The Diary of Caspar Kruse III, Executioner: Goslar, February 19, 1630 – The Fall of the Master

 I do not know exactly when I learned what I know now.

It crept into my hands the way iron takes on the cold: slowly, without mercy. And always he was there—my father. Caspar the Second. Silent as a shadow. A man of weight, without ever raising his voice. He bore his craft as a smith bears his hammer: as an extension of his being.

When I was still a boy, he sometimes took me out to the fields behind the Breite Tor. Not to the gallows, but to the place beyond, where animals were buried and where the air was always heavy with rancid fat. He said nothing then. He showed. And I watched. Saw how he cut a rope with the back of his knife. Saw how he tested the sharpness against his thumb. Saw how he did not break the silence, even when the crows cried. “You must not fill the work with words,” he once said. “Otherwise it will sound as if you doubt.”

My mother Magdalena was different. She filled every corner of the house with sound. Not loud—but present. The beating of dough, the sweeping of the floor, the quiet singing over the laundry. Her hands smelled of sourdough, of mugwort, of honey and wool. When Father polished the iron, she would place her hand on his shoulder. “You have made it clean again,” she would say. Not mocking. Not flattering. Simply: factual. As if she knew it was exactly what he needed. In that way, she kept him human.

I was twelve when he first took me into the Ulrich Chapel. The chapel lay cold and deserted, the stones like bones beneath our feet. He carried no sword that day. Only a leather roll with tools. I thought he would show me how the wheel worked. But he said nothing. He pointed to the floor, where chains were fixed to an iron ring. “Sit there,” he said. I obeyed. He tied a rope around my wrist. Not tight. Not painful. But secure. “Do you feel it?” he asked. I nodded. “That is what they feel. Before they speak.” Then he loosened it. “And now you know more than most preachers.”

That same evening I sat at the table with red wrists. Mother saw it. She laid her hand on mine. “Do you know why he did that?” she asked. I shook my head. “Because he does not want you to think it is a game.” At the time I did not understand. Now I do.

He taught me the difference between a wound that heals and a wound that punishes. How to oil the wheel so it does not creak. How to hold my breath when the knife touched the neck—so that the hand would not tremble. He rarely spoke during the work. But in the evenings, when he cleaned his tools, he let me watch. I was allowed to learn to hold them. First the tongs. Then the knife. Only years later the sword. He placed my fingers around the hilt, pressed gently. “Not force,” he said. “Direction.”

I remember one winter, the coldest I have ever lived through. The house was snowed in, the Gose frozen to its middle. Mother cooked the same porridge every day, with flaxseed and old pears. Father had no commission for weeks. The town was afraid, spoke of the Swedes, of conquest and plunder. And yet he rose every morning at the same hour. He sharpened the sword, polished the buckles, checked the leather. “When the work comes, you must be ready,” he said. He believed in that.

I was sixteen when I carried out my first judgment as my father’s apprentice. Not with his sword. But with a small knife, on command. A convicted smuggler, already dying of the plague, was to be “marked as an example” before his last breath. My hand trembled. I felt the knife slip, almost too deep. But he said nothing. Only: “You have done it.” And that was enough. No praise. No punishment. Only recognition. He knew that I knew.




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