In effigy

In effigy execution of members of the Targowica Confederation . Painting by Jean-Pierre Norblin de La Gourdaine

Burning of Judas Iscariot in-effigie, Juiz de Fora, Brazil, 1909

In effigie (pronounced effígië) is a Latin expression that means in or as an image .

This phrase was used in legal history in the following sense: executions in which the perpetrator was on the run were carried out symbolically on his portrait. To be hanged or burned in effigy was a judgmental execution , in which the image of the absent criminal was hung on the gallows in proxy, burned in public or beheaded. For example, the Hungarian revolutionary Lajos Kossuth was executed in effigy on September 22nd, 1851 in Pest because the Austrian Empire could not get hold of him. In fact, he did not die in exile in Italy until 1894 . Curiously, there is an entry in the German Biographical Archive that states that Kossuth died in 1851.

It was also customary to have funerals of high personalities in effigy in order to gain time for preparing and carrying out elaborate funeral ceremonies. In some cases, the positive from a death mask was used to design the doll .

In literary terms, the expression appears prominently and shifted in meaning as a wedding in effigy in Georg Büchner's Leonce and Lena , with supposed automatons as the bride and groom.

literature

• Wolfgang Brückner: Portrait penalty . In: Albrecht Cordes u. a. (Ed.): Concise Dictionary of German Legal History , Vol. 1, 2nd Edition, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-503-07912-4 , Sp. 582-584.
• Hans Belting: image and cult. A history of the image before the age of art. Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-37768-8 , p. 515.