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The Secret Beheading
(Heimliche Enthauptung) 1810
Had the executioner of Landau prayed the sixth petition
of the Lord’s Prayer with devotion early on June 17 of that year, so i
don't know. If he had not prayed it, a short letter arrived from Nanzig
at the most opportune day. in the letter was written: “Executioner of
Landau! You are to come to Nanzig immediately and bring your great
executioner’s sword with you. You will be told what you have to do, and
you will be well paid.”—A carriage for the journey was already waiting
at the front door. The executioner thought, “This is part of my function,”
and sat into the carriage. When he was still an hour’s journey from
Nanzig, it was already evening, and the sun was setting amid blood-red
clouds, and the coachman stopped and said: “We’ll have nice weather
again tomorrow,” when suddenly three strong, armed men appeared on the
road; they sat down beside the executioner and promised him that no harm
would come to him, “but you must let us blindfold you”; and when they
had blindfolded him, they said, “Coachman, drive on.” The Coachman drove
on, and it seemed to the executioner as if he had been driven on for a
good twelve hours, and he had no idea where he was. He heard the night
owls at midnight; he heard the roosters crow; he heard the morning bells
ring. Suddenly the carriage came to a stop again. They led him into a
house and gave him something to drink, along with a good sausage roll.
After he had refreshed himself with food and drink, he was led further
through the same house, in and out of doors, up and down stairs, and
when the blindfold was removed, he found himself in a large hall. The
hall was draped all around with black cloth, and wax candles burned on
the tables. In the center sat a person on a chair with a bare neck and a
mask covering the face, and must have had something in the mouth, for
she could not speak, but only sob. But standing against the walls were
several gentlemen in black robes and with black veils covering their
faces, so that the executioner would not have recognized any of them had
he met them again at the other hour, and one of them handed him his
sword with the order to behead this person sitting on the little chair.
Then it seemed to the poor executioner as if he were suddenly standing
in ice-cold water up to his heart, and he said: one should not hold this
against him. He could not desecrate his sword, which was dedicated to
the service of justice, with an act of murder. But one of the gentlemen
raised a pistol at him from a distance and said, “It’s now or never! If
you don’t do as you’re told, you’ll never see the church tower of Landau
again.”Then the executioner thought of his wife and children at home,
“and if it cannot be otherwise,” he said, “and I shed innocent blood,
let it be upon your heads,” he struck the poor person’s head off her
body with a single blow. After the deed, one of the gentlemen gave him a
purse containing two hundred doubloons. They blindfolded him again and
led him back into the same carriage. The same people who had brought him
accompanied him again. And when the carriage finally came to a stop, and
he was given permission to get out and remove the blindfold from his
eyes, he found himself standing once more where the three men had taken
seat to him an hour from Nanzig on the road to Landau to Landau, and it
was night. But the carriage hurried back again.
This is what happened to the executioner of Landau, and it would pain
the family friend if he could say who the poor soul was who had to go on
such a bloody path into eternity. No, no one ever found out who she was
or what sins she had committed, and no one knows where she is buried.
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