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Franz Schmidt (1555 – 1634), also known as Meister Franz, was an executioner in Hof from 1573 to April 1578, and from 1 May 1578 till the end of 1617 executioner of Nuremberg. He left a diary in which he detailed the 361 executions he performed during his 45 years in office.〔God's Executioner〕 == Personal and professional life == Franz Schmidt's father, Heinrich, was originally a woodsman in the north-eastern Bavarian town Hof. Once, when the notoriously tyrannical margrave of Brandenburg-Kulmbach, Albrecht II (r. 1527–1553), wanted three men hanged, he picked out Heinrich from the crowd and forced him to perform the execution, after which he had no option but to continue in the profession of executioner.〔in the retelling of Joel F. Harrington: "They didn't have a standing executioner and the prince, in a crowd, said to Heinrich Schmidt, Frantz's father: You! You are going to hang these guys! Heinrich replied, I'm not going to do that. The prince said: You hang them or I am going to string you up instead, as well as the two men standing next to you. So Heinrich did it. And once he did it there was no other job. Nobody wanted to have anything to do with him. He and his children were condemned to the occupation." (The Faithful Executioner: Joel F. Harrington on the life of sixteenth-century executioner Frantz Schmidt. ) 〕 Franz Schmidt was probably born in 1555, and was about 18 years old when he became executioner under his father's supervision in Bamberg in 1573. Five years later, in 1578, he secured the post as executioner in Nürnberg. He married the chief executioner's daughter Maria, and eventually became chief executioner after his father-in-law. He fathered seven children, and his salary, on par with the city's wealthiest jurists, allowed him to have a spacious residence in Nürnberg. After his retirement in 1617, he began a new, lucrative career as medical consultant. He was given a state funeral in 1634, in Nürnberg's most prominent cemetery, just a few paces away from the graves of famous individuals like Albrecht Dürer and Hans Sachs.〔God's Executioner〕 Throughout his career as an executioner, Franz Schmidt also had a side job as a healer. According to Joel Harrington who authored an account of his life, Schmidt's own estimate of patients seeking medical advice amounted to some 15,000 consultations.〔(June 5th 2013: 1573: Meister Frantz Schmidt’s first execution )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Franz Schmidt (executioner)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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