the execution and its message speeches and draft speeches alike. The Absolution delivered by Anders Hylander in Dalby in 1803 is almost two pages long in the printed version.330 When Johann Gottlieb Lehmann was executed in 1825 in Saxony, after they had ascended the scaffold one priest blessed him and another absolved him.331 Interpreting the situation were naturally the speeches given at the site or close to the event. In this role they were similar to the speeches at for example a wedding or an inauguration. Does the eventual removal of the speeches and much of the liturgical action imply that silence was seen as better at communicating the message of the authorities or that the governments were giving up the struggle for owning the interpretation? Eventually the execution in itself, at least the visible execution, came to be seen as a problem and criticised for its negative effects. By the midnineteenth century in the United Kingdom an emerging view of the public execution was that ”the current system glorified the criminal, set him up as amartyr, and undermined the seriousness of his crime”.332 Alphonse Bérenger at the same time made a substantial case for the executions and especially the public executions to be counterproductive. People around executions behaved in unspeakable manners. Their behaviour was also part of a moral torture of the condemned. Children were hardened and as a result recreated the execution in their games. In most crowds the interest was not focused on the crime but on the execution and an unrepentant delinquent got the most admiration. The general effect was to develop instincts in the population that otherwise would not be developed, instincts contrary to those desirable.333 Victor Savart, in his discussion of the penal code project of the still unified Netherlands, voiced a critique of the execution according to which 330 Hylander 1805 p 82 sq, Högström 1775 p 205 sq, idea in Henschen 1800 p 102; see also Eckerdal 1970 p 26 sq. 331 Knauth 1825a p 46. 332 Schuyler 2008 p 22. 333 Bérenger 1855 p 808–61 sqq. A huge report with unusual pagination, 808–61 is one particular page. 102
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