Ημερολόγιο ενός Γερμανού δήμιου

[Nero]

Όχι δεν αφορά τον Dr Σόιμπλε το νήμα,αφορά τον Franz Schmidt,τον δήμιο της Νυρεμβεργης απο τα μέσα του 16ου αιώνα μέχρι της αρχές του επόμενου. Την εποχή του το να είσαι δήμιος ήταν ταμπού,ανάλογο με το να είσαι σήμερα παιδεραστής,ο τύπος έσπασε όλα τα ταμπού:έμαθε να γράφει,έβγαλε λεφτά αξιοποιώντας τις γνώσεις ανατομίας που είχε λόγω επαγγέλματος για να προσφέρει ιατρικές συμβουλές,έγινε Meister και κατάφερε να ταφεί δίπλα στον Durer αλλά πριν από αυτό μας άφησε ένα ντοκουμέντο στο οποίο καταγράφει όλες τις εκτελέσεις που πραγματοποίησε,από την πρώτη ως την τελευταία και ξεκινώντας απο 2 γραμμές (σήμερα εκτέλεσα τον τάδε για το χ έγκλημα με τον y τροπο) άρχισε να γράφει ολόκληρες παραγράφους για τη ζωή του εγκληματία,τις λεπτομέρειες του εγκλήματος μέχρι τις δικές του τις σκέψεις για το ζήτημα και τις μεταφυσικές του ανησυχίες.

June 5, 1573. “Leonardt Russ of Ceyern, a thief. Executed with the rope at the city of Steinach. Was my first execution.” So begins the sixteenth-century journal of Nuremberg’s Frantz Schmidt (1555-1634), who during 45 years of professional activity personally put to death 361 individuals and tortured, flogged, burned, or disfigured hundreds more. Legally empowered to torture, maim, and kill suspected or convicted criminals, the professional executioner is one of the more evocative and charged symbols of pre-modern Europe’s otherness. A ubiquitous and integral part of the European social fabric well into the modern era, these human “weapons of justice” were simultaneously viewed with suspicion and disdain by the very communities they served, formally marginalized as members of the “dishonourable trades”, a delimited menagerie that included slaughterhouse workers and gravediggers. And yet “Meister Frantz”, as he was popularly, endearingly known, remained a revered member of the local establishment, widely respected for his piety and steadfastness.

The dichotomy begs to be reconciled, or, at least, interrogated: How did early modern executioners square their unsavoury occupations with aspirations to social respectability and Christian morality? Was Schmidt a rare anomaly, or was he an indication of something of broader social significance underway, perhaps laying a foundation for modern rationalizations of the use of state violence?

Schmidt maintained his personal journal between 1573 and 1617, recording and describing each and every execution and corporal punishment he administered in Bamberg and Nuremberg. Although the original volume is no longer extant, several manuscript versions of it circulated during the subsequent two centuries. Three published versions appeared during the hundred years after that, the last in 1928. While relatively well-known among German early modernists, the journal itself has appeared curiously resistant to in-depth analysis, perhaps due to its seemingly disaffected chronicle format. There are no introspective crises resulting from extended torture sessions, nor lengthy philosophical discourses or even brief musings on the meaning of life.

But just below the surface, beyond the facticity of all the deaths caused by his very hand, the journal of Meister Frantz opens up a rich source for topics ranging from early modern concepts of identity and social status to notions about the human body and the development of both the picaresque and autobiographical genres. As Schmidt grows in both professional and storytelling experience, his accounts of the various unfortunates he encounters become both more colourful and more revealing of his inner world. Consequently, the journal unveils not so much a detailed portrait as a vivid sketch of the moral cosmology of a sixteenth-century executioner.

Frantz Schmidt considered himself first and foremost a professional, a master in the guild sense. And as in other crafts, the trade of the executioner was often passed from father to son, with Frantz following his own father, the hangman of Bamberg, into the family occupation, at the age of 18. After five years’ work as a journeyman, he secured a permanent appointment at nearby Nuremberg, succeeding his future father-in-law as the city’s official executioner – a position he would hold for a remarkable 40 years. Throughout this period Schmidt enjoyed a life of bourgeois respectability with his wife, Maria, and seven children in their spacious Nuremberg residence, boasting an annual salary that put him on a par with the city’s wealthiest jurists. After his retirement, in 1617, Schmidt began a lucrative career as a medical consultant, exploiting his extensive knowledge of human anatomy – now to the end of saving lives. Upon his death, in 1634, Schmidt enjoyed a state funeral and burial in the city’s most prominent cemetery, a few paces away from other famous sons, Albrecht Dürer and Hans Sachs. Schmidt’s life, in virtually every respect, had been a great social success, although the dishonourable nature of his profession consistently precluded his open participation in patrician and craftsmen circles alike, placing him and his family in a unique kind of social limbo.

Forty-five years of personal entries reveal a good deal about Meister Frantz’s internal reconciliation of apparently sincere personal piety and hunger for respectability with the violent acts he regularly performed – torture by various methods, flogging, cutting off of fingers or ears, as well as judicial execution by hanging, beheading, burning, drowning, live burial, or breaking on the wheel. Two aspects of his professional identity emerge most consistently, both of the moral and religious in a broad sense, rather than in a more constricted denominational or even evangelical sense. The first is, unsurprisingly, his self-identity as a restorer of social order, a kind of moral accountant, who, in his own words, “did his duty and made things right again”. As if making entries in a ledger, Meister Frantz carefully lists all known offenses committed by each individual, including full itemization of all stolen property, and numbers all of his punishments, capital and corporal, providing annual totals of each.

While Schmidt’s tone is almost always dispassionate, the relative length of the entries and other clues reveal his implicit hierarchy of social values. Violent crimes, particularly the outrages committed by vicious robber gangs, were clearly the worst and required the most severe punishments to restore justice. Abuses of trust, however, were nearly as grievous in Schmidt’s eyes, including treason, the murder of a relative (especially a child), the rape of a young girl, or audacious financial fraud, such as the one-legged “treasure finder” Elizabeth Aurholtin (a.k.a. “Scabby”), whose schemes amassed a considerable personal future, or the master forge and con-man Gabriel Wolf, who defrauded nobles across Europe of huge amounts. Crimes against property in general required strict rectification, often including hanging for theft. But most such offenses – except when they directly abused people’s good will or hospitality – did not arouse Schmidt’s ire. His complacency was even more evident in a variety of “victimless” sexual offenses (not rape), typified more by exasperation at the defiance of recidivist prostitutes and their pimps than by any evangelical fervour.

The other self-image that appears prominently is that of a healer-priest, likewise evident in his pervasive concern with full accounting of each individual’s crimes and sins, no matter how small, and Schmidt’s own active role in reconciling the sinner with God. Strikingly, his approach is much less overtly doctrinaire than that of his colleague, prison chaplain Johannes Hagendorn, who also kept a personal journal of criminal cases. Rather, Schmidt seeks to create in the elaborate spectacle of public death a sort of preliminary last judgment that provides the condemned the opportunity to achieve “a good end” or “fine death”, and in his journal he comments extensively on his own success or failure in ensuring that they did not part the world “godless” or “with no hope of salvation”. Above all, the journal entries and supplemental legal sources portray a man steeled to the use of torture and other violence on the offenders before him but also consistently attentive to avoid unnecessary cruelty. Schmidt, for example, successfully leads a pioneering campaign to abolish the drowning of female felons and execute them by what he considered the more humane method of decapitation. He also regularly persuades his magisterial colleagues to behead those condemned to die by fire or being drawn and quartered.

Meister Frantz’s style and thinking evolved over the course of his long career as did his reactions to the range of individuals he encountered during his professional duties, alternately evoking his pity, disgust, indifference, bemusement, and, occasionally grudging admiration. His matter-of-fact recitation of hundreds of state killings, including some horrendous punishments, cannot fail to jolt our modern sensibilities. At the same time, his work ethic, commitment to restoring civic order, and attempts at personal redemption are immediately familiar, perhaps to an uncomfortable degree.

http://berlinbooks.org/brb/2009/12/gods-executioner/

http://wyplfmbooktalk.blogspot.com/2013 ... ngton.html

[Nero]

Το μεγαλύτερο highlight σ'αυτή την απίστευτη ιστορία είναι ίσως ότι ο συμπαθής Schmidt έγινε δήμιος απο σπόντα: ο μπαμπάς του ήταν ξυλοκόπος και είχε πάει να παρακολουθήσει μια εκτέλεση που τότε ήταν θέαμα,ανάλογο με το να πας σήμερα στο γήπεδο(είχανε μαζί τους και κολατσιό,λουκάνικα κλπ) όταν ο άρχοντας της περιοχής που ήταν γνωστό αρχίδι είδε ότι δεν είχε αρκετούς δήμιους και τσίμπησε 2 τυχαία άτομα απο το κοινό και τους έβαλε να κρεμάσουν τους θανατοποινίτες. Το ταμπού ήταν τόσο μεγάλο που ο ξυλοκόπος δεν μπορούσε να επιστρέψει στην παλιά του δουλειά και έπρεπε απο δω και πέρα να συνεχίσει να ζει σαν δήμιος,όπως και τα παιδιά του,τα οποία ήταν επισης πρακτικά καταδικασμένα να συναναστρέφονται μονο με άλλους δήμιους,να παντρευτούν τις κόρε δήμιου γιατί κανένας άλλος δεν θα τους έδινε την κόρη του,να ζουν σε τρώγλες στις άκρη της πόλης στις οποίες κανένας άλλος δεν πάταγε το πόδι του σε καμιά περίπτωση,να τους απαγορεύεται μέχρι και η είσοδος σε δημόσιους χώρους όπως οι ταβέρνες κλπ κλπ

[argouen]

Συνδράμω με κάποια στοιχεία από wiki

His journal of punishments executed by him has survived and contains accounts of 361 executions and 345 minor punishments (floggings and ear or finger amputations). The individual entries contain date, place, and method of execution, name, origin, and station in life of the condemned and – in later years more verbose than in the earlier ones – details of the crimes on which the sentence was based.

Schmidt executed criminals by rope, sword, breaking wheel, burning, and drowning. The wheel was reserved for severely violent criminals. Burnings (for homosexual intercourse and counterfeiting money) occurred only twice in his whole career, and drowning – prescribed by the Carolina for a woman committing infanticide – was commuted regularly in the Nuremberg of Schmidt’s time into execution by sword, partly upon the intervention of Schmidt and some clergy.

Schmidt's journal is unique as a source of social history and history of law. The autograph no longer exists, but – according to the preface of a modern edition – libraries at Nuremberg and Bamberg owned, as late as 1913, four handwritten copies made between the 17th and the start of the 19th century. The first printed edition appeared in 1801.

[Nero]

ας σημειωθεί ότι σε 30 χρόνια καριέρας είχε περίπου 350 εκτελέσεις στο βιογραφικό του. Το μεγαλύτερο μέρος της δουλειάς ήταν βασανιστήρια και ακρωτηριασμοί,εξ ου και οι ιδιαίτερες γνώσεις ανατομίας

[argouen]

Καλό παιδί

[Μπίστης]

Κατεβατά αποκλείεται βρε Νέρωνά μου.
Επειδή διαβάζω γιά μάγισσες αυτό τον καιρό, έχεις κανένα μεζεδάκι ;

[Dwarven Blacksmith]

Κατεβατά αποκλείεται βρε Νέρωνά μου.
Επειδή διαβάζω γιά μάγισσες αυτό τον καιρό, έχεις κανένα μεζεδάκι ;

Καλά σου λέει ο Μπίστης, κανα τουίτ δεν έκανε, μόνο ταμπλρ;

[Nero]

Καλό παιδί

Πολύ καλό. Ήταν μορφωμένος άνθρωπος,οικογενειάρχης και θρήσκος δημόσιο υπάλληλος. Πρέπει να βρω το γράμματα που έστειλε στον αυτοκράτορα ζητώντας να αφαιρέσει το στίγμα του δήμιου απο τα παιδιά του για να μπορέσουν να ζήσουν σαν άνθρωποι και μιλάει για τη μεγάλη προσφορά του στην κοινωνία ως θεραπευτής. Καταρρίπτει εντελώς το στερεότυπο του τέρατος με την κουκούλα που πρέπει να ίσχυε και τότε ακόμα

[argouen]

Ρε συ Νερο ο άνθρωπος κάθε μέρα ξυπνούσε και πήγαινε "στο γραφείο" και έκαιγε κόσμο ζωντανό
Οκ ξέφυγε από το στερεοτυπο του δημίου της εποχής καταλαβαίνω τι λες, αλλά καλό παιδί δεν τον λες

[Πορφύριος Εξαρχίδης]

Αδύνατο να φανταστώ ότι υπήρχε τέτοια προκατάληψη απέναντι στους δήμιους.

[Nero]

Ρε συ Νερο ο άνθρωπος κάθε μέρα ξυπνούσε και πήγαινε "στο γραφείο" και έκαιγε κόσμο ζωντανό
Οκ ξέφυγε από το στερεοτυπο του δημίου της εποχής καταλαβαίνω τι λες, αλλά καλό παιδί δεν τον λες

Σου ξαναλέω ότι αυτό ήταν απλά το επάγγελμά του το οποίο δεν επέλεξε κιόλας,το κληρονόμησε

[zteo]

Νερο αυτο το ημερολογιο υπαρχει στα Ελληνικα?

[argouen]

Αδύνατο να φανταστώ ότι υπήρχε τέτοια προκατάληψη απέναντι στους δήμιους.

Αν διαβάσεις πιο πάνω βεβαια, γράφει ότι επιλέγονταν στην τύχη οπότε έχουν ένα ελαφρυντικό. Προφανώς (ή μάλλον) δεν είχαν δικαίωμα επιλογής

[argouen]

Ρε συ Νερο ο άνθρωπος κάθε μέρα ξυπνούσε και πήγαινε "στο γραφείο" και έκαιγε κόσμο ζωντανό
Οκ ξέφυγε από το στερεοτυπο του δημίου της εποχής καταλαβαίνω τι λες, αλλά καλό παιδί δεν τον λες

Σου ξαναλέω ότι αυτό ήταν απλά το επάγγελμά του το οποίο δεν επέλεξε κιόλας,το κληρονόμησε

Ακόμα και με το ζόρι, το κάνεις? Ρητορική ερώτηση, δεν ξέρω ο καθείς πως θα αντιδρούσε

[Nero]

Αδύνατο να φανταστώ ότι υπήρχε τέτοια προκατάληψη απέναντι στους δήμιους.

Αν διαβάσεις πιο πάνω βεβαια, γράφει ότι επιλέγονταν στην τύχη οπότε έχουν ένα ελαφρυντικό. Προφανώς (ή μάλλον) δεν είχαν δικαίωμα επιλογής

φυσικά δεν επιλέγονταν γενικά στην τύχη,αυτό το έκανε μόνο τύπος που ήταν γνωστός τύραννος,ίσως και σαν κακόγουστο αστείο. Κανονικά ήταν κλειστό επάγγελμα το οποίο κληρονομούσες ή τέλος πάντων διάλεγες αν ήσουν πολύ απελπισμένος. Το στίγμα ήταν ταιράστιο, είχε μεν λεφτά αλλά δεν μπορούσες να τα χαρείς ως κοινωνικά απόκληρος σε τέτοιο βαθμό....