The Faithful Executioner

This is the fascinating story of Frantz Schmidt, the executioner of Nuremberg, Germany, in the mid- to late 1500's and early 1600's. His father was forced into the profession by chance, and Schmidt spent his 50 year career trying to restore the social acceptability of his family so that his children would not have to follow him into the same profession.

The book makes use of a sort of diary that Schmidt kept, a record of the people he executed or punished, and what crimes they were convicted of that warranted the punishment. As a young man in his 20's, the records he kept were taciturn–just the name, the offense (such as ‘thief'), and the punishment. As he aged, though, his descriptions began to have more narrative. Joel Harrington, the book's author, uses these narratives, along with other available documents like town records, to piece together a picture of what law enforcement was like in Nuremberg and what Schmidt's attitude to his work was.

Harrington's argument is that although Western societies in the 21st century no longer have public executioners, we are not as removed from 16th century Nuremberg as we like to think. We still struggle with fears of violence and other kinds of lawlessness and frustration with the inability of law enforcement to completely protect us. Our customs have changed, we have access to better investigative tools and more humane punishments, but at bottom we are still in the same predicament that the city fathers of Nuremberg and their executioner were.

I mostly read this book on my lunch breaks at work, believe it or not. It was gruesome, but in a matter of fact way that I didn't find hard to take. It also has a lot of humor and is quite readable.