different realities and reactions shot for attacking their officers. They had both been accompanied by two military priests to their death. Three days after the second execution a soldier searched for a particular officer to shoot him or stab him with his bayonet. Not finding him, he said to a boy of fourteen years he would shoot him dead instead. The boy fled, but then the soldier said the same thing to a girl who had come out of her home, whereupon he shot her dead. When king Friedrich II heard about the murder he spoke without anybody giving him advice and the quotation is said to be precise: ”Die Teubels (sic!) verlassen sich auf die Pfaffen, und glauben, daß der Pfaffe sie selig machen kann. Es soll keiner mehr mitgehen!” The next morning the king ordered that the soldier should be held alone, his hands and feet tied, and no clergy would be allowed to meet him. The executioner was ordered to prepare for breaking somebody on the wheel. The next day a court martial was held and the king signed the sentence and ordered that the execution should take place early next morning. In the morning the entire population of Potsdam was in the streets, wanting to see a murderer going to his death with no priest present. When the execution took place the ten strokes of the executioner took wholly six minutes, which Bastian thought was a long time and the result of a secret order given to the executioner.453 Regardless that a single source used in a controversy hardly can be used to claim something as a reliable fact this story gives a fascinating explanation to the origin of the Prussian legislation. A few years later a solution of the same type but not as far-reaching was introduced in non-military legislation through the Prussian Royal ordinance of July 3rd 1769, soon becoming the most famous legislation with this aim. According to it the clergy could and should, well ahead of the execution, visit and pre453 ’The devils trust the priests and think that the priest can save them. Nobody shall accompany any more!’ Knauth 1825b p 24 sqq (quotation p 25). Even though Zauper 1781 p 81 sq suggest that a case he describes was the direct reason for the well-known Prussian ordinance of 1769, one can wonder if it was the case Knauth describes he refers to? According to Zauper a soldier that had killed had done so to have greater security in reaching heaven. He had said that he had been influenced by a sermon at the latest execution that had described this route to heaven in glowing terms. 132
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