Johann Reichhart

Johann Reichhart was born the April 29th 1893 with Wichenbach close to Wörth on the the Danube; and deceased the April 26th 1972 with Dorfen close to Erding).

It was the busiest Bourreau of Germany. It went down from a line of Bavarian torturers which goes up until the middle of the 18th century.

Its career

Since 1924, during the Weimar Republic, and at the time of the Third Reich it carried out 3.165 sentences of death, mainly with the prison of Plötzensee to Berlin. What makes an average of 137 executions per annum.
It is him which carried out with the Prison of Stadelheim to Munich Hans Scholl and Sophie Scholl, the known militants of the group of resistance the white Rose. ; Reichhart practiced various forms of executions:

with the axe;
by Hanging with a butcher's hook or by trap door;
with a piano wire or a natural cord;
but mainly with the Guillotine.

After 1945, the American military government continued to employ it until the end of May 1946.
Dans the prison of Landsberg on Lech, il hung 156 dignitaries nazis. The technique necessary to this kind of operation was already familiar for him at the latest in 1942, when after the introduction of hanging as additional method of execution it presented a proposal to build an bracket with trap door on the British model, proposal disallowed by the ministry for justice. Consequently, to hang people during third Reich, Reichhart had to work according to the method of the Strangulation “to Austrian” i.e. hanging " high and court" .

The experiment of Reichhart with Landsberg was invaluable for American justice since, says one, it made him teach the technique of the bracket to the staff sergeant John C. Woods and charged it with supervising the construction of the brackets with Nuremberg. Woods could thus hang to the October 16th 1946 the principal war criminals of the Procès of Nuremberg, assisted by Joseph Malta. Thereafter Woods was transferred and was victim later with Eniwetok (Marshall Islands) of a fatal accident while it repaired a Electric chair.

Reichhart is regarded as the torturer who carried out the greatest number of executions of all times, that is to say 3010 executions (including 2948 guillotinages). During its career, it had as a characteristic to return the execution fastest possible and thus least painful for condemned, grace inter alia to modifications made to the guillotine. Obviously in 1944, after the attack against Hitler, the number of the executions, whose Reichhart held an exact register besides, climbed in a considerable way. A torturer who worked quickly was precisely what it was necessary in such circumstances for those which were with the capacity. That the American authorities, during the denazification, did not make carry out like his/her colleagues torturers Reichhart marked however of Nazism, one can explain it by his side " humain". And then, for their own executions they needed an experienced specialist.

When in 1963, during murder series against drivers of taxi, voices required the re-establishment of the Capital punishment, Reichhart supported this proposal and entrusted that its preferred method was the guillotine because it was faster and cleaner.

Reconversion

The trade of Reichhart made of him a kind of pestiferous what disaggregated its family, and his/her Hans son committed suicide in 1950, overpowered psychologically by this situation.

As most of its goods had been confiscated at the time of the denazification, and that one had not granted a retirement pension to him, it earned its living by manufacturing hair lotions and perfumes, like by raising Schnauzers Moyens, which did not prevent it, until its death, to depend financially on the assistance of its family and her mistress.

See too

Methods of execution

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