Volkmar Limprecht, a pedagogue and city councilor of Erfurt in Thuringia, was beheaded on this date in 1663. Almost all the links in this post are in German.
“A Mephistophelian mixture of reckless egoistic ambition and restless energy, worldly agility, and unfettered frivolity,” our man Limprecht was a pedagogue turned demagogue who won election to the city council and briefly rode his acumen to control of the city and the absurd prospect of asserting leadership of the Electorate of Mainz.
The Elector, Johann Philipp von Schoenborn, dispatched an army to Erfurt to put it in its place, leading the city’s other grandees to overthrow Limprecht for self-preservation and have him condemned a traitor. He was beheaded the day after his sentence, and his head mounted on a spike as a gesture of submission to the Elector.
Google Books has digitized a public domain blackletter summary of the man’s fall here.
On this day..
- 1928: William Charles Benson
- 2013: Joseph Paul Franklin, Larry Flynt's would-be assassin
- 1781: Margaret Tinkler, abortionist
- 1829: The slaves of the Greenup revolt
- 1936: Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, Falange founder
- 1903: Peter Mortensen, divinely accused
- 2010: Mohsen bin Faisal Al Barik Al-Dossary, Saudi cop-killer
- 869 or 870: St. Edmund the Martyr
- 1903: Tom Horn
- 1676: Johan Johansson Griis, the Gävle Boy
- 284: Aper, by Diocletian
- 1695: Zumbi dos Palmares