Johann Reichhart

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Johann Baptist Reichhart (born April 29, 1893 in Wichenbach near Wörth an der Donau , † April 26, 1972 in Dorfen near Erding ) was a state-appointed executioner in Germany from 1924 to 1946 . During the Nazi era , he executed numerous people who had been sentenced to death for resisting National Socialism .

Life

Reichhart came from a Bavarian knacker's and executioner clan that can be traced back to the middle of the 18th century. His father († 1902) owned a small farm in the wasteland of Wichenbach near Tiefenthal and worked as a sideline foreman . Johann attended elementary and holiday school in Wörth an der Donau and graduated both with success. He did an apprenticeship as a butcher .

Executioner in the Weimar Republic

Reichhart took over the office of executioner in Bavaria in April 1924 from his uncle Franz Xaver Reichhart (1851-1934). Appointed by the Bavarian Ministry of Justice , Reichart was rewarded with 150  gold marks per execution , ten marks daily expenses and a free third-class train ticket. He was also allowed to travel by express train to executions in the Palatinate .

The number of executions decreased from 1924 to 1928 (one execution in 1928). Reichhart found it increasingly difficult to support his family. He achieved that he was allowed to work in the future - also abroad - and he was released from the residence obligation. Due to a lack of orders, he gave up his wagon business in 1925, as did his restaurant on Mariahilfplatz the following year . He then sold Catholic tracts in Upper Bavaria as a traveling salesman . In 1928 Reichhart wanted to terminate his contract with the Ministry of Justice; he did not succeed. He moved to The Hague , where he was successful as an independent greengrocer. In the spring of 1931 and in July 1932 he traveled to Munich to carry out a death sentence each in Stadelheim prison . In July 1932, several Dutch newspapers published articles about Reichhart's other activities, thus clearing his incognito . His business no longer flourished; in spring 1933 he returned to Munich. He considered giving up his job as an executioner.

Executioner in the time of National Socialism

After the National Socialists came to power , Reichhart signed a new contract with the Bavarian Ministry of Justice on June 22, 1933. He now received a fixed, significantly higher annual salary, payable in monthly amounts. After a request from the Saxon Ministry of Justice, Reichhart was granted permission on July 18, 1933 to also judge in Saxony; he received a lump sum "after the attack". The sword machine and the assistants were provided to him at the execution sites in Dresden and Weimar by the Free State of Saxony. After he had reached the Bavarian judiciary in January 1934 that his annual income was raised to 3,720 Reichsmarks , he no longer had to worry about finances.

Reichhart had joined the NSKK (National Socialist Motor Vehicle Corps) , NSKOV (National Socialist War Victims Supply) , NSV (National Socialist People's Welfare) and DAF (German Labor Front) on September 1, 1933 . In April 1937 he joined the NSDAP .

The Ministry of Justice announced Decree of 25 August 1937, the areas of responsibility, and re-named three executioners. Ernst Reindel was responsible for the central execution sites in Berlin , Breslau and Königsberg , Friedrich Hehr was responsible for the executions in Butzbach , Hamburg , Hanover and Cologne . Reichhart was named for the executions in Munich , Dresden , Stuttgart and Weimar . After the annexation of Austria , the Reich Minister of Justice ordered the change of territorial division on February 19, 1939. Reichhart gave Weimar to Friedrich Hehr and also took over Vienna and Frankfurt (Frankfurt replaced Butzbach). He temporarily suffered from depression .

During his entire period of service, it was characteristic of Reichhart that he tried to speed up the execution process and make it “less burdensome” for the convicted person. From around 1939 he had the tilting board ( bascule ) on the guillotine replaced by a fixed bench. The condemned man was simply held by the executioner's assistants without buckling up until the ax fell. He took off the black blindfold. One of his assistants closed the condemned man's eyes. These measures shortened the execution time to three to four seconds (time given by Johann Reichhart).

Reichhart also carried out executions on his behalf in Cologne , Frankfurt-Preungesheim , Berlin-Plötzensee , Brandenburg-Görden and Breslau , where central execution sites had also been set up. From 1938 to 1944 he was also the executioner responsible for the central execution sites in Vienna and Graz . He has carried out a total of 2,951  death sentences with the guillotine and 59 with the gallows since 1924 during the Weimar Republic and the time of National Socialism . 250 women were convicted. He also executed Hans and Sophie Scholl († February 22, 1943), the most famous members of the White Rose resistance group . Reichhart later stated that he had never seen anyone die as bravely as Sophie Scholl.

Central Execution Places and Enforcement Districts in the German Reich (1944)

After the assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944 , the number of executions rose sharply. According to the classification valid since December 1944, Reichhart was designated as the executioner in charge of the " central execution site for the execution district VIII " (with the locations Munich-Stadelheim , Stuttgart remand prison and Bruchsal prison ).

Executioner for the US military government

After the war ended, Reichhart was arrested by members of the US Army in May 1945 and taken to Munich-Stadelheim prison for a week . He was then employed by the US military government in Germany until the end of May 1946. He hanged 156 National Socialists and war criminals sentenced to death in the Landsberg am Lech prison on the gallows . The technology required for this must have been known to him since 1942 at the latest, when he submitted a design proposal for a gallows of British design with trap door ( long drop ), which was rejected by the Reich Ministry of Justice (the hanging was an additional type of execution by the Reich law of March 29, 1933 introduced). When hanging during the Third Reich, Reichhart had to work with the Austrian method of strangulation .

In August 1945 he was denounced to the Munich city administration that he lived in a villa and owned several cars. Formally, he was still an executioner for the Free State of Bavaria without taking on this role.

At the end of May 1946, Reichhart learned that he had executed two innocent people as a result of confusing names. Since then he has not carried out any more executions, he trained the American Master Sergeant John C. Woods to use the gallows and was commissioned by the Americans to supervise the construction of the gallows in Nuremberg. On October 16, 1946, Woods hanged those convicted of the Nuremberg Trial of Major War Criminals , assisted by Joseph Malta .

Life after finishing execution

In May 1947, Reichhart was imprisoned again. After a trial in Munich, he was denazified as “incriminated” in December 1948 and sentenced to two years in a labor camp and confiscated half of his property. After an appeal, the sentence was reduced to one and a half years and a thirty percent confiscation of assets was ordered. Since the prison sentence had been settled, Reichhart was subsequently released. Reichhart's activity made him a lonely person. His marriage failed, his son Hans died by suicide in 1950 ; his father's profession and his denazification process had put a heavy strain on him.

Impoverished and despised by many, Reichhart lived on a small military pension from the First World War . When calls for the reinstatement of the death penalty were raised during a series of murders of taxi drivers in 1963 , he spoke out against the death penalty. In the same year, however, he became an honorary member of the "Association for the Reintroduction of the Death Penalty eV". Johann Reichhart died on April 26, 1972 at the age of almost 79 in the Dorfen hospital. Before that he had been temporarily in the Algasing mental hospital .

Others

At the beginning of 2014 it became known that a guillotine stored in the depot of the Bavarian National Museum is probably the one that Reichhart had used and with which u. a. the Scholl siblings had been executed. The then Bavarian Minister of Education and Science, Ludwig Spaenle, complied with the recommendations of a committee made up of members of the Weisse Rose Foundation and scientists and decided not to display the guillotine in public. It was feared that otherwise it could become “the preferred travel destination for event tourists and voyeurs”.

First press reports contained the false information that a guillotine was on display at the Münchner Platz Dresden Memorial . The memorial denied this.

Plays

literature

  • Literature by and about Johann Reichhart in the catalog of the German National Library
  • Matthias Blazek : Executioner in Prussia and in the German Empire 1866–1945. ibidem-Verlag, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-8382-0107-8 , p. 91 ff.
  • Stefan Amberg : Johann Reichhart, the last German executioner. Goldmann, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-442-06765-0 .
  • Ulrich Chaussy : Profession: executioner. The story of the last Bavarian executioner, Johann Reichhart. (Country and people). Bayerischer Rundfunk, Munich 1996.
  • Johann Dachs: Death by the guillotine: The German executioner Johann Reichhart (1893–1972). Ullstein, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-548-36243-5 .
  • Klaus Hillenbrand : Desired career as an executioner: Why men wanted to be executioners under National Socialism. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt / New York 2013, ISBN 978-3593-39723-8 .
  • Gotthold Leistner: Saxony and the guillotine. A contribution to the story of a killing monster. In: Sächsische Heimatblätter, 48th year, 2002, pp. 130–149.
  • Thomas Waltenbacher: Central execution sites . The execution of the death penalty in Germany from 1937–1945. Executioner in the Third Reich. Zwilling-Berlin, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-00-024265-6 .
  • Johann Dachs: Death by the guillotine. The German executioner Johann Reichart. Gietl, Regenstauf 2012, ISBN 978-3-934863-84-2 .
  • Roland Ernst: The executor. Johann Reichhart. Bavaria's last executioner . Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-96233-102-3 .

See also

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Johann Dachs: Death by the guillotine . The German executioner Johann Reichhart (1893–1972). 2nd Edition. MZ-Buchverlag, Regensburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-934863-84-2 , p. 10 .
  2. ↑ Helmut Ortner: The craftsman of death. Focus 43/2016, pp. 46–50.
  3. ↑ Johann Dachs: Death by the guillotine . The German executioner Johann Reichhart (1893–1972). 2nd Edition. MZ-Buchverlag, Regensburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-934863-84-2 , p. 57 and 58 .
  4. ^ Klaus Hillenbrand: Desired career executioner: Why men wanted to be executioners under National Socialism. P. 127.
  5. ↑ Johann Dachs: Death by the guillotine . The German executioner Johann Reichhart (1893–1972). 2nd Edition. MZ-Buchverlag, Regensburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-934863-84-2 , p. 59 .
  6. ↑ Johann Dachs: Death by the guillotine . The German executioner Johann Reichhart (1893–1972). 2nd Edition. MZ-Buchverlag, Regensburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-934863-84-2 , p. 59 f .
  7. ↑ Johann Dachs: Death by the guillotine . The German executioner Johann Reichhart (1893–1972). 2nd Edition. MZ-Buchverlag, Regensburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-934863-84-2 , p. 60 and 62 .
  8. ↑ Johann Dachs: Death by the guillotine . The German executioner Johann Reichhart (1893–1972). 2nd Edition. MZ-Buchverlag, Regensburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-934863-84-2 , p. 66 f .
  9. ↑ Johann Dachs: Death by the guillotine . The German executioner Johann Reichhart (1893–1972). 2nd Edition. MZ-Buchverlag, Regensburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-934863-84-2 , p. 68 ff .
  10. ↑ a b c Johann Dachs: Death by the guillotine . The German executioner Johann Reichhart (1893–1972). 2nd Edition. MZ-Buchverlag, Regensburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-934863-84-2 , p. 75 .
  11. ↑ a b c d Johann Dachs: Death by the guillotine . The German executioner Johann Reichhart (1893–1972). 2nd Edition. MZ-Buchverlag, Regensburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-934863-84-2 , p. 76 .
  12. ↑ a b Erich Helmensdorfer: "I would never do it again" , www.zeit.de, October 30, 1964.
  13. ↑ Executions every three minutes . Article about Johann Reichart in the Augsburger Allgemeine from November 14, 1996.
  14. ^ A b Klaus Hillenbrand: Desired career executioner: Why men wanted to be executioners under National Socialism. P. 104.
  15. ^ Legal text at Wikisource
  16. ↑ Johann Dachs: Death by the guillotine . The German executioner Johann Reichhart (1893–1972). 2nd Edition. MZ-Buchverlag, Regensburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-934863-84-2 , p. 121 f .
  17. ↑ Andreas Frei: Bavaria's last executioner. In: augsburger-allgemeine.de . January 29, 2014, accessed December 5, 2018 .
  18. ^ Klaus Hillenbrand: Desired career executioner: Why men wanted to be executioners under National Socialism. P. 104.
  19. ↑ Der Spiegel , 42/1964: Death or Glass.
  20. ↑ Katja Iken: Death penalty in Germany: "Take your last difficult walk courageously and calmly" . In: Spiegel Online . February 18, 2019 ( spiegel.de [accessed February 18, 2019]).
  21. ^ The Nazi guillotine remains in the depot. In: sueddeutsche.de. April 10, 2014, accessed September 20, 2018 .
  22. ^ Correction: no guillotine in the exhibition. Münchner Platz Dresden Memorial - Saxon Memorials Foundation. Accessed on February 22, 2014 : "... erroneously in your online editions that a guillotine is the centerpiece of the permanent exhibition of the Münchner Platz Dresden Memorial."
  23. ↑ On the carelessness of love. Landestheater Niederbayern , archived from the original on February 3, 2014 ; accessed on December 5, 2018 (biography of Reichhart, cast of the performance).
  24. ↑ Andreas Frei: Bavaria's last executioner. In: augsburger-allgemeine.de . January 29, 2014, accessed on December 5, 2018 (the director explains the play, Reichhart is called “Anton Reichmann”).
personal data
SURNAME Reichhart, Johann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Reichhart, Johann Baptist
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German executioner
DATE OF BIRTH April 29, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Wichenbach near Wörth on the Danube
DATE OF DEATH April 26, 1972
Place of death Dorfen near Erding