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The Markt has been Leipzig's civic heartbeat for centuries, presided over by the Renaissance splendour of the Altes Rathaus. But on a late-summer morning in 1824, the square served a far grimmer purpose. A scaffold stood before the Rathaus steps, and the crowd that gathered had not come for a market. Johann Christian Woyzeck, a forty-one-year-old wigmaker and former soldier, had stabbed his lover Johanna Christiane Woost with a broken sword blade on 2 June 1821, killing her elsewhere in the city. His case dragged through three years of legal proceedings that turned into a landmark debate about criminal responsibility and mental illness. Court physician Johann Christian August Clarus declared him fit to stand trial despite Woyzeck's reported hallucinations and paranoid delusions. On 27 August 1824, the state's verdict was carried out here, in public, before thousands of onlookers. It was a spectacle Leipzig would never repeat.
Fatti principali
- 1824 year — Woyzeck was beheaded by sword on this square on 27 August 1824, Leipzig's last ever public execution.
- 41 years old — Woyzeck was 41 years old at the time of the murder and had worked in more than a dozen different professions throughout his life.
- 2 literary masterpieces — The case inspired Georg Büchner's drama 'Woyzeck' and Alban Berg's opera 'Wozzeck', both now considered classics of German culture.