Franz Schmidt (executioner)

Franz Schmidt (1555–1634), also known as Meister Franz or Frantz Schmidt, was an executioner in Hof from 1573 to April 1578, and from 1 May 1578 till the end of 1617 he was the executioner of Nuremberg. He left a diary in which he detailed the 361 executions he performed during his 45-year career.

Personal and professional life

Franz Schmidt's father, Heinrich, was originally a woodsman in the north-eastern Bavarian town Hof. Once, when the notoriously tyrannical margrave of Brandenburg-Kulmbach, Albrecht II (r. 1527–1553), wanted three men hanged, he picked out Heinrich from the crowd and forced him to perform the execution, after which he had no option but to continue in the profession of executioner.

Franz Schmidt was probably born in 1555, and was about 18 years old when he became executioner under his father's supervision in Bamberg in 1573. Five years later, in 1578, he secured the post as executioner in Nürnberg. He married the chief executioner's daughter Maria Beck, and eventually became chief executioner after his father-in-law. He fathered seven children, and his salary, on par with the city's wealthiest jurists, allowed him to have a spacious residence in Nürnberg. After his retirement in 1617, he began a new, lucrative career as a medical consultant and subsequently received an imperial privilege by Ferdinand II making him "ehrlich", i.e. an honourable member of society, and thus removing the stain of social stigma from his previous occupation. He was given a lavish funeral in 1634, in one of Nürnberg's prominent cemeteries. The grave is still present today.

Throughout his career as an executioner, Franz Schmidt also had a side job as a healer. According to Joel Harrington, a historian who authored an account of his life, Schmidt's own estimate of patients seeking medical advice amounted to some 15,000 consultations.