different realities and reactions and initiative might even have come from somebody not yet known as connected to the legislation. A question to explore is the implementation of the legislation in practice, both in courts and at the site of execution. A case from a nearby but not Prussian town gives us an example underlining the question as it among many possible interpretations could be understood both as both a result of Prussian influence and of defiance against it. At the last public execution in Neubrandenburg in Mecklenburg-Strelitz in 1770 where Christianen Dorothea Eleonora Götterich was broken on the wheel the two priests assigned to follow her were absent from the solemn judgement and they did not actually enter the place of execution, remaining at a distance. Instead, another priest went with her to the marketplace where the sentence was delivered and spoke with her while she was tied to the wheel.468 Already in 1770, the possible implementation of the legislative solution of 1769 was widened as it was ordained that women having killed their own children never were to be accompanied by clergy.469 The murders, however, continued. ”Du must dies Kind umbringen, so wird es ein Engel und entgeht aller Verführung.” So said an inner voice to a woman in Prussia 1785 who also murdered the child.470 Thewoman was fifty-two years old, Lutheran, and a pious participant in the services of the church and in the Holy Communion. After the murder she is said to, like having woken up from a dream, have understood the horribleness of it.471 Another possibility than execution with limited clerical support also existed, at least when the king did not, as he could, change the sentence. One example is a man that in Berlin, probably in February 1781, murdered a child. The murderer had a long history of mental problems such as depression and also problems with economy and job. He came to feel 468 Maubach 2003 p 99 sq, 102. 469 Vater 1801 p 436, see also Schwarz 1935 p 117. 470 Pyl 1786 p 166. ’You must kill the child, so it becomes an angel and is delivered from all temptation.’ 471 Pyl 1786 p 161 sq, 174. 137
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