The Diary of Caspar Kruse III, Executioner: Goslar, 15 February 1635 – Withheld Payment

 

The wind had wedged itself into the corners of the city, sharp as rust. The snow had melted, but left behind a grey sludge — mud, straw, dung. The streets around the defensive tower, the Zwinger, where the city lets its filth sink away, steamed with rot and stagnant water.
My servants from the knacker’s yard came to me, three weeks without pay.
Their hands torn from scraping, their shoes black up to the laces, their coats soaked with the stench of cesspits. They did not complain aloud, but their eyes spoke.
Boys from Seesen and Liebenburg,
who had seen more entrails than bread.
They did what no one else would do.
They emptied pits, removed carcasses, pulled half-decayed dogs from the water by the city wall. And still … no payment.
I wrote a letter to the Small Council, with a steady hand:
“Your Most Wise may consider that he who bears the city’s filth should not be forgotten when the treasury is closed.”
I signed with my full name.
Not as executioner. Not as knacker.
But as an officer in service of the body of this city.
I waited.
No answer.
The cesspit remained full.
A brown vapor hung over the ditch, sharp as ammonia, with shadows that would not be driven away. The snow around it turned black. The citizens complained of the stench, yet looked away when my boys marched along Marktstraße with their barrels and hooks.
I could read their eyes: “They carry death in their clothes.”
On the third day without word, I put on my leather apron myself.
I took the hook, the spade, the rope.
I went first.
My servants were silent. One nodded.
Together we stood knee-deep in mud and remains, until the froth sloshed over our boots. We dug. We hauled. We sweated.
We removed a dead pig, half swollen.
A human thigh bone, bare, likely old.
And bone meal.
We kept Goslar’s air clean — with our own stench.
That evening I sat at the table with the leather book of receipts.
I turned a blank page.
No payment. No entry.
But I knew what I had done.
And the city knew as well — though it never spoke it.
It wants the filth to disappear.
But it does not want to know who carries it.




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