Author Topic: THE MAN AT THE GUILLOTINE A GERMAN EXECUTIONER’S LIFE - Part 1  (Read 43 times)

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raul

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Johann Reichhart is a busy man. Yesterday he was in Vienna, before that Dresden and Berlin, and now he is on his way to Munich. For years he has been crossing the country by train or in his Opel Blitz. Always on business trips, on behalf of justice. His profession: executioner. Common murderers, robbers and sex criminals die under his guillotine. Now, in 1943, he often has to deal with a new type of perpetrator: “Volksschädlinge” (harmful organisms), “Wehrkraftzersetzer” (underminers of military force) and “Kriegswirtschaftsverbrecher” (war economy criminals).

Day after day, Nazi special courts handed down death sentences against which there were no legal remedies. And so the executioner traveled a great deal, driving from execution to execution to do his bloody work. Reichhart had a lot of practice in ending people’s lives.

Four years earlier, his activities had been regulated by a circular from the Ministry of Justice on “actions in connection with death sentences”. The details of an execution were meticulously listed on twenty- one type- written pages, from the announcement of the Führer’s decision, the place of execution and accommodation for the executioner, to the manner of execution and what would happen afterwards to the body. Step by step. All preparations for the execution – it was said – were to be implemented as quickly and quietly as possible.

Reichhart carried out this “necessity of war” action to the full satisfaction of his employer. In the afternoon of the day before the execution at the latest, he traveled with his two assistants, moved into quarters in nearby offices with sleeping accommodation (sometimes even in an inn), then inspected the execution site and familiarized himself with the equipment. Next, he was given an order form, the wording of which he knew almost by heart: The executioner. . .Reichhart. . .is commissioned to execute the person legally sentenced to death and to the permanent loss of honor rights. . .(before and after). . .to be executed via guillotine after the Führer and Reich Chancellor had decided that justice should be given free rein.

On 22 February 1943, justice was given free rein again. Reichhart received a message saying that in a few hours, he must carry out a death sentence on three young students. Only four days earlier, on 18 February, they had been caught by the caretaker distributing leaflets against the Hitler regime in the courtyard of Munich University. He immediately informed the Gestapo, who arrested them on the same day. They were then sent swiftly to the notorious Gestapo prison in Wittelsbach Palace. The students’ names were the siblings Sophie and Hans Scholl, and Christoph Probst.

The hearing at the People’s Court, responsible for cases of high treason, would be presided over by Roland Freisler. Having been President only a few months, he would travel all the way from Berlin for the occasion, determined to make a public example of the three students. Freisler’s debating style was feared: he yelled at the accused, humiliated them, and violated all legal principles that were still at least halfway valid.

His court cases resembled Stalinist show trials. For most of the defendants who had to answer to the fanatical judge, their death sentence was already a given fact before the trial even began: “Death by guillotine!”

After a trial lasting less than two hours, Freisler’s icy voice cut through the silence of the courtroom : “The defendants Sophie Scholl, Hans Scholl and Christoph Probst are sentenced to death!”

Immediately afterwards, the three students were transferred to Munich’s central execution prison at Stadelheim, where the executioner Johann Reichhart had already received the order for immediate execution in the usual paper form.
Reichhart and the Stadelheim magistrates knew each other well, with a close, collegiate relationship developing between them over the years. When the new “guidelines for executioners” came into force shortly after the beginning of the war, the number of execution sites was increased from eleven to fourteen and the areas of responsibility of the four executioners had been reorganized. Johann Reichhart was now a regular at Stadelheim.

He was responsible for “District II”, which included the prisons in Dresden, Frankfurt (Preungesheim), Munich (Stadelheim), Stuttgart and Vienna. As a native of Bavaria, Stadelheim was the most preferable of all his jobs, even calling it his “home execution site”. He had carried out countless executions here, but of course, the execution of three young people was not an everyday occurrence for him, either.

When Sophie Scholl was brought in by a prison guard, she was wearing a white dress. Shortly before, her parents had managed to speak to her and her brother Hans again. A final farewell. Sophie seemed calm and was friendly towards the prison officers. Perhaps that was why the officials took the risk of letting the three death row inmates share a cigarette together before their execution.

The guillotine was in a wooden barracks in the prison yard.

Reichhart’s assistants grabbed the young Sophie and lay her on the bench. Seconds later, her head was separated from her body. Next, Hans lay his head on the block.

Before the cold iron rushed down, he shouted: “Long live freedom!” Finally, the same sentence was carried out on Christoph Probst, a young father of three children, who was baptized before the execution.

Three young people, denounced by a caretaker for the “unlawful distribution” of a leaflet, sentenced to death by a fanatical Nazi judge, and treated indifferently by the German people.

The assistants routinely cleaned the guillotine of blood, after which the execution protocol was duly signed. The executions were – as the minutes soberly noted – carried out in the “name of the people” and “without any particular incident” in the presence of witnesses. Reichhart had fulfilled his executioner’s craft properly and without any hassle. In the following months he would behead the remaining resistance fighters from the inner circle of the “White Rose” resistance group: the medical student Alexander Schmorell, his fellow student Willi Graf and the professor of psychology and musicology Kurt Huber.

Now, he could submit his invoices: he received 40 Reichsmarks for each beheading, while 30 Reichsmarks were paid to each assistant. In the case of “multiple executions” taking place on one day, an additional 30 marks for each execution was paid.

A bonus of 60 marks was paid for working away from home, but Reichhart could not claim this for work carried out in Munich as it only applied when the distance between the places of residence and execution was over 300 kilometers. However, once his work had been completed, he could finally return to his house in Gleißental, near Deisendorf, which he was able to buy in the autumn of 1942. His income had risen satisfyingly within just a few years, thanks to the increasing number of death sentences he had to carry out. Indeed, in addition to his annual basic income of 3,000 Reichsmarks, in 1943 he received further special payments totaling 41,000 marks for overseeing 764 beheadings. Reichhart, who as a young man had completed an apprenticeship as a butcher, was now financially secure as a state- hired executioner. It was what he had always dreamed of.

His rise began after the end of the First World War. He had returned home from the war in 1918 without any injuries and, in those economically difficult times, had tried his hand at being an innkeeper, book salesman and dance teacher, all with little success.
Only an offer from his uncle, who was also an executioner, was to bring about the turnaround.

Franz Xaver Reichhart had been appointed as an executioner towards the end of the nineteenth century. First working as an assistant, after 1894 he was an executioner with the rank of a Bavarian civil servant. When he retired at the age of 73, after more than thirty years in the role, he had beheaded fifty- eight people. Despite his bloody craft, he saw himself as a devout Christian, lighting a candle for each person he executed and having a funeral mass read, at his own expense, to save the souls of the criminals he had beheaded.

At the suggestion of the uncle, his nephew Johann, now 31 years old, took over the executioner’s position. On the one hand out of commitment to his uncle, who had always stood by him when he had financial difficulties, but on the other hand because he hoped to obtain a permanent position in the Bavarian civil service during the ongoing economic crisis.

There was also a certain aspect of vanity involved: now he held an office that demanded respect. He also now had the power to transport a person from life to death, later even gladly boasting to be the “fastest executioner in Germany”. On 27 March 1924 he signed his employment contract with the First Public Prosecutor of the Munich I Regional Court. In cumbersome, official German, it meticulously listed what the Free State of Bavaria expected from its future executioner. Reichhart was now ready to kill people, in the name of the people.

Johann Reichhart and his assistants could now get to work.

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