Hans Vollenweider

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Hans Vollenweider

Hans Vollenweider (born February 11, 1908 in Zurich ; † October 18, 1940 in Sarnen ) was a Swiss criminal. He was the last person to be sentenced to death and executed in Switzerland after a civil criminal trial .

The Vollenweider case

Vollenweider, who already had several criminal records, shot the chauffeur Hermann Zwyssig, the postman Emil Stoll and, when he was arrested, the 23-year-old policeman Alois von Moos within ten days within ten days. After Vollenweider's stays in several prisons in different cantons, the cantonal court in Obwalden sentenced him to death on September 19, 1940 for the murder of the police officer von Moos . The Obwalden higher court upheld the death sentence on October 12, 1940. A pardon request to the Cantonal Council was also rejected on October 16, although the widow of the killed police officer had also submitted one.

Because of the other two homicides, Vollenweider was not on trial, as the canton of Obwalden first brought proceedings against him after his arrest. In this he was only accused of the crime committed in Obwalden.

In the early morning of October 18, 1940, Hans Vollenweider was executed with the guillotine in Lucerne in the workshop of the prison in Sarnen . The condemned refused last words and a hangman's meal as well as spiritual assistance. This execution was controversial, as the abolition of the death penalty in Switzerland and the introduction of a nationwide penal code had already been decided in a referendum on July 3, 1938.

The last execution

Vollenweider was the last person to be sentenced to death and executed in Switzerland after civil criminal proceedings. The death penalty had already been abolished in Switzerland in 1874 and was reintroduced five years later. After that, only nine death sentences (including that of Paul Irniger ) were carried out, in the absence of alternatives, always with the Lucerne guillotine, which originally came from the canton of Zurich and was passed on from canton to canton.

literature

  • Guido Cotter: Vollenweider - the last death sentence in Switzerland, the judgments of the cantonal court and the higher court of the canton of Obwalden from 19./20. September 1940 and October 12, 1940. Self-published by Cotter, Sarnen 2004, DNB 973920416 .
  • Stefan Suter: Guillotine or prison? The abolition of the death penalty in Switzerland. Helbing & Lichtenhahn, Basel / Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-7190-1659-5 .
  • Carlo von Ah : The last cut. Pro Libro, Luzern 2010, ISBN 978-3-905927-13-9 (fiction dealing with the topic, with many passages from the original documents).
  • Marcel Gyr: The last execution . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . October 12, 2015, p. 11 ( online ).

filming

In 2004 the Swiss documentary filmmaker Theo Stich published a documentary about the case: Vollenweider - The Story of a Murderer .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lukas Schneider: Short Trial: The Last Execution in Switzerland , SRF Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen, October 10, 2015
  2. ↑ Details on portrait 94262 Alois von Moos-Röthlin , on portraitarchiv.genealogie-zentral.ch, accessed on December 12, 2015
  3. ↑ Swiss Dispatch Agency : The last Swiss on the guillotine. In: 20 minutes . October 10, 2015, accessed October 12, 2015 .
  4. ↑ a b Marcel Gyr: The last execution . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . October 12, 2015, p. 11 ( online ).
personal data
SURNAME Vollenweider, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss criminal
DATE OF BIRTH February 11, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Zurich
DATE OF DEATH October 18, 1940
Place of death Sarnen