Albrechthof farm. Some villagers had seen strange lights in that area, smoke rising from the woods, and heard voices where no one lived. But no one had dared to venture closer.

The mountains there were steep, crisscrossed with rocks, and only a single path led down to the valley where the sisters lived. Riedel decided to investigate for himself. At the end of April, he set off with a local guide, the old woodcutter Hans Ketterer. The path was arduous.

For two days, they climbed over slippery slopes and through fog that billowed from the forest like cold breath. “The Albrechts,” Ketterer said during the ascent, “are not quite of this world. The old man was already eccentric, but the daughters—they talk of angels and blood as if they were the same thing.” Riedel remained silent, but unease gnawed at him.

On the evening of the second day, they reached the farm. The house was built of dark fir wood, the roof heavy with moss, as if it hadn’t seen a ray of sunshine in years. Thin smoke rose from the chimney. The sisters stepped outside when they heard footsteps.

Magdalena Albrecht was tall, unusually tall, almost as tall as a man, with a narrow face and gray eyes that scanned everything with a wary, fearless gaze. Friederike stood a step behind her, thin and silent, her hands tightly clasped together. Ried introduced himself, explaining that he was investigating the disappearance of several men. Magdalena nodded, showing no sign of surprise.

“Trappers often come by here,” she said in a calm voice. “Some take a drink, some ask for directions. We see them come and go.” She spoke slowly, almost solemnly, and sprinkled Bible verses into her answers as if they were protective formulas. “He who goes into the woods, trust in the Lord.”

Not everyone who goes out returns. Ried continued to ask questions, naming the missing men. Magdalena remembered a few, offering plausible explanations. One had spoken of a trip to Bavaria, another had taken the train to France. It all sounded reasonable, too reasonable.

Riedel noticed that the women wore simple, patched dresses. But inside the house, fine tools gleamed, along with exquisite china, and fabrics of the kind one could only find in the city lay on the table. He asked to see the farmyard. Magdalena readily agreed, leading him into the barn and the stable, and showing him her father’s old copper kettle.

But every time the path led to the slope behind the house, she subtly steered him away. There, among the roots of the spruce trees, heavy wooden doors jutted into the rock, too low and too solid to be mere storerooms. As Riedel headed toward them, she said gently, “Just cold earth back there, Awakemaster, nothing you need to see.”

He noticed Friederike briefly hold her breath at these words. That evening, he and Ketter left, having found nothing suspicious. But Riedel knew that something was amiss in this place. It wasn’t what he had seen, but what he wasn’t allowed to see. The breakthrough in the Albrecht affair didn’t come through systematic investigation, but through chance, suffering, and the will to survive of a single man. In the early morning of September 12,

1899, a half-naked, severely injured man dragged himself through the main street of Trieberg. His clothes hung in tatters, his skin was scraped and torn by thorns and rocks. He collapsed in front of the house of Dr. Heinrich Falkenstein and lost consciousness. The doctor, an experienced man with an iron composure, immediately had him carried inside.

What he found made even him shudder. Deep, inflamed wounds on his hands and ankles, as if heavy irons had been in place for weeks. Emaciated to the bone, with bite and scratch marks that looked as if the man had injured himself in a panic. For hours, Dr. Falkenstein fought to save his life. Falkenstein fought for his life, gave him broth, cleaned the wounds, and applied bandages.

The man barely spoke, babbling incoherently in a feverish agitation, yet he repeated individual words over and over: “The chambers, the prison cell