1588: Two Nuremberg highwaymen
Add comment January 2nd, 2018 Headsman
Nuremberg executioner Franz Schmidt on this date in 1588 broke on the wheel two of the countless violent thieves that haunted the byways of early modernity. As the meticulous Nachrichter did for all his clientele, Schmidt noted the occasion in his diary:
January 2nd. George Hörnlein of Bruck, Jobst Knau of Bamberg, a potter, both of them murderers and robbers. Two years ago Hörnlein and a companion attacked a carrier on the Remareuth, stabbed him four times so that he died, and took 32 florins. Six weeks ago he and Knau were consorting with a whore. She bore a male child in the house, where Knau baptised it, then cut off its hand while alive. Then a companion, called Schwarz, tossed the child in the air, so that it fell upon the table, and said: “Hark how the devil whines!” then cut its throat and buried it in the little garden belonging to the house.
A week later the above-mentioned Hörnlein and Knau, when the whore of the aforesaid Schwarz bore a child, wrung its neck; then Hörnlein, cutting off its right hand, buried it in the yard of the house. Six weeks ago Hörnlein and Knau with a companion, a certain Weisskopf, attacked a man between Herzog and Frauen Aurach. Knau shot him dead, took 13 florins, dragged the body into the wood and covered it with brushwood.
[A long list of murders and highway robberies follows here. Schmidt adds:]
To conclude it would require another half sheet to write down all the people they attacked … The two murderers were led out on a tumbril. Both their arms were twice nipped with red-hot tongs, and their right arms and legs broken; lastly they were executed on the wheel.
On this day..
- 2016: Nimr al-Nimr, Shiite cleric - 2020
- 1959: Joaquin Casillas Lumpuy, Batista regime soldier - 2019
- 1823: Robert Hartley, on Penenden Heath - 2017
- 1863: William Ockold, the last hanged at Worcester - 2016
- 1477: Gerolamo Olgiati, ducal assassin - 2015
- 1997: Eight foes of Qaddafi - 2014
- 1946: Franz Strasser - 2013
- 10 executions that defined the 1990s - 2012
- 1916: Sergeant John Robins, before evacuating Gallipoli - 2012
- 1981: Cipriano, Eugenio, and Ventura García-Marín Thompson - 2011
- 1645: John Hotham the Younger - 2010
- Daily Double: John Hothams - 2010
- 1994: Mansour Kikhia? - 2009
- 1663: Illiam Dhone - 2008
Entry Filed under: 16th Century,Abortion and Infanticide,Broken on the Wheel,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Execution,Germany,Gruesome Methods,Murder,Outlaws,Public Executions,Theft
Tags: 1580s, 1588, franz schmidt, george hornlein, january 2, jobst knau, nuremberg
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