Executioner Goslar

  It was a moonless night when they came for her. The bells of Saint Stephen’s had not yet finished the ninth toll before the watchman stood at my door. He whispered her name as if it were contagious: Anna Ilsabe Flörke, daughter of the widow Flörke of Nonnenstraße. That evening she had been seen in the tavern Zur goldenen Kanne , drinking beer with the leather-boys from the yarn-weaving shop. They said she laughed. They said she sang. They said she had no shame and an eye for girls. But weightier still was this: her mother was said, as a young girl, to have danced on the Brocken with black bucks and naked women on Walpurgis Night. There was no evidence, of course. There is seldom evidence. There are words. Rumors. Whispers between mothers at the well. A child wakes sleepless, a cow dies, milk sours — and always there is a woman nearby who knows too much of herbs or moon-times. She was brought to the Ulrich Chapel. My sons carried her half-alive across the threshold: not by forc...

 The air beneath the market hall had been suspicious for weeks. People said it was the rain trapped between the boards, the rotting wood, the fish remnants from Fridays. But I knew better. rotten air has layers, and this one had that dull, penetrating note that quiets even dogs. I was sent with my oldest man, Hans, by the Council to inspect what was truly brewing under the boards. We pried up a row of floorboards on the south side, where the arches are lower. Beneath was a dark pit, no more than a hole, deep and reeking like an open grave. We found rags, worn leather, clotted cloths, fish scraps and entrails. And more: a half-rotted pig’s head, still with teeth in the jaws. The bones were mixed with fibers, hair, something that looked human but was no longer recognizable. Hans whispered, “Either a pig. Or worse.” We dug with hooks, scooped into leather buckets, and poured lime over everything. The stench did not lessen, but it foamed and hissed as if the town’s sins had been la...

 The sun burned over the town today as if it wanted to scorch something hidden deep beneath the roofs. The air was dry, but the smell of rotten fat hung like a haze above the Goseufer. Four weeks ago I inspected three pigs. Dead in their pens — no disease communicable to humans, but enough to sow panic. There was also a horse, found on the slope of the Rammelsberg, foam at its lips and a stiffened neck. I examined their bodies with glove and knife. Opened the abdominal cavities, smelled liver and spleen, tested skin and lymph. I recorded my judgement on the council’s parchment: “Unsafe for trade. Cadaver disposal necessary. Origin likely contaminated feed.” They nodded. They promised payment: 18 groschen and the remainder “on occasion.” That was four weeks ago. Since then my table has seen no meat. The cellar is empty. The children eat barley soup with linseed. My wife Anna says nothing, but her hands grow thinner, her face drawn. I am not a man of words, but today I wrote...

  Today I was called to the town hall. A messenger came early in the morning, before the light had touched the courtyard. His knock on the door woke not only me but Anna as well. She looked at me from the bed, her eyes already full of worry before I had put on my boots. “What do they want from you?” she asked. I shrugged. “What they always want. More confessions. Less time.” It was cold on the marketplace. The stalls were empty, the stones gleamed with a thin film of morning moisture. The Council of Goslar meets in the great hall above the old town hall, where light falls through tall windows but warmth never enters. The floor creaked beneath every step, as if it resisted the judgement of men. They were already gathered inside. Mayor Henning Cramer at the head of the table, as always with his hands folded before him, as if he were always praying but never listening. To his right sat Secretary Kleine, a thin man with eyes that take everything in and betray nothing. On the left...

 The town was up early. Even before the bell tolled voices sounded in the street: children with branches, women filling their baskets with baked breads and bottles of beer. The scent of pitch and gunpowder already hung in the air. It was Marksmen’s Day — the day the town honors its guild, waves its banners, and praises its marksmen. From the house on the Rosenberg I looked out over the town. The roofs shone with morning dew. At the foot of the slope the guild-brethren walked in their Sunday robes: red, blue, dark green. Drums sounded, the brass of the horns blared between the half-timbered houses. The banners were held high — the city arms, the colors of the bakers, smiths, tanners. I took Hans Caspar down with me. He was now six years old and full of expectation. His hair was still wet from washing, his face serious in that way only children can be when they expect something important. On the marketplace benches and barrels had been set out. Above the gate by the Zwinger they h...

 The annual fair filled the town with sound: hoofbeats, voices, flute music, the cries of hawkers and the whinnying of horses. Everywhere stalls, carts, cloths spread with copper, linen, gingerbread, and nuts. The air was heavy with the smell of roasting fat and stale beer. Children chased one another, and even the Council showed itself—neat, lifted high on their feet, as though their boots did not touch the mud. I walked through it as always: visible and yet avoided. The crowd gave way, not out of courtesy, but out of habit. At a stall full of pies, cakes, and stuffed loaves I stopped. The woman behind the table looked timid, but her hands automatically reached for the warmest corner of the rack. “Three pfennigs,” she said. I set down the coins and took the pie. Pigeon and plums—a strange combination, but it smelled good. The crust crumbled beneath my thumb, the meat was tender, still steaming. I walked around to the back, away from the bustle, to the brewery’s stable on Brei...

 The sky above the High Court was heavy, that kind of clammy heat one feels before a thunderstorm, where sweat mingles with iron and blood. I had risen early – not out of duty, but because the night had woken me with the echo of Henning’s voice, resounding in the Ulrich Chapel like a tear in the mind. He had screamed, not from malice, but from fear, from pain, from something beyond reason. I remember how, still strapped to the bench, he shook his head like a beast bitten by invisible wasps. Today I would take the sword. In the days after his “confession,” he had spoken no more. The preacher – a gaunt man with trembling hands – claimed that the devil had left him. But I saw only what pain had left behind: an empty vessel, trembling flesh surrounded by eyes that recognized nothing. The Council had signed the verdict: beheading, followed by the burning of the body. Not for witchcraft – his sins were never clearly defined – but for dealings with evil, for calling forth “storms,” and ...

 It was around midday when they brought in the boy. Dietrich Henning, seventeen years at most, dusty hair still full of hay, fists clenched, clothes torn at the shoulders. A farmhand from Harlingerode, hardly grown, his voice as fragile as reed. He was accused of poisoning his master, a certain Herr Vogler, owner of a shabby farm on the edge of the village. The charge: rat poison in the morning porridge, in revenge for beatings and hunger. He remained silent. Even when the Council read the indictment to him, he only looked at the floor. Not out of remorse, but out of defiance. I knew that look. It was not guilt burning there, but fear with no escape. The preacher, young pastor Klausner, spoke of the possibility of possession — the devil binding the tongue, as described in Scripture. The town physician nodded thoughtfully. But I saw only a boy who knew the language of violence, not of words. I was charged with the interrogation. On the first day, they contented themselves with har...

 The evening air hung heavy over Goslar, saturated with a heat that did not recede even after sunset. There was no moon, only the pale shine of stars behind a veil of clouds. I had already withdrawn to my workroom, the knife sharpened and the wine poured, when there was another knock at the door — twice short, once long. The sign of the Council. My wife looked up from her knitting. She did not speak, but her fingers stiffened. We both knew: no messenger comes after dusk for a trivial matter. On the square in front of the Rathaus a few torches still burned. The windows were dark, save one. The back room. There, where men meet when minutes later must be twisted or forgotten. The servant led me in silently. The wooden passage smelled of candle wax and old linen. In the room sat three men. To the right, Mayor Cramer, the youngest of the three, with nervous hands and a stain on his collar. Beside him the secretary, Master Bode, who did not use his goose quill but held it like a dagge...

Today, a day later, I brought her to the Sankt Stephani Church. Anna stayed at home to rest. The midwife had insisted. It was cold, and the snow crunched beneath my feet. I carried my daughter in a thick woollen cloth, close against my chest. She slept. In the church it was quiet, the pastor whispered the words of the sacrament almost solemnly. We stood at the baptismal font, I and the two witnesses – my distant cousin Wilhelm and Anna’s sister Ilsabe. “Anna Maria,” said the pastor, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” And he sprinkled the water over her forehead. She stirred briefly, frowned, but did not cry. Not a tear. I thought that strong, as if she knew this was an important moment and that silence was fitting. As if she understood that from now on she was a child of God. Then we softly sang a psalm, and I looked up to the wooden vault of the church, to the chandeliers, the light, the sacred. It felt as though my child stood under protection. ...

Today our daughter was born. A girl. Our first. And what a one: strong in build, with a powerful breath, a color like apple blossom in spring, and eyes still clouded, yet carrying something piercing within. We have given her the name Anna Maria, after my wife and after the Mother of God. To bless her with the virtue of the one and the holiness of the other. It was early in the morning, still dark outside. The snow had lain itself like a soft blanket over the Rosenberg, and inside only the hearth fire burned. The evening before, Anna had still rinsed the linen and prepared the soup for the next day, as if she knew her time was near but refused to give in to it. To my amazement, she carried out her tasks until the very last days without complaint – as if her body was stronger than the months it bore. When her labor began, I sent servant Bastian to fetch the midwife. He ran down Rosentorstraße in his winter coat, and within the hour she stood inside our home. Her hands cool, her gaze st...

 Barely a week after the regiment of more than a thousand Swedish soldiers had left Goslar, the drumming of drums and the clatter of hooves echoed once more through the streets. This time a company of horsemen and a regiment of infantry entered the city, under the command of Colonel Hamson. The people stood powerless along the streets. Some lowered their eyes, others muttered curses into their beards, but no one dared resist. The memory of the months of hunger and scarcity, when 1,304 men had to be fed and housed, is still fresh. And now it begins all over again. The riders took up quarters in the stables and inns by the Breite Tor, while the infantry was distributed across the districts. Houses were broken open again, barns seized, and the marketplace was crowded with carts and tents. The Council decreed that the citizens must once more provide food and lodging. On Marktstraße I heard a woman cry: “We have not a crumb left from the last time — how are we to bear this?” Her word...

  Today the bells of the Marktkirche and the Sankt Stephani Church rang without pause, heavy and solemn. It was for the death of our emperor Ferdinand II, who had already died on 15 February in Vienna. The news reached Goslar late, but today it was officially commemorated. The Council had ordered that all churches ring their bells and that the citizens gather in prayer. In the Marktkirche there was a special service, where the preacher spoke about obedience to the authority instituted by God Himself. He preached that the emperor, distant though he was from us, represented the place of God’s order in the empire, and that therefore we must pray for his soul and for the future of the Holy Roman Empire. The church was full. I saw citizens, councillors and guild brothers, all in sombre attire. The women whispered softly, the children were silent. Outside, on the marketplace, many remained standing, listening to the bell-ringing that rolled over the city for hours. I stood in the chu...

 Today another regiment of Swedish soldiers entered our city. This time they did not come as enemies who seized the walls, but as “allies” who had to be quartered. The regiment numbered 1,304 men, an endless procession of pikemen, musketeers, and cavalry who marched through the city gates and spread out across our districts. The Council had ordered that citizens open their homes. Each family was assigned soldiers who were to be given shelter and food. The burden is heavy, for the winter stores are scarcely finished, and this year’s harvest has not yet come in. I heard women weeping as their beds were taken, and children giving up their places to rough men who spoke no German except a few curses. I myself was spared from soldiers in my house, perhaps because no one dares to burden me in my office. Yet I see the tension in the streets: carts of hay and grain vanish into the barracks, barrels of beer are tapped for the troops, and our citizens stoop under the levy. I thought back t...

  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. ...

 Today we prepared the second nursery. Anna brought extra straw mattresses from the market, had new blankets made of coarse wool, and arranged the woodwork as if it were a feast. The room still smells of resin and fresh lime. The winter air hangs heavy over Goslar, yet in the house there is the laughter and babbling of two voices: Wilhelm and Hans Caspar. Hans Caspar already runs like a young dog through the house — the wooden floor thunders, the old cupboard shakes when he bumps into it. His feet are often dirty from the street, his hair full of straw, his voice loud. Anna laughs when I urge them to be quiet. “Let them live,” she says. And I fall silent. For that is what they do: they live. Without fear, without judgment. As if the shadow of my office did not touch them. Anna says that I smile more these days when I come home from work. Perhaps that is true. Perhaps I let fall part of the outer armor as soon as I close the gate and the scent of lentil porridge or fresh bread...

  The air hung heavy over the city today. Not from storm or rain — but from something else. A tension that drifted through the streets, rolled across the marketplace, clung in people’s eyes like dust. Margarete Lichten stood trial. She was the widow of a mercenary, dead in the emperor’s service, somewhere between Halberstadt and Magdeburg. No one knew for sure. She was left with a ragged skirt, three children, and the name of a man who had slain more faces than he had kissed. She was accused of stealing offerings from the church — candles, bread, coins from the alms chest. But it did not stop there. The pastor, a young man with fiery eyes and an unbending back, called her a witch. He said: “She touched the holy with unclean hands.” And: “God’s curse rests upon him who disturbs the grave.” For during her interrogation, under the first torture, she confessed that she and her dead husband had desecrated graves — that she had gathered blood, mixed it with wine, and sold it as...

 The days grow longer, yet the wind remains sharp. The trees along the Gose show only buds, hesitant whether they may bloom. In the house a candle still burns in the evening, but the light is meager — not out of poverty, but out of restraint. It is Lent. As every year we eat simply: rye bread, stewed turnips, applesauce. Anna makes the sauce in her own way — with a dash of vinegar and a spoon of honey, so that it both tightens and softens. It fills the room with a scent I have come to know as sobriety, but also as homeliness. Son Hans Caspar does not yet ask for meat. He knows the rhythm of the calendar better than some pastors. Anna says: “He who abstains remembers better.” And I know: she is right. But last night, as I closed the window on the market side, I smelled it unmistakably: roast. Pork belly, perhaps veal. A scent that cut through the evening air like a call in a silent church. The neighbors do not fast. Their table follows laws other than those of the church. Pe...

 The night was harsh. The east wind drove over the Rosenberg as if it sought revenge on everything that rose upward. It whistled through cracks, howled past the chimney, tore at the shutters. The house groaned like a ship at sea. I lay awake, listening to the storm, and around the third night hour I heard two blows, hard and sharp. As if stones struck the pavement. Then the unmistakable rush of falling roof tiles. By morning I saw it with my own eyes: two tiles gone, the slates shifted, an opening through which rain and wind forced themselves mercilessly inside. It was not raining yet, not yet, but the sky was gray and threatening. I knew I could not wait a day. I pulled on my old boots, the leather coat torn at the elbows, and took up the tools. Anna stood in the doorway. Her face was pale, her arms folded. She already knew what I intended. “Why not a carpenter?” she asked softly. I looked at her and said: “Because a carpenter does not come to an executioner.” She was silent, ...

 The snow lay thick in the alleys of the Altstadt, hardened under the feet of the city guards who came to take her. It was shortly after morning prayer when Magda vom Bruch was brought in — not shouted at or beaten, but quiet, her head slightly bowed, as if she had expected her arrest herself. People had whispered about her for weeks. She lived in a small house behind the Brauergasse, close to the Gose, where dampness gathers and the walls sweat in winter. She sold herbs at the market: chamomile, asafoetida, lady’s mantle, vervain. Sometimes she told old stories, gave a recipe against sores or a potion against cramps. Too many had sought her out at night. Too many women had said they had “something from Magda.” And when the young wife of the merchant Christoph lost her child twice, and the neighbor Gertrud whispered that Magda had “murmured words over the bed,” the accusation was born. I knew Magda only faintly. In her youth she had served as a maid to a surgeon’s wife from Halbe...

 This morning I went to the church with Anna, resting upon a stretcher, and our eldest son Hans Caspar. Our neighbors, insofar as they tolerate us, stood still at the Rosentor and watched us with that mixture of curiosity and fear we know so well. The executioner remains, for many, a man of ill omen, even when he brings his child to baptism. The Sankt Stephanikirche was cool and still. The candles burned. Pastor Friedrich was already waiting for us, his hands washed, his robe immaculate. He looked long at little Wilhelm in my arms, yet spoke nothing but blessing. I stood there before the altar, the child in my hands and the mother behind me, and I felt something gentle, something vast pass through my chest — as though God Himself, for a moment, spoke in the breath of my son. “Wilhelm,” Friedrich spoke loudly and clearly, as he let the cold baptismal water glide over my son’s forehead, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” And Wilhelm, thank God,...

  It is evening. My hands still tremble from what the day has brought me. Not blood, not steel, not death — but life. Our son is born. Anna has brought a strong boy into the world, red in color and with a voice like a storm bell. We have named him Wilhelm, after my grandfather on my mother’s side. The room smells of warm linen, of iron, and of something indefinable — the sweat and blood of birth, mingled with tears of joy and relief. I have wept. I, Caspar, executioner of four cities, wept like a child. The pregnancy was long and hard. Anna had often been ill these past months. In the early mornings she bent over the basin, her face pale, her breath gasping. The smell of meat, of beer, even of my leather belt, made her retch. Her appetite came and went; most days she endured with nothing more than porridge and a boiled carrot. At times I feared for her life, and for the child’s, and every evening I laid my hand upon her belly, spoke a prayer, and whispered to the unborn life that I...

 His name was Bastian. A boy from the Harz, from Clausthal, where the air smells of ore and pine. He did not come to me out of calling, nor out of need, but out of Zwischenraum. A silent figure, tall of stature, with hands that fit tools like vises. When I asked him why he applied, he said: “I have learned little. Except carrying.” Bastian became my servant when I had only just taken over my father’s office. I already knew the tools, but not the silence of assistance. He filled that silence. Not with words, but with presence. He always stood one step behind me, but never hesitating. Screwed thumbs like a carpenter working with softwood. Laid ropes with care for the knot, not for the flesh. After the first interrogation with him, I saw his shoulders tremble. He sat outside the Ulrichskapelle on the stone ledge, his hands black with oil and blood, his eyes fixed into the distance. I asked nothing. He said: “My father was a carpenter. He made windows. I do not know how I ended up ...

This day the Swedish troops, under the command of Colonel Bergström, have departed from our city. Since their entry in January of the last year, their presence has weighed heavily upon Goslar. Now they marched once more through the gates, but this time outwards, their carts laden with treasures stolen from houses, churches, and guilds. The people have suffered terribly during their stay. The farmers brought scarcely any grain to the market, for their stores were ever seized. Many homes were plundered, and some families utterly ruined. I saw women weeping along the streets—not from joy that the soldiers were gone, but from grief at what was left behind: empty cellars, silver vanished, lives torn apart. The city, once proud, remains desolate. For myself, little has changed through all these months. My work went on as always. The dead kept coming, the cattle kept dying, and the executioner’s blade still awaited command. Where once my orders came from the Council, in these months they ...

 The morning was gray and still. The snow that had fallen in the days before lay like an old cloak over the roofs of the Klosterviertel, heavy and melting. In the Sankt Stephani Church it was cold, and the breath of the congregation drifted like mist through the dim space. The preacher spoke in solemn tones of purification, of the body and the blood, of communion with Christ in bread and wine. I knelt as was proper. Among the people. Not at the back, not at the front — but somewhere in between, as if in doing so I could forget my place. When the deacon came to me, I saw his hand hesitate. Just for a moment. It was no grand gesture, no theatrical shock. Merely a brief delay, a split second of tension at the breaking of the bread. As if he doubted whether my mouth — with which I pronounce sentences, with which I give orders for torture — was truly worthy to receive the body of Christ. I did not look at him. I opened my mouth. He offered the bread. I took it, chewed, swallowed. ...