Straightening bench

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The execution bench constructed by the Magdeburg executioner Friedrich Reindel (1824–1908) was first used during an execution by ax on August 17, 1883 in Holzminden .

Before that, the condemned man had to kneel behind the execution block , his arms were tied to the block and a wide strap was stretched across the back of his head. Tying was unnecessary at the straightening bench. Two executioner's assistants held the man lying on his stomach on the bench, while the third assistant pressed the condemned man's head into the recess in the execution block and covered his eyes with the other hand.

Construction and implementation

On April 17, 1885,
Friedrich Reindel beheaded Anton Giepsz, a worker convicted of murder, in Braunschweig, using a bench and a cleaver . A little later, the accomplice Antonie Kossmieder, the Buhlin des Giepsz, was judged.

Little is known about the nature of the straightening bench, which apparently only slowly gained acceptance. It will have been a low, stable bench set up behind the execution block on which the convict lay. There was a small space between the block and the bench, under which the blood box hung. This then caught the blood that poured out of the decapitated body. If that box was missing, sawdust was thrown around the block, soaking up the blood.

The straightening block was originally a wooden block about 70 cm high. Its lower half was cylindrical, the upper half rectangular. The back and front edge - this contained a recess for the delinquent's chin - measured about 37 cm each, the side edges about 27 cm each.

The straightening block and bench were awkward devices and therefore difficult to transport. That is why the later acting executioner Carl Gröpler developed an unusually narrow block and a light, also quite thin bench.

literature

  • Matthias Blazek: "Mr. Public Prosecutor, the sentence has been carried out." The brothers Wilhelm and Friedrich Reindel: Executioners in the service of the North German Confederation and His Majesty 1843–1898 . ibidem, Stuttgart 2011 ISBN 978-3-8382-0277-8
  • Matthias Blazek: Executioner in Prussia and in the German Empire 1866–1945 . ibidem, Stuttgart 2011 ISBN 978-3-8382-0107-8
  • Heinrich Breloer / Horst Königstein: blood money. Materials on a German story. Prometh Verlag, Cologne 1982 ISBN 3-922009-46-8

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Blazek, Matthias: "Mr. Public Prosecutor, the judgment has been carried out." The brothers Wilhelm and Friedrich Reindel: Executioners in the service of the North German Confederation and His Majesty 1843–1898, ibidem: Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-8382-0277-8 , P. 70 f.