Meet Frantz Schmidt executioner, torturer and, most unusually for his times, diarist.Following in his fathers footsteps, Frantz entered the executioners trade as an Apprentice. 394 executions and fortyfive years later, he retired to focus his attentions on running the large medical practice that he had always viewed as his true vocation.Through examination of Frantzs exceptional and often overlooked record, Joel F. Harrington delves deep into a world of human cruelty, tragedy and injustice. At the same time, he poses a fascinating question could a man who routinely practiced such cruelty also be insightful, compassionate even progressive?The Faithful Executioner is the biography of an ordinary man struggling to overcome an unjust family curse it is also a remarkable panorama of a Europe poised on the cusp of modernity, a world with startling parallels to our own.

Binding: Paperback;320 pages; Publisher: TBS-Penguin Random House Wholesale; Classification: HBJD; Weight: 398 g; Dimensions: 198 x 131 x 24

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