Juliana Hummel

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Juliana Hummel , also Juliane Hummel (born December 30, 1870 in Enzesfeld , Lower Austria ; † died January 2, 1900 in Vienna ) was an Austrian child murderer.

Hummel and her husband had been charged with the murder of their five-year-old daughter Anna . In the course of the proceedings, the court came to the conclusion that she, who had already had a previous conviction for child abuse, had continued to abuse the child with intent to kill by deprivation of food, physical abuse such as hitting and hitting hard objects, until numerous injuries, malnutrition and one the phlegmon of the skin of the head and face, which could be traced back to this mistreatment, and the blood poisoning that probably resulted from it, died.

On November 17, 1899, she and her husband were sentenced to death in the Viennese regional court and execution was planned for January 2, 1900. The last public execution of the death penalty on a woman took place in Vienna in 1809. In the Austro-Hungarian monarchy women sentenced to death were almost always pardoned because they were considered to be physically not robust enough to carry out death sentences. (Nevertheless, the emperor had the maid Katharina Ossoinig executed in Klagenfurt in 1866 for poisoning her aunt.) Emperor Franz Joseph also wanted to pardon Juliana Hummel, but he was prompted by an unprecedented storm of protest in the newspapers and the intervention of a "supreme lady of the ruling house" finally, to pardon only the man and leave the death sentence on the woman. Juliana Hummel was the first woman in over 90 years to be executed in Vienna. Calm and asserting her innocence to the end, she went to her death.

The execution of Juliana Hummel was not without complications. Since no permanent replacement had been found after the death of the Viennese executioner Karl Sellinger (1862–1899), the Prague executioner Wohlschläger had to step in on a temporary basis. He seemed very excited at the execution and is reported to have even trembled, apparently because Hummel was the first woman he was supposed to execute. The execution turned out to be a disaster because Wohlschläger used the method he had developed in Prague, for which the strangling algae common in Vienna was unsuitable. The result was a 45-minute agony of the delinquent . According to the report, the judicial commission should have gotten sick. On January 3, 1900, the Salzburger Chronik and the Salzburger Tagblatt reported the execution of the day laborer . After her death, investigations were carried out on Hummel's skull in order to find a possible pathological change in the brain , based on the theories of Cesare Lombroso and Franz Joseph Gall , which could explain her violence. This is still on display in room 1 of the Vienna Crime Museum.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Egon Erwin Kisch : Collected Works in Individual Editions , Aufbau-Verlag, 1960, p. 23
  2. ↑ ... she had enjoyed their "highest intercession" and grace. In: sbg.ac.at. Archived from the original on March 24, 2007 ; accessed on January 6, 2015 .
  3. ↑ Tankred Koch: The Methods. In: History of the Executioners. Archived from the original on February 28, 2008 ; accessed on January 6, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Hummel, Juliana
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hummel, Juliane
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian child murderer
DATE OF BIRTH December 30, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH Enzesfeld , Lower Austria
DATE OF DEATH January 2, 1900
Place of death Vienna