Comments by "Crazy Eyes" (@CrizzyEyes) on "MedievalMadness" channel.

His name was Franz Schmidt and he was a surprisingly virtuous man given the nature of his position. For example he advocated to eliminate some of the excessively cruel methods like drowning (which was only used against women) and he seemed to often behead people "as a favor" (literal phrase he used in his diary) instead of a less humane method
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@JaKingScomez It was a punishment reserved specifically for women who killed their children. I think it is supposed to represent the baptism the baby never got, but that's just my surface-level interpretation of it. Sadly a fairly common occurrence given how bad it was to be found to have had a child out of wedlock.
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Even worse is when someone is forced into the profession because literally nobody else wants to do it. Then the moment he's taken a single criminal's life, his whole community treats him like a different person and he has to be an executioner for the rest of his life.
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Another fun fact, some executioners would have the right to dispose of a criminals body how they saw fit. And some took advantage of this to chop pieces off their bodies and sell them as souvenirs. Incredibly macabre, but even worse is knowing that people bought them. People believed specific body parts of specific criminals held power. Franz Schmidt, a German executioner who we have the written diary of, even used the knowledge gained from this to retire, get a pardon from the emperor saying he is now honorable and become a medical consultant
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