Vienna execution sites

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The Vienna execution sites , where death sentences and other sentences were publicly carried out to deter the population , kept changing their location.

Civilians

  • Am Tabor (Alter Tabor, today 20th, Gaußplatz)
Executions by drowning on the bridge
Memorial plaque for Balthasar Hubmaier
Executions mostly by burning
In 1420 Archduke Albrecht V had around 200 Jews burned on the occasion of the expulsion of Jews from Vienna . This was officially justified with a desecration of the host . In 1528 Balthasar Hubmaier was burned as a so-called Anabaptist and in 1583 Elisabeth Plainacher as a witch (the only witch burned in Vienna).
Sodomites were also executed here by beheading and then burning them , for example a tailor from Traiskirchen in 1661 or a man from the Waldviertel in 1672 . He shared his fate with his horse.
The method of execution by burning was used by Emperor Charles VI. Abolished in 1733.
  • Am Hof , today 1st district, 15th and 16th centuries
Execution of Mayor Wolfgang Holzer with some of his supporters by Vierteilen , 1463
Execution of Ferdinand Graf Hardegg , 1595
Execution of some peasant leaders, 1597
  • Pig market (today 1st, Lobkowitzplatz)
Executions by hanging
For example, on July 11, 1408, the mayor Konrad Vorlauf and the councilors Hans Rockh and Konrad Ramperstorffer, another source speaks of heads. The monks of the Augustinian monastery felt disturbed in their devotion by the noise of the onlookers.
  • the Rabenstein (at 9., Schlickplatz)
Rabenstein execution site in the second half of the 18th century
Regional Court for Criminal Matters Vienna, former place of execution, now a sanctuary (memorial)
Regional Court for Criminal Matters Vienna, Weiheraum : memorial plaques for 650 resistance fighters executed at this location during the Nazi era
Executions mostly by hanging and wheels , but also by the sword.
The first documentary mentions come from the years 1311 and 1488.
On March 23, 1747, on the orders of Maria Theresa, the gallows was moved from Wienerberg here to Rossau . She did not want to see him, and especially the corpses hanging there, on her trips to Laxenburg .
After Emperor Joseph II had abolished the death penalty, work began on August 25, 1786 with the demolition of the stone-built execution platform. The gallows were later erected again, because in 1818 the notorious robber chief Johann Georg Grasel was executed here.
He stayed here until 1804, then at the insistence of the Rossau residents he was transferred back to the Wienerberg to the spinner on the cross .
Executions by hanging, burning and wheeling.
The place of execution on Wienerberg is mentioned for the first time in 1311, but it is probably older. On March 23, 1747, on the orders of Maria Theresa, the gallows was moved from Wienerberg to Rabenstein in Rossau.
The first execution after the relocation of the gallows took place on May 16, 1805. Between 1805 and May 30, 1868, all public executions took place here. The condemned performed their last prayer at the Matzleinsdorf line chapel .
In 1708 the first woman, a child murderer, was executed here.
Executions by hanging in the so-called "Galgenhof" took place here; the death penalty was carried out on the strangling algae.
The first execution took place here on December 16, 1876, as public executions have not been allowed to take place since 1873.
After the reintroduction of the death penalty in 1933, further executions were carried out here until 1938 (see list ), especially after the February fighting and the July coup , both in 1934.
During the Nazi regime , executions were carried out in the building between December 6, 1938 and April 4, 1945 using guillotines . Records by Heinrich Zeder, a chaplain, show the beheading of 1,184 men and women. On March 30, 1943, Helene Kafka (sister Maria Restituta ) was beheaded in the Vienna Regional Court. She was beatified on the occasion of the Pope's visit to Vienna in June 1998.
On March 24, 1950, the robbery murderer Johann Trnka was hanged in the “Galgenhof” . This was the last execution of the death penalty under Austrian law.
In 1967 this place of execution was converted into a memorial , which can be visited after prior registration.

Military personnel

Danube Park - Kagran shooting range
  • Erdberger Lände
In the 18th century there was an execution site for military personnel on the Erdberger Lände.
Up until January 28, 1747 there was a military place of execution here on the grain market, where since 1702 executions have only been carried out by shooting . Executions of military personnel by hanging were then moved to Alser Strasse , where the Vienna Regional Court was later built.
On June 24, 1809, the leader of the Viennese militia ( Peter Tell , carpenter ) and two days later, on June 26, 1809, the citizen and master saddler Jakob Eschenbacher was shot by the French occupation soldiers on the wall of the Jesuitenhof at the Getreidemarkt. Jakob Eschenbacher had buried two cannon barrels in the garden of his house when Napoleon occupied Vienna . To his patriotic courage, Eschenbachgasse was named after him in 1863 and a memorial plaque was placed on the site of his former home at Favoritenstrasse 47.
During the Nazi era, numerous members of the German Wehrmacht were executed by shooting on the former Kagran shooting range (now Donaupark Vienna ) , as well as two members of the Vienna fire brigade , Hermann Plackholm and Johann Zak , in a public execution in front of around 600 professional colleagues . A memorial stone was unveiled on November 5, 1984.

Further

The places of execution listed here were the most important in the course of Vienna's history.

In addition to the places mentioned here, executions also took place at Graben (for example 1601 and 1640), Am Hof and in the council chamber of the old town hall (on April 30, 1671 Franz Graf Nádasdy because of his involvement in a conspiracy against Emperor Leopold I ).

Martial law shootings after the revolution in 1848 were often carried out in the city moat. The murderers of War Minister Count Baillet von Latour (he was hanged from a gas lantern during the Revolution) were executed on the glacis in front of the Schottentor in 1849.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl Hofbauer: The Rossau and the fishing village on the upper Werd . Vienna 1866, pp. 27–30.

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