Public execution on the guillotine. Photo and video of execution by guillotine

Ideas about humanism in different eras of the development of human civilization differed very seriously. Now it is rather difficult to imagine, but such a “death machine” as the guillotine was born out of the most humane considerations.

Humane Doctor Guillotin

Meanwhile, the professor of anatomy and deputy of the revolutionary Constituent Assembly, Dr. Guillotin, has only an indirect relation to the guillotine.

Joseph Guillotin, a member of the Constitutional Assembly created during the French Revolution, was an opponent of the death penalty. However, he believed that in an era of revolutionary changes it was impossible to completely abandon its use. That is why Dr. Guillotin put forward the idea: if the death penalty still exists, let it at least be fast and the same for all segments of the population.

Portrait of Doctor Guillotin. Photo: Public Domain

By the end of the XVIII century in Europe there was a fairly rich choice of ways to kill criminals. For representatives of the upper strata of society, beheading with a sword or ax was used, for unborn criminals - quartering, wheeling or hanging. The “execution without the shedding of blood” was applied to those who were angry with the spiritual authorities, that is, auto-da-fe - burning alive.

It was believed that the most humane of these methods is cutting off the head. But even here everything depended on the skill of the executioner. It is not so easy to cut off a person's head with one blow, so high-class executioners were worth their weight in gold.

If a certain nobleman managed to greatly anger the monarch, an ordinary soldier or another unprepared person could appear on the scaffold instead of a professional executioner, as a result of which the last minutes of the life of the disgraced nobleman turned into real hell.

Joseph Guillotin considered that the most humane method of execution in relation to those sentenced to death is beheading, so he proposed creating a mechanism that would deprive people of their heads and lives quickly and painlessly.

Are you going on a hike? Take the guillotine!

The National Assembly of France entrusted the development of such a machine to the famous for his work on surgery Dr. Antoine Louis. Dr. Louis created the outline drawings of the machine, and their implementation fell on the shoulders of the German mechanics by Tobias Schmidt, who was assisted by the famous Parisian executioner Charles Henri Sanson.

The main part of the guillotine was a heavy slanting knife, which, along guides from a height of 2-3 meters, fell on the neck of the condemned, fixed with a special device. The body of the victim was fixed on a special bench, after which the executioner pressed the lever, and the falling knife put an end to the life of the criminal.

The new machine was approved by the National Assembly of France as an instrument of execution on March 20, 1792.

The first execution using the guillotine took place in Paris on April 25, 1792, when he paid for his crimes with his head assassin Jean Nicolas Peltier.

Spectators who gathered to watch the new spectacle were disappointed by its transience. However, the era of revolutionary terror that began later generously compensated for the transience of the number of executions. At the peak of the revolutionary struggle, up to 60 people were executed a day. And the revolutionary army of France, setting out on a campaign to pacify the rebels, carried with them marching guillotines.

"Death Machine" conquers Europe

At the turn of the XVIII - XIX centuries, scientists believed that a severed head lives for another five to ten seconds. Therefore, the executioner took the severed head and showed it to the crowd so that the executed person could see the audience laughing at him.

Among those who ended their lives on the guillotine were King Louis XVI of France and his Marie Antoinette's wife, figures of the French Revolution Danton, Robespierre and Desmoulins, and even founder of modern chemistry Antoine Lavoisier.

Execution of Marie Antoinette. Photo: Public Domain

Contrary to legend, the initiator of the creation of the guillotine, Joseph Guillotin, was not guillotined, but died a natural death in 1814. His relatives tried for a long time to achieve the renaming of the guillotine, but failed, after which they preferred to change their surname.

Until the middle of the 19th century, the guillotine was little used in Europe, as it was associated with the French "revolutionary terror". Then, however, in many countries it was decided that the guillotine was cheap, reliable and practical.

Especially actively the guillotine was used in Germany. During the reign Hitler with its help, about 40 thousand members of the Resistance were executed. This was explained simply - since the Resistance fighters were not soldiers of the regular army, instead of being shot, they were subjected to "ignoble" execution as criminals.

The execution of the French revolutionary Maximilian Robespierre. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

It is curious that the guillotine as a means of execution was used in post-war Germany both in the FRG and in the GDR, and in the West it was abandoned in 1949, and in the East - only in 1966.

But, of course, the most "reverent" attitude towards the guillotine was preserved in France, where the procedure for execution on it did not change from the end of the era of "revolutionary terror" to the complete abolition of the death penalty.

Scheduled execution

Preparations for the execution began at 2:30 am. Within an hour, the executioner and his assistants brought the mechanism into working condition and checked it. An hour was allotted for this.

At 3:30 a.m., the director of the prison, a lawyer, a doctor and other officials went to the prisoner's cell. If he was asleep, the director of the prison woke him up and proclaimed:

Your request for pardon has been denied, get up, prepare to die!

After that, the convict was allowed to go to natural necessities, handed over a specially prepared shirt and jacket. Then, accompanied by two policemen, he was transferred to a room where he could write a farewell note to relatives or any other persons.

Then the condemned received a few minutes to communicate with the priest. As soon as he completed the ceremony, the police handed over the condemned to the hands of the executioner's assistants. They quickly removed the jacket from the "client", tied his hands behind his back and legs, and then put him on a stool.

While one of the executioner's assistants cut off the shirt collar with scissors, the condemned man was offered a glass of rum and a cigarette. As soon as these formalities were over, the assistants of the executioner picked up the victim and swiftly dragged him to the guillotine. Everything took a matter of seconds - the condemned was laid on a bench, his neck was fixed in the grooves, and the executioner, by pressing the lever, carried out the sentence. The body of the victim from the bench was immediately thrown into a prepared box with a substance that absorbs blood. Then the head was sent there.

The whole process was completed around 4 o'clock in the morning.

Guillotine in Pankrac Prison in Prague. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

How the President of France destroyed the labor dynasty

The last public execution in France was Eugen Weidmann, the killers of seven people, which took place on June 17, 1939 in Versailles. The execution was delayed in time and took place at 4:50 in the morning, when it was already dawn. This allowed stubborn newsreel operators to capture it on film.

The indecent behavior of the crowd and journalists during the execution of Weidmann forced the French authorities to abandon public executions. From that moment until the abolition of the death penalty in general, the procedure was carried out in closed courtyards of prisons.

The last person to be executed in France by guillotine was on October 10, 1977. Tunisian immigrant Hamida Jandoubi, sentenced to death for torturing his friend, 21-year-old Elizabeth Busquet.

In 1981 French President Francois Mitterrand signed a law abolishing the death penalty in the country.

Last French state executioner Marcel Chevalier passed away in 2008. It is interesting that Chevalier, who inherited the position of state executioner from his uncle, intended to subsequently transfer it to his son Eric, who worked as an assistant at the executions carried out by his father. However, the labor dynasty of the French executioners was interrupted due to the abolition of the profession.

Each century has its own concept of philanthropy. At the end of the 18th century, from the most humane considerations, guillotine. Cheap and fast - this is how the popularity of this "death machine" can be characterized.

The guillotine is named after the French doctor Joseph Guillotin, although he was only indirectly involved in the creation of this killing instrument. The doctor himself was an opponent of the death penalty, but he recognized that no revolution could do without it. In turn, Joseph Guillotin, being a member of the newly-minted Constitutional Assembly in revolutionary times, expressed the opinion that it would be nice to invent a tool that would equalize the conditions of execution for all classes.

At the end of the 18th century, as soon as people were not executed: the nobility chopped off their heads, common people were subjected to wheeling, hanging, and quartering. In some places, burning at the stake was still practiced. The most "humane" was considered the execution by cutting off the head. But even here it was not all simple, because only master executioners could cut off the head the first time.

The very same mechanism of the guillotine was developed by the French surgeon Antoine Louis and the German mechanic Tobias Schmift. A heavy slanting knife fell along guides from a height of 2-3 meters. The body of the condemned was fixed on a special bench. The executioner pressed the lever and the knife cut off the head of the victim.

The first public execution by guillotine took place on April 25, 1792. The crowd of onlookers was very disappointed that the spectacle quickly ended. But during the revolution, the guillotine became an indispensable and speedy means of reprisal against those objectionable to the new regime. Under the knife of the guillotine were the King of France Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, the revolutionaries Robespierre, Danton, Desmoulins.

Relatives of Dr. Joseph Guillotin made every effort to have the authorities change the name for the death machine, but to no avail. Then all the relatives of Guillotin changed their surname.

After the “revolutionary terror”, the guillotine lost its popularity for several decades. In the second half of the 19th century, the mechanism with an oblique knife "came into fashion" again.

The last public execution by guillotine took place in France on June 17, 1939. She was captured on camera. But excessive crowd unrest forced the authorities to abandon public executions altogether.

In Nazi Germany under Hitler, more than 40,000 members of the Resistance went under the knife of the guillotine. Even after the Second World War, the death mechanism was used in the FRG until 1949, and in the GDR until 1966. The last execution by guillotine took place in 1977 in France.
After the abolition of the death penalty, hundreds of executioners were left without work. will allow us to see something different in this profession from the point of view of our ancestors.

It is not known for certain whether he succeeded in doing this, but the descendants of Guillotin disappeared forever from the field of view of historians.

Joseph Ignace Guillotin was born on May 28, 1738 in the provincial town of Saintes in the family of not the most successful lawyer. Nevertheless, from an early age he absorbed a certain special sense of justice, passed on to him by his father, who would not agree to defend the accused for any money if he was not sure of their innocence. Joseph Ignace allegedly persuaded his parent to give him up for education to the Jesuit fathers, suggesting to put on the cassock of a clergyman until the end of his days. It is not known what averted the young Guillotin from this venerable mission, but at a certain time he, unexpectedly even for himself, turned out to be a student of medicine, first at Reims, and then at the University of Paris, which he graduated with outstanding results in 1768. Soon, his lectures on anatomy and physiology could not accommodate everyone: portraits and fragmentary memoirs depict the young doctor as a small, well-tailored man with elegant manners, possessing a rare gift of eloquence, in whose eyes a certain enthusiasm shone.

Joseph Ignace Guillotin

Joseph-Ignace Guillotin

Birthday: 05/28/1738
Birthplace: Sainte, France
Year of death: 1814
Citizenship: France

One can only wonder how radically the views of someone who once claimed to be a minister of the church have changed. Both Guillotin's lectures and his inner convictions revealed in him a complete materialist. The great doctors of the past, such as Paracelsus, Agrippa Nettesheim or father and son van Helmont, had not yet been forgotten, it was still difficult to get rid of the idea of the world as a living organism. However, the young scientist Guillotin already questioned Paracelsus' assertion that “nature, the cosmos and all its givens are a single great whole, an organism where all things are consistent with each other and there is nothing dead. Life is not only movement, not only people and animals live, but also any material things. There is no death in nature - the extinction of any given, there is immersion in another womb, the dissolution of the first birth and the formation of a new nature.

All this, according to Guillotin, was pure idealism, incompatible with the fashionable new materialistic beliefs of the Enlightenment, eager to dominate. He, as befitted the young naturalists of his time, incomparably more admired his acquaintances - Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Holbach, Lamerty. From his medical chair, Guillotin with a light heart repeated the new spell of the era: experience, experiment - experiment, experience. After all, a person is, first of all, a mechanism, it consists of screws and nuts, you just need to learn how to tighten them up - and everything will be in order. Actually, these thoughts belonged to Lamerty - in his work “Man-Machine”, the great enlightener asserted ideas that are very recognizable even today that a person is nothing but a complexly organized matter. Those who believe that thinking presupposes the existence of a disembodied soul are fools, idealists and charlatans. Who ever saw and touched this soul? The so-called "soul" ceases to exist immediately after the death of the body. And this is obvious, simple and clear.

Therefore, it is quite natural that the doctors of the Paris Medical Academy, to which Guillotin belonged, were so unanimously indignant when, in February 1778, the Austrian physician Franz Anton Mesmer, widely known for discovering the magnetic fluid and the first to use hypnosis for treatment, appeared in the capital. Mesmer, who developed the ideas of his teacher van Helmont, empirically discovered the mechanism of mental suggestion, however, he considered that a special liquid circulates in the healer's body - a "magnetic fluid", through which celestial bodies act on the patient. He was convinced that gifted healers could pass these fluids to other people and thus heal them.

... On October 10, 1789, the members of the Constituent Assembly made a lot of noise and did not want to leave the meeting. Monsieur Guillotin introduced the most important law concerning the death penalty in France. He stood before the legislators, solemn, inspired, and spoke and spoke. His main idea was that the death penalty should also be democratized. If until now in France the method of punishment depended on the nobility of origin - criminals from the common people were usually hanged, burned or quartered, and only the nobles were honored with beheading with a sword - now this ugly situation should be radically changed. Guillotin hesitated for a moment and glanced at his notes.

To be convincing enough today, I spent a lot of time in conversations with Monsieur Charles Sanson ...
At the mention of this name, a mute silence instantly fell in the hall, as if everyone at the same time suddenly lost the power of speech. Charles Henri Sanson was the hereditary executioner of the city of Paris. The Sanson family held, so to speak, a monopoly on this occupation from 1688 to 1847. The position was passed on in the Sanson family from father to son, and if a girl was born, then her future husband was doomed to become an executioner (if, of course, there was one). However, this work was very, very highly paid and required absolutely exceptional skill, so the executioner began to teach his “art” to his son, as soon as he was fourteen.

Guillotin, in fact, often went to Monsieur Sanson's house on the Rue Château d'Eau, where they talked and often played music in a duet: Guillotin played the harpsichord well, and Sanson played the violin. During the conversations, Guillotin asked Sanson with interest about the difficulties of his work. I must say that Sanson rarely had a chance to share his worries and aspirations with a decent person, so he did not have to pull his tongue for a long time. So Guillotin learned about the traditional methods of mercy of the people of this profession. When, for example, a condemned person is put on the stake, the executioner usually places a hook with a sharp end to mix the straw, exactly opposite the heart of the victim - so that death overtakes him before the fire begins to devour his body with painful slow relish. As for wheeling, this torture of unprecedented cruelty, then Sanson admitted that the executioner, who always has poison in the form of tiny pills in the house, as a rule, finds the opportunity to quietly slip it on the unfortunate person in between tortures.

So, - Guillotin continued in the ominous silence of the hall, - I propose not just to unify the method of capital punishment, because even such a privileged method of killing as decapitation with a sword also has its drawbacks. “It is possible to complete a case with a sword only if three most important conditions are observed: the serviceability of the instrument, the dexterity of the performer and the absolute calmness of the condemned,” deputy Guillotin continued to quote Sanson, “in addition, the sword must be straightened and sharpened after each blow, otherwise the goal will be quickly achieved in public execution becomes problematic (there were cases that it was possible to cut off the head almost on the tenth attempt). If you have to execute several at once, then there is no time for sharpening, which means that stocks of “inventory” are needed - but this is not an option either, since the convicts, forced to watch the death of their predecessors, slipping in pools of blood, often lose their presence of mind and then the executioner henchmen have to work like butchers in a slaughterhouse ... "
- Enough about it! We've heard enough! - suddenly someone's voice shot up nervously, and the assembly suddenly became agitated - those present hissed, whistled, hissed.
"I have a cardinal solution to this terrible problem," he shouted over the noise.

And in a clear, clear voice, as in a lecture, he informed those present that he had developed a drawing of a mechanism that would allow him to instantly and painlessly separate the head from the body of the convict. He repeated - instantly and absolutely painlessly. And triumphantly shook some papers in the air.

At that historic meeting, it was decided to consider, investigate and clarify the project of the "miraculous" mechanism. In addition to Guillotin, three more people came to grips with them - the king's physician surgeon Antoine Louis, the German engineer Tobias Schmidt and the executioner Charles Henri Sanson.

... Thinking of benefiting humanity, Dr. Guillotin carefully studied those primitive mechanical structures that were used to take life ever before in other countries. As a model, he took an ancient device used, for example, in England from the end of the 12th to the middle of the 17th century - a chopping block and something like an ax on a rope ... Something similar existed in the Middle Ages in Italy and Germany. Well, then - he went headlong into the development and improvement of his "brainchild".

History reference:there is an opinion that The guillotine was NOT invented in France. Actually a guillotine from Halifax, Yorkshire. The "Gallows from Halifax" consisted of two five-meter wooden poles, between which there was an iron blade, which was fixed on a crossbar filled with lead. This blade was controlled with a rope and a collar. The original documents show that at least fifty-three people were executed with this device between 1286 and 1650. The medieval city of Halifax lived on the cloth trade. Huge cuts of expensive fabric were dried on wooden frames near the mills. At the same time, theft began to flourish in the city, which became a big problem for him and the merchants needed an effective deterrent. This and a device like it called "The Maiden" or "Scottish Maiden" may well have inspired the French to borrow the basic idea and give it their own name.

In the spring of 1792, Guillotin, accompanied by Antoine Louis and Charles Sanson, came to Louis at Versailles to discuss the finished draft of the execution mechanism. Despite the threat looming over the monarchy, the king continued to consider himself the head of the nation, and his approval was necessary. The Palace of Versailles was almost empty, noisy, and Louis XVI, usually surrounded by a noisy, lively retinue, looked ridiculously lonely and lost in it. Guillotin was visibly agitated. But the king made only one single melancholy, but striking remark: “Why the semicircular shape of the blade? - he asked. “Does everyone have the same neck?” After that, absent-mindedly sitting down at the table, he personally replaced the semicircular blade in the drawing with an oblique one (later Guillotin made the most important amendment: the blade should fall on the neck of the convict exactly at an angle of 45 degrees). Be that as it may, Louis accepted the invention.

And in April of the same 1792, Guillotin was already fussing on the Place de Greve, where the first device for decapitation was being installed. A huge crowd of onlookers gathered around.
- Look, what a beauty, this Madame Guillotine! - quipped some impudent.

Thus, from one evil tongue to another, the word "guillotine" was firmly established in Paris.

History reference: Later, Guillotin's proposal was revised by Dr. Antoine Louis, who served as a secretary at the Academy of Surgery, and it was according to his drawings that the first guillotine was made in 1792, which was given the name "Louizon" or "Louisette." .

Guillotin and Sanson made sure to test the invention first on animals, and then on corpses - and, I must say, it worked perfectly, like a clock, while requiring minimal human participation.

The Convention finally adopted the “Law on the Death Penalty and Methods of Executing It,” and henceforth, for which Guillotin advocated, the death penalty ignored class differences, becoming one for everyone, namely “Madame Guillotine”.

The total weight of this machine was 579 kg, while the ax weighed more than 39.9 kg. The process of cutting off the head took a total of a hundredth of a second, which was the pride of the doctors - Guillotin and Antoine Louis: they had no doubt that the victims did not suffer. However, the "hereditary" executioner Sanson (in one private conversation) tried to dissuade Dr. Guillotin in his pleasant delusion, arguing that he knows for certain that after cutting off the head, the victim still continues to retain consciousness for several minutes and these terrible minutes are accompanied by an indescribable pain in the severed part of the neck.
- Where did you get this information? Guillotin wondered. - It is absolutely contrary to science.

Sanson, in the depths of his soul, was skeptical about the new science: in the bowels of his family, who had seen a lot of things in his lifetime, all sorts of legends were kept - his father, grandfather and brothers more than once had to deal with witches, and with sorcerers, and with warlocks - they were all managed to tell the executioners before the execution. And so he allowed himself to question the humanity of advanced technology. But Guillotin looked at the executioner with regret and not without horror, thinking that, most likely, Sanson was worried that from now on he would be deprived of his job, since anyone could activate Guillotin's mechanism.

By the way, execution on the guillotine is not at all as simple as it seems. Not only does a person need to be properly fixed on a swinging board (and not everyone obediently allows themselves to be tied!) And clamp his neck with boards. At the moment before the execution, the executioner’s assistant had to grab the head of the executed and pull it forward so that it was the neck, and not the back of the head, that fell under the blade, while the blade fell only 2-5 cm from the assistant’s fingers. And yes, there were grounds for doubting the instantaneousness of death. According to the testimony of the same executioner, severed heads often moved their eyes and moved their lips for quite a long time (from seconds to a minute).

In the meantime, Dr. Joseph Ignace Guillotin overnight turned into a fashionable socialite and was in great demand everywhere. Once he dreamed of fame - and now it has come. His invention was discussed both in the royal chambers and in the living rooms of the most prominent aristocrats, he was congratulated, shook hands, approved. He smiled, albeit modestly, but like a man who knows his own worth. The machine he invented became one of the main characters in the grandiose dramatic performance taking place around. In Paris, and not only, they produced brooches and seals for envelopes in the form of guillotines. The capital's culinary specialists also did not stand aside: a small car was skillfully baked for the festive table. The last and most relevant cry of fashion was the perfume "Parfume de Guillotine" - their author remained unknown to history.

For the first time, Dr. Guillotin realized that something was wrong when the Convention, which replaced the National Assembly, with a majority of one vote passed the death sentence as a "traitor to the revolution" ... to the king himself, in violation of his own current Constitution, according to which the monarch remained a person inviolable. When Guillotin was delivered a solemn invitation to participate on January 21, 1793 in the play "coition of Madame Guillotine with the King of France", he lost his senses. And the first thing he learned when he came to his senses was that the revolutionary people wished to transfer the car they had invented from Grevskaya to the square under the windows of the royal palace, which from now on will be called Revolution Square.

There is evidence that at night, on the eve of the execution of the king, Guillotin, for the first time in many years, extracted the image of the Mother of God from the secret closets and prayed without closing his eyes until dawn ... His servants even decided that the owner had lost his mind.

... The king was the only one of all the French who was graciously granted two privileges - to go to execution in a carriage befitting his rank (and not in a carriage intended for this) and to arrive at the scaffold, accompanied by a priest. There was a roar of drums. Guillotin continued to stand with his eyes closed, and in his mind, as if in a dream, the number “20” appeared - he, like no one else, knew that it was at the expense of 20 that the blade of the machine fell to its limit ...

I die for the happiness of France, - as if in a fog, the last words of Louis reached him.
“Twenty,” Guillotin breathed convulsively and, falling to his knees and no longer controlling himself, began to pray frantically. Nobody paid any attention to him. The crowd swayed, and a bloodthirsty cheer sounded through the pale dawn sky.

For several months after the execution of the king, Dr. Guillotin was not seen by anyone. And before him, was it then? Someone was sure that he did not know what he died of, someone claimed that he had fled abroad. In any case, there is no reliable information about this period of his life.

What kind of prisoners she had not seen in recent years! The revolution, as it usually happens, began to devour itself long ago: the legendary figures of the revolution Brissot and Vergnot were executed - the latter not so long ago presided over the National Assembly. Then its walls were honored by aristocrats - but in what quantity! The Duke of Orleans was guillotined, the one who voted for the death of the king, then the head of Count Laroque, Count de Lagle fell off, and with him - Agnes Rosalia La Rochefoucauld, Princess de Lamballe ... They executed the scientist whom Guillotin always admired so much - Lavoisier, not having found a way to postpone the execution of the sentence for a single day in order to give him the opportunity to record a scientific discovery. They executed the recent revolutionary leaders - Danton and Desmoulins.

Guillotin, tormented by monstrous mental anguish, considered himself guilty of the death of each of these people. Mesmer's ominous prediction came true: at night, their severed heads appeared to him, he begged their forgiveness, uttering passionate justifications in his address - he wanted the best ... He absolutely sincerely promised himself that, when his hour comes, he , having ascended the scaffold, he will confess to the people, publicly spit on "Madame Guillotine" and curse her. So it will be easier for him to die ...

But fate did not allow Dr. Guillotin to become intimately acquainted with "Madame Guillotine." It is known for certain that after the execution of Robespierre, which took place on July 28, 1794, Joseph Guillotin was freed. He hid in a remote province and rarely appeared in the capital. It was said that he turned into a diligent Christian and until the last days of his life begged the Lord for forgiveness for his sins. His name surfaced in the documents again due to the fact that he was a supporter of the idea of vaccination against smallpox, which was progressive at the beginning of the 19th century.

... Joseph Ignace Guillotin lived until 1814 and died of a carbuncle on his shoulder. Perhaps, in recent years, he more than once recalled how, during his youth, he dared to argue with Paracelsus that the living "mechanisms" were dead. How stupid it must have seemed to him! Moreover, the mechanism he invented turned out to be more alive than the living ...

The "gift" of Dr. Guillotin served mankind for a long time. It was later estimated that over 15,000 people were guillotined during the French Revolution. The guillotine in France was abolished only in 1981 - along with the abolition of the death penalty. The last execution with the help of "Madame Guillotine" took place in October 1977 in Marseilles: this is how the murderer Namid Jadoubi was executed. In Europe, the guillotine was also used, although in Sweden, for example, it was used only once - in 1910.

However, the history of the guillotine is not limited to France alone. It was used as an instrument of execution in Italy (until 1870), in Sweden (though only once - in 1910). The guillotine experienced a true “renaissance” in Nazi Germany: from 1933 to 1945, about 40 thousand people were beheaded in the Third Reich in this way. Formally, executions on the guillotine were betrayed for criminal offenses, in fact, any resistance to the Nazi regime was considered a criminal offense ...

Oddly enough, after the collapse of the Third Reich, guillotining continued to be used in the GDR. It was only in 1966 that it was replaced by execution, since the only guillotine broke.

We will never know how the completely immaterial soul of Dr. Guillotin reacted to such a monstrous longevity of his "superhumane" machine. Although where the road is paved with good intentions, repeatedly

Well, in conclusion. Turgenev has a very curious story "The Execution of Tropmann", which describes the execution on the guillotine. Read it - you won't regret it!

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Let me remind you again who dreamed and what came of it or who was The original article is on the website InfoGlaz.rf Link to the article from which this copy is made -

Eugene Weidman was born in 1908 in Germany. He started stealing at a young age and eventually grew into a professional criminal.

He served five years in prison for robbery. While serving his sentence, he met his future accomplices - Roger Millen and Jean Blanc. After being released, they began to work together, kidnapping and robbing tourists in the vicinity of Paris.

The group robbed and murdered a young New York City dancer, a chauffeur, a nurse, a theater producer, an anti-Nazi activist, and a real estate agent.

As a result, the police found Weidman. The offender managed to wound them with a pistol, but he was still arrested.

December 21, 1937
Vaidman is taken away in handcuffs after being detained.
Photo: Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

June 17, 1938
Eugene Weidman shows the police the cave in the forest of Fontainebleau where he killed Jeanine Keller.
Photo: Horace Abrahams/Getty Images

March 24, 1939
Photo: Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone/Getty Images

March 1939
Weidman at trial in France.
Photo: LAPI/Roger Viollet/Getty Images

March 1939

March 1939
Special telephone lines are installed in the courthouse.
Photo: Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone/Getty Images

After a high-profile trial, Weidmann and Millen were sentenced to death, and Blanc to 20 months in prison. Millen's sentence was then commuted to life imprisonment.

On the morning of June 17, 1939, Weidmann was taken to the square in front of the Saint-Pierre prison, where a guillotine and a noisy crowd were waiting for him. Among the audience was the future legendary actor Christopher Lee, then he was 17 years old.

Weidmann was placed in the guillotine, and the chief executioner of France, Jules-Henri Defurneau, immediately lowered the blade.

The crowd reacted violently. Solemnly jubilant, many tried to break through to the decapitated body to soak handkerchiefs in Weidmann's blood as a souvenir. The scene was so horrifying that President Albert Lebrun banned public executions. He stated that instead of serving as a deterrent to crime, they awakened baser instincts in people.

The guillotine was originally conceived as a quick and relatively humane way to take a life. It continued to be used in closed executions until 1977. In 1981, the death penalty was abolished in France.

In June 1939
Weidman in court.
Photo: Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

June 17, 1939
Weidmann is led to the guillotine. He passes by the chest in which his body will be taken away.
Photo: Keystone-France/Getty Images

June 17, 1939
A crowd awaiting Weidmann's execution gathered around a guillotine near the Saint-Pierre prison.
Photo: AFP/Getty Images

June 17, 1939
Weidman in the guillotine a second before the blade drops.
Photo: POPPERFOTO/Getty Images.

Towards the end of his life, a man who bore the “monstrous”, in his own opinion, name Guillotin, turned to the authorities of Napoleonic France with a request to change the name of the terrible execution device of the same name, but his request was rejected. The fact is that not even Guillotin was the author of the drawings, according to which the first working device was made in 1792. However, later the name of Guillotin stuck to the "death machine" in some incomprehensible way and, despite all the efforts of his family, stubbornly holds on to this day.
The guillotine became the first "democratic" method of execution and quickly came into use throughout France. According to historians, in the first ten years, 15 thousand people were beheaded with its help.

Many may be surprised by the fact that the last public execution by guillotine took place in France in 1939, and the device continued to be used in non-public executions until 1977.

1.1939 - the last public execution by guillotine.

Here are the details of this execution...

Born in Germany in 1908, Eugène Weidmann began stealing from a young age and did not give up his criminal habits even as an adult. While serving a five-year sentence in prison for robbery, he met future partners in crime, Roger Millon and Jean Blanc. After their release, the three began working together, kidnapping and robbing tourists around Paris.
They robbed and murdered a young New York City dancer, a chauffeur, a nurse, a theater producer, an anti-Nazi activist, and a real estate agent.

The National Security Administration eventually got on Weidman's trail. One day, returning home, he found two police officers waiting for him at the door. Weidman fired a pistol at the officers, wounding them, but they still managed to knock the criminal to the ground and neutralize him with a hammer lying at the entrance.

2. June 17, 1938. Eugène Weidmann shows the police the cave in the forest of Fontainebleau in France where he killed the nurse Jeanine Keller.

As a result of the sensational trial, Weidman and Millon were sentenced to death, and Blanc was sentenced to 20 months in prison.

On June 16, 1939, French President Albert Lebrun rejected Weidmann's pardon and commuted Million's death sentence to life imprisonment.

On the morning of June 17, 1939, Weidman met on the square near the Saint-Pierre prison in Versailles, where the guillotine and the whistle of the crowd were waiting for him.

6. June 17, 1939. A crowd gathers around the guillotine in anticipation of Weidmann's execution near the Saint-Pierre prison.

Among those wishing to watch the execution of the audience was the future famous British actor Christopher Lee, who at that time was 17 years old.

7. June 17, 1939. Weidman, on the way to the guillotine, passes by the box in which his body will be transported.

Weidmann was placed in the guillotine and the chief executioner of France, Jules Henri Defurno, immediately lowered the blade.

The crowd present at the execution was very unrestrained and noisy, many of the spectators broke through the cordon to soak handkerchiefs in Weidman's blood as souvenirs.
The scene was so horrifying that French President Albert Lebrun banned public executions altogether, arguing that instead of deterring crime, they help awaken people's base instincts.

The guillotine, originally invented as a quick and relatively humane method of killing, continued to be used in private executions until 1977, when Hamid Djandoubi was executed behind closed doors in Marseille. The death penalty in France was abolished in 1981.

9. Hamid Jandoubi before his execution 1977

Video from the film with the last execution of Hamidu Dzhandubi (video is working, despite the picture):

And a little more about Guillotin:

Joseph Ignace Guillotin was born on May 28, 1738 in the provincial town of Saintes, in the family of not the most successful lawyer. And, nevertheless, from a young age he absorbed a certain special sense of justice, transmitted to him by his father, who would not agree to defend the accused for any money if he was not sure of their innocence. Joseph Ignace allegedly persuaded his parent to give him up for education to the Jesuit fathers, intending to put on the cassock of a clergyman until the end of his days.

It is not known what averted the young Guillotin from this venerable mission, but at a certain time he, unexpectedly even for himself, turned out to be a student of medicine, first at Reims, and then at the University of Paris, which he graduated with outstanding results in 1768. Soon, his lectures on anatomy and physiology could not accommodate everyone: portraits and fragmentary memoirs depict the young doctor as a small, well-tailored man with elegant manners, possessing a rare gift of eloquence, in whose eyes a certain enthusiasm shone.

Joseph-Ignace Guillotin

Birthday: 05/28/1738
Birthplace: Sainte, France
Year of death: 1814
Citizenship: France

One can only wonder how radically the views of someone who once claimed to be a minister of the church have changed. Both Guillotin's lectures and his inner convictions revealed in him a complete materialist. The great doctors of the past, such as Paracelsus, Agrippa Nettesheim or father and son van Helmont, had not yet been forgotten, it was still difficult to get rid of the idea of the world as a living organism. However, the young scientist Guillotin already questioned Paracelsus's assertion that “nature, the cosmos and all its givens are one great whole, an organism where all things are consistent with each other and there is nothing dead. Life is not only movement, not only people and animals live, but also any material things. There is no death in nature - the extinction of any givenness, there is immersion in another womb, the dissolution of the first birth and the formation of a new nature.

All this, according to Guillotin, was pure idealism, incompatible with the fashionable new materialistic beliefs of the Enlightenment, eager to dominate. He, as befitted the young naturalists of his time, incomparably more admired his acquaintances - Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Holbach, Lamerty. From his medical chair, Guillotin with a light heart repeated the new spell of the era: experience, experiment - experiment, experience. After all, a person is primarily a mechanism, it consists of screws and nuts, you just need to learn how to tighten them up - and everything will be in order. Actually, these thoughts belonged to Lamerty - in his work “Man-Machine”, the great enlightener asserted ideas that are very recognizable even today that a person is nothing more than a complexly organized matter. Those who think that thinking presupposes the existence of a disembodied soul are fools, idealists and charlatans. Who ever saw and touched this soul? The so-called "soul" ceases to exist immediately after the death of the body. And this is obvious, simple and clear.

“In order to be convincing enough today, I spent a lot of time in conversations with Monsieur Charles Sanson ...
At the mention of this name, a mute silence instantly fell in the hall, as if everyone at the same time suddenly lost the power of speech. Charles Henri Sanson was the hereditary executioner of the city of Paris. The Sanson family held, so to speak, a monopoly on this occupation from 1688 to 1847. The position was passed on in the Sanson family from father to son, and if a girl was born, then her future husband was doomed to become an executioner (if, of course, there was one). However, this work was very, very highly paid and required absolutely exceptional skill, so the executioner began to teach his “art” to his son, as soon as he was fourteen.

Guillotin, in fact, often dropped by Monsieur Sanson's house on the Rue Château d'Eau, where they talked and often played music in a duet: Guillotin played the harpsichord quite well, and Sanson played the violin. During the conversations, Guillotin asked Sanson with interest about the difficulties of his work. I must say that Sanson rarely had a chance to share his worries and aspirations with a decent person, so he did not have to pull his tongue for a long time. So, Guillotin learned about the traditional methods of mercy of the people of this profession. When, for example, a condemned man is brought to the stake, the executioner usually sets up a hook with a sharp end to mix the straw, exactly opposite the heart of the victim - so that death overtakes him before the fire with painful slow relish begins to devour his body. As for wheeling, this torture of unprecedented cruelty, then Sanson admitted that the executioner, who always has poison in the form of tiny pills in the house, as a rule, finds the opportunity to quietly slip it on the unfortunate person in between tortures.

“So,” continued Guillotin in the ominous silence of the hall, “I propose not just to unify the method of capital punishment, because even such a privileged method of killing as decapitation with a sword also has its drawbacks. “It is possible to complete a case with a sword only if three most important conditions are observed: the serviceability of the instrument, the dexterity of the performer and the absolute calmness of the condemned,” Deputy Guillotin continued to quote Sanson, “in addition, the sword must be straightened and sharpened after each blow, otherwise the goal will be quickly achieved in public execution becomes problematic (there were cases that it was possible to cut off the head almost on the tenth attempt). If you have to execute several at once, then there is no time for sharpening, which means that stocks of “inventory” are needed - but this is not an option either, since the convicts, forced to watch the death of their predecessors, slipping in pools of blood, often lose their presence of mind and then the executioner henchmen have to work like butchers in a slaughterhouse ... "
- Enough about that! We've heard enough! - suddenly a voice shot up nervously, and the assembly suddenly became agitated - those present hissed, whistled, hissed.
“I have a cardinal solution to this terrible problem,” he called out over the noise.

... Thinking of benefiting humanity, Dr. Guillotin carefully studied those primitive mechanical structures that were used to take life ever before in other countries. As a model, he took an ancient device used, for example, in England from the end of the 12th to the middle of the 17th century - a chopping block and something like an ax on a rope ... Something similar existed in the Middle Ages in Italy and Germany. Well, and then - he went headlong into the development and improvement of his "brainchild".

Historical note: there is an opinion that the guillotine was NOT invented in France. Actually a guillotine from Halifax, Yorkshire. The "Gallows from Halifax" consisted of two five-meter wooden poles, between which there was an iron blade, which was fixed on a crossbar filled with lead. This blade was controlled with a rope and a collar. The original documents show that at least fifty-three people were executed with this device between 1286 and 1650. The medieval city of Halifax lived on the cloth trade. Huge cuts of expensive fabric were dried on wooden frames near the mills. At the same time, theft began to flourish in the city, which became a big problem for him and the merchants needed an effective deterrent. This and a device like it called "The Maiden" or "Scottish Maiden" may well have inspired the French to borrow the basic idea and give it their own name.

And in April of the same 1792, Guillotin was already fussing on the Place de Greve, where the first device for decapitation was being installed. A huge crowd of onlookers gathered around.

- Look, what a beauty, this Madame Guillotine! - quipped some impudent.

Thus, from one evil tongue to another, the word "guillotine" was firmly established in Paris.

Historical note: The first proposals of Guillotin were revised by Dr. Antoine Louis, who served as a secretary at the Academy of Surgery, and it was from his drawings that the first guillotine was made in 1792, which was given the name “Louison” or “Louisette”. And among the people they began to affectionately call her "Louisette".

Guillotin and Sanson made sure to test the invention first on animals, and then on corpses - and, I must say, it worked perfectly, like a clock, while requiring minimal human participation.

The Convention finally adopted the "Law on the Death Penalty and Methods of Executing It", and henceforth, for which Guillotin advocated, the death penalty ignored class differences, becoming one for all, namely, "Madame Guillotine".

- Where did you get this information? Guillotin wondered. This is absolutely contrary to science.

Sanson, deep down, was skeptical about the new science: in the depths of his family, who had seen a lot of things in his lifetime, all sorts of legends were kept - his father, grandfather and brothers more than once had to deal with witches, and with sorcerers, and with warlocks - they were all managed to tell the executioners before the execution. And so he allowed himself to question the humanity of advanced technology. But Guillotin looked at the executioner with regret and not without horror, thinking that, most likely, Sanson was worried that from now on he would be deprived of his job, since anyone could activate Guillotin's mechanism.

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