Vienna utopian Franz Hebenstreit, the world’s first communist, was publicly hanged on this date in 1795.
Philosophy student turned cavalry officer and sometime poet, Hebenstreit along with Andreas von Riedel became in the wake of the French Revolution the foremost proponents of constitutional monarchy within the Habsburg empire.
As these visionaries trended, with France, ever more republican they became in like proportion ever more odious to Emperor Franz II. Finally in 1794 the “Wiener Jakobiner” types were arrested; Hebenstreit caught a death sentence for treason via a show trial designed to exaggerate the group’s threat. (Riedel would be imprisoned, and freed from his dungeons by Napoleon.)
On this day..
- 1889: Louisa Collins, the last woman hanged in New South Wales
- 1999: Dobie Gillis Williams
- 1878: Gauchito Gil, Argentina folk saint
- 1932: Asbury Respus, North Carolina serial killer
- 1900: The private, decent, and humane execution of a human being named George Smiley
- 1690: Andrei Ilyich Bezobrazov, stolnik
- 1813: The Yorkshire Luddites, for murdering William Horsfall
- 1908: John Boyd, by John Radclive
- Themed Set: 2010
- 2010: Jeong Dae-Sung and Lee Ok-Geum, for escaping North Korea
- 1603: Not Tommaso Campanella
- 1864: Two Dodds, as two spies, in two states, and twice botched
- 1697: Thomas Aikenhead