Josef Lang (executioner)

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Josef Lang (born March 11, 1855 in Simmering near Vienna ; † February 21, 1925 there ) was the last executioner in Austria-Hungary . He held this office from 1900 until the end of the monarchy in 1918 and carried out 39 death sentences during that time .

Life

Origin and education

Josef Lang was born in Simmering and learned the carpentry trade. After military service and a few years as a stoker at the then British gas company in Vienna , he had saved enough to buy a small coffee house in Simmeringer Geystraße 5 in 1888 , with which he later moved to Simmeringer Hauptstraße. As a coffee house owner, he was soon a well-known personality in the then small suburb of Vienna. Lang was also a member of the "Voluntary Simmeringer Turner Fire Brigade ". Since he appeared several times as a lifesaver, Lang was to be found more often in the newspapers.

The way to office

One of the regulars in Lang's coffee house was the Viennese executioner Karl Selinger (1862–1899), whose main job was actually a milk merchant. He persuaded the sturdy Lang to stand by him as an assistant during executions. Lang assisted in several executions in a row, as he himself put it “out of sport, without pay”. When Selinger died, the post of Viennese executioner had to be filled. Since the applications submitted by other people did not meet with the approval of the authorities, the “athletic assistant” of Selinger was remembered and Lang was found through police investigations. Lang had originally intended to apply as his successor, but had neglected to send a letter of application because at 45 he was too old to enter civil service (according to service pragmatics, no one in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy could become a civil servant, who was older than 40 years). An exception was not a problem in this particular case, and Lang was appointed executioner of Vienna by decree of February 27, 1900. With the appointment, however, he had to give up his coffee house and thus lost his bourgeois existence, as civil servants were forbidden at the time to run private businesses.

Activity as an executioner

Josef Lang after the execution of Cesare Battisti at the Würgegalgen on July 12, 1916
Josef Lang (right) after the execution of Fabio Filzi at the Würgegalgen on July 12, 1916

As an executioner in Vienna, Lang was responsible for executions in all of what was then Cisleithanien , with the exception of the Kingdom of Bohemia and the occupied territories of Bosnia and Herzegovina .

According to a newspaper obituary in the Wiener Arbeiter-Zeitung, Lang executed a total of 39 people by hanging . From 1900 to 1914, Lang did not have many sentences to execute - the aged Emperor Franz Josef almost always made use of his grace - so Lang was used more often during the First World War to execute spies and traitors. He was photographed during the execution of Cesare Battisti and Fabio Filzi in the Castello del Buonconsiglio in 1916 with the bodies of the executed hanging on the gallows. The picture of the “laughing Austrian executioner” went around the world and was widely used as a postcard. The Austrian writer Karl Kraus addressed Battisti's execution and in particular the display of his corpse for the purpose of photography immediately after the events in his work The Last Days of Mankind and chose the photo as the cover of the first book edition of the drama.

All 39 executions took place long after the usual in Austria at this time method of strangulation on Würgegalgen ; He knew and disapproved of the Anglo-Saxon hanging method of falling through a trapdoor, because, in his opinion, it caused unnecessarily great and long-lasting agony. He considered an execution lasting more than a minute to be a “raw slaughter” and was convinced that the strangulation with his method “does not cause the least pain”, in fact it induces “pleasant feelings”. As evidence, he cited an attempt at strangulation which he had once had his assistants carry out on him.

retirement

Grave of Josef Lang and his family in the Simmeringer Friedhof in Vienna

Lang was active until the end of the Danube Monarchy, including on August 21, 1918, when he requested , from Graz (where the last execution of a civilian had taken place in 1893), the death sentence of a 27-year-old wood servant who died in 1917 Feistritzsattel had committed a robbery and murder. With the abolition of the death penalty in April 1919, Lang was decommissioned.

In the following years he received a small pension and worked as a caretaker in Vienna at Gottschalkgasse  1 (Simmering). Until the end, Lang was self-confident and convinced that he had done a good job as an executioner.

As long 1,925 died, he was on the Simmering cemetery in Vienna buried ; 10,000 Viennese gave him the last escort . The popular story that Lang committed suicide is not true.

After the death penalty was reintroduced eight years after Josef Lang's death, his nephew Johann Lang was also appointed executioner.

reception

Status in society

Lang enjoyed a high social reputation among his fellow men and was - in contrast to, for example, the executioners in Great Britain - a person of public life. When he went about his business in small provincial towns under the monarchy, he was often received at the train station like a state guest, and the entire population was on their feet to see the executioner. The newspapers reported on him with a photo, and Lang was invited to evening parties where he willingly shared his experiences. His success with the ladies was "legendary". Lang also gave an interview to the well-known “mad reporter” Egon Erwin Kisch , in which he reported in detail about his profession.

One-person piece

Gerhard Dorfer and Anton Zettel dramatized Lang's life and work as a satirical one-person piece in the early 1970s . It was premiered on April 18, 1971 by the author Gerhard Dorfer in the role of Josef Lang at the Theater am Neumarkt in Zurich . Directed by Peter Schweiger. The Austrian premiere took place with the participation of Anton Zettel in November 1971 in Graz with Fritz Holzer as Josef Lang. In Vienna, the play was performed in October 1972 in the Josefstadt cellar theater (small theater in the concert hall) with Felix Dvorak in the leading role. Peter Lodynski staged the "truthfully retold from ancient sources" monodrama about an executioner who "no longer understands the world" after the death penalty was abolished (slip). Many other theaters from Bremerhaven to the Stadttheater Klagenfurt (here again with Felix Dvorak) played the play that is still performed today. There is a record and a television recording of the ORF of the production of the Theater in der Josefstadt with Felix Dvorak . After the radio version of Radio Wien, a CD with Helmut Qualtinger as executioner Lang was released by Spray Records (radio director Hans Krendlesberger ). The ZDF produced on the basis of Monodramas a teleplay directed by Heinz Shirk , where Georg Corten as Josef Lang was seen.

literature

  • Oskar Schalk (ed.): Executioner's Josef Lang's memories . Leonhardt, Leipzig / Vienna 1920, OBV .
    • Oskar Schalk, Harald Seyrl (ed.): The memories of the Austrian executioner . (Extended, annotated and illustrated new edition of the memoirs of the kk executioner Josef Lang, published in 1920). Edition Seyrl, Vienna 1996, ISBN 3-901697-02-0 .

Web links

Commons : Josef Lang (executioner)  - Collection of pictures

Individual evidence

  1. Hans Veigl : Morbid Vienna. The dark districts of the city and its inhabitants. ( Memento from May 14, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Böhlau Verlag , Vienna 2014, pp. 234–239
  2. Hans Hautmann : Military Trials against Members of the Austrian Parliament in the First World War , in: Mitteilungen der Alfred Klahr Gesellschaft, Vol. 21, 2/2014, p. 9.
  3. ^ Anton Holzer : The executioner's smile. The Unknown War Against Civilians 1914-1918. Primus Verlag, Darmstadt 2014
  4. ^ Theodor W. Adorno : Dissonances: Music in the administered world. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht , Göttingen 1991, p. 138
  5. Ulrich Weinzierl : The cruel executioners of the First World War. Die Welt , November 12, 2008
  6. ↑ Courtroom . The murderer Peter Ranner executed. In:  Workers will. Social democratic organ of the Alpine countries / workers will. Organ of the working people of the Alpine countries / workers will. Organ of the working people for Styria and Carinthia / workers will. Organ of the working people for Styria, Carinthia (and Carniola) Neue Zeit. Organ of the Styrian Socialist Party , No. 226/1918 (XXIXth year), 23 August 1918, p. 7, top left. (Online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / Maintenance / awi.
  7. Cf. Matthias Blazek: "The love of the executioners - in 1924 and 1925 some executioners took their own lives" , matthias-blazek.eu (accessed on October 2, 2014).
  8. Egon Erwin Kisch: An executioner's curriculum vitae. In: Ders .: The raging reporter , Erich Reiss Verlag, Berlin, 1925
  9. Josef Lang, kuk executioner - history of an honorable citizen's life and work between the slaughterhouse and central cemetery of the former kuk capital and residence city of Vienna, truthfully retold from old sources by Gerhard Dorfer and Anton Zettel , Thomas Sessler Verlag, Vienna 1971.