Maria Gertraude Schmidt

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Picture of a maid around 1700

The maid named Maria Gertraude Schmidt or Maria Gertrauda Schmidt from Lottenmühle in Weimar was executed by the sword on August 3, 1753 for child murder at the age of 29. She was born in Rödigsdorf . The pig market was on today's Goetheplatz. The motive was adultery of the Lottenmühle miller Sebald Tobias Stock, whom she also incriminated. The miller himself no longer played a role in the proceedings. On December 23, 1750, she gave birth to a boy without assistance. The examinations dragged on over 31 months. So the dead boy was hidden in the closet. The skull had been crushed. Overall, despite the maid's confession, the councilors were unsure whether she had deliberately killed their child. The Weimar councils also questioned the confession, which was obtained through torture . According to an expert opinion, Schmidt would have credibly assured that the child fell (away) from her to the ground . That did not change the guilty verdict, which the Jena Schöppenstuhl considered to be legal, and thus the sentence imposing the death penalty .

In the second half of the 18th century, the neck court order of Emperor Charles V ( Constitutio Criminalis Carolina ) from 1532, according to which child murderers should be buried alive, staked or drowned, still applied. Execution with the executioner's sword was, according to this case law, a lessening of the sentence.

Almost three decades later, the Niedermühle's maid (from 1854 Karlsmühle) Johanna Catharina Höhn was also executed for child murder in 1783. This case, in turn, should deal with the question of the abolition of the death penalty in the Duchy of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach . In contrast to this case, the Weimar councils ordered Duke Franz Josias of Saxony-Coburg-Saalfeld to convert the execution into an eternal domestic punishment on the basis of several reports from universities . However, this was rejected by the duke. Like the execution of Johanna Catharina Höhn, the execution of Maria Gertraude Schmidt was carried out as a lavish public spectacle.

The Weimar sword with which Maria Gertraude Schmidt was beheaded has been preserved. It is located in the Weimar City Museum under inv. No. 3n L FB 1203 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wilhelm Möller: Places of execution and executions in the city of Weimar , in: Contributions to the history of the city of Weimar No. 21, Weimar 1933, p. 24. There it says: "1753, August 3rd, Maria Getraude Schmidtin von Rödigsdorf was born, which Served here in the Lottenmühle, and killed her illegitimate boy himself, brought from life to death by the sword on the pig market. " Quoted from: Volker Wahl (Ed.): "The child in my body": Moral offenses and child murder in Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach under Carl August: A source edition: 1779-1786. With an afterword by René Jacques Baerlocher , Weimar 2004, p. 12, note 36. ISBN 978-3-7400-1213-7
  2. ↑ Christine Herzog: chap. 3.2 .: The Lottenmühle : Criminal Energy? Kindsmord in der Lottenmühle , in: Axel Stefek (Ed.): Energy in Weimar: From the Middle Ages to the Modern Age (= Energy History of the City of Weimar Vol. 1), ed. from Stadtwerke Weimar Stadtversorgungs-Gmbh by Axel Stefek, Weimar 2016, pp. 123-138. On child murder, p. 128 f. All of the following information has this amount as its source.
  3. ↑ Susan Geißler: "AFTER BOSEN WERCKEN FOLLOWS BOSER LOHN" The Weimar Richtschwert from 1623 , in: Weimar - Jena: Die große Stadt 5/3 (2012) pp. 191–199.