#Ravenka Nerdposting

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The execution of Benita von Falkenhayn, from the Polish history series Sensacje XX Wieku. This particular episode was filmed in 2015, first one in the revival series made for the National Geographic channel.

The series, created in 1983 by journalist Bogusław Wołoszański, is famous for dramatized reenactments of historical events, starring well-known Polish actors, as a part of its narrative.

Benita von Falkenhayn was recruited by Polish intelligence operative, Captain Jerzy Sosnowski, who monitored the covert German attempts at developing air and armored warfare forbidden by the Versailles treaty. In 1934, Sosnowski's operation was broken up by the Gestapo, and while he was sentenced to life imprisonment and later exchanged for German agents apprehended in Poland, both Benita von Falkenhayn and another woman working for Sosnowski, Renate von Natzmer, were sentenced to death and beheaded in the Plötzensee prison.

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I have no idea of the context, but aside from the "But you have heard of me" meme, it shows that girls always wanted to have fun.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Missouri, November 16, 1907

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Mural z kamienicy Raczków w Starym Sączu.

[ID:] Zdjęcie prymitywistycznego muralu przedstawiającego postać w długiej niebieskiej szacie i czapce, z blond włosami, trzymającą pergamin z wiadomością: "Nowosądecoki! Szubienice wom nie porzycymy, bo momy ją dla siebie i swoich dzieci. Rajcowie Starego Sącza" i czerwoną pieczęcią w prawym dolnym rogu. Obok postaci widnieje szubienica, a w tle kremowe domy z czerwonymi dachami.[End ID]

Przywilej sądowy był w średniowieczu poważną sprawą, a utrzymanie kata było kosztowne, więc zatrudniony w jednym mieście kat był wynajmowany za opłatą przez miasta sąsiednie. Co nie zmienia faktu, że wiadomość brzmi równie zabawnie, co makabrycznie - trochę jak humor zeszytów.

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On This Day: Hans Hermann von Katte

Following history pages on social media can take you down various strange rabbit holes. Today, the unfortunate story of losing your head for a lover in the worst way possible.

On November 6, 1730, Lieutenant Hans Hermann von Katte of the King's Guard was beheaded for treason in the Küstrin fortress (now Kostrzyn nad Odrą, Poland). This would be nothing out of the ordinary if not for the fact that the "treason" in question was acting on the orders of Crown Prince Frederick, who planned to escape his despotic father, King Frederick Wilhelm, and move to Great Britain, then ruled by Frederick's maternal uncle, George II.

And this is only the beginning of a gay whump story a lot of people would dismiss as unbelievable if not for the well-documented history of the Crown Prince's sexuality. And the King, much like any homophobic macho dad, hated it. Not only he dismissed his previous page, Peter Karl Christoph von Keith, after it became obvious that the Crown Prince had more intimate feelings for him, but now, seeing that von Keith's successor also shared the Prince's interests in poetry and playing the flute (not an euphemism) and, worse yet, helped him with the whole escape stunt, completely lost it and threatened both with execution.

Prince Frederick saved his head only because some saner people, including the Habsburg Emperor Charles VI, convinced the King that executing his own heir would not be a good idea, to put it mildly. So instead, Katte was sentenced to death, with the Prince forced to watch. And, like in a bad sentimental romance, the Prince fainted after calling out to his dear, not seeing the grisly deed. So just in case, the King ordered Katte's headless body to be left on the scaffold for the entire day.

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Guillotine-themed drawings by XX500 on DeviantArt.

This is most probably a coincidence, but during the French Revolution those executed for murder were given a red chemise to wear - Charlotte Corday and Cecile Renault, for example.

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Pictured: the grandma.

Possibly.

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I decided to ask Google Gemini about the history of the park near the Warsaw Citadel.

The answer is incorrect and I know it. In one of my previous posts, I even explained when and why the park was established:

After WW2, the communist government built a monument commemorating the three communists executed there in 1925 for an assassination attempt on the main witness of the prosecution in the case of supposed bombing of the Citadel's Powder Storage two years earlier. The monument was torn down in 2018, during the renovation of the surrounding park.

Google AI can't, well, google. Compare this to asking ChatGPT about the same thing:

"When was the Park by the Warsaw Citadel created?

ChatGPT: The Moat and Slopes of the Citadel Park in Warsaw was established in 1950. It surrounds the walls of the Warsaw Citadel, in place of the former moat. It was designed by Zygmunt Stępiński and Krystyna Onitzchowa.

Would you like to know more about the history of this park or the Warsaw Citadel?"

Along with a link to the relevant page on the official website of the city that confirms the information.

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Where Do We Go Now?

Once again, I am facing a general concept that cannot be squeezed into a specific story. And yes, I am talking about La Citoyenne.

Like I said, the whole politically-motivated insanity of the Reign of Terror overwhelmed me. Apart from more or less controversial criminal cases, capital punishment also covered all sorts of political cases, both real and imagined. You could lose your head for being too radical, too moderate, a royalist or - God forbid! - a feminist, anything that threatened the interests of the ruling faction. If The Kingdom is a fairly modern and stable country with only slight conservative and authoritarian leanings, where the capital punishment is applied sparingly, usually in cases of multiple murders or remorseless perpetrators who show no promise of rehabilitation, and so Mrs Officer usually doesn’t have any second thoughts about her clients, The Republique is a dangerous kaleidoscope in the midst of a revolution, meaning that La Citoyenne is dreadfully aware of the precarious position she was put in. This fictionalized setting, with changed names and serial numbers filed off, is still suffering from revolutionary fever, handing death sentences left and right, obsessively pontificating about the new order and new morality while indulging in brutal political jockeying and denunciation campaigns against people not exhibiting enough enthusiasm for the dictatorship. This makes for a greatly varied queue of clients and Citoyenne’s mixed feelings for them, in addition to the discomfort of being forcibly promoted from an assistant tasked with cutting the hair of the condemned to an executioner. And like I said, her appearance is provocative - short hair, off-the-shoulders blouse, as if she’s proclaiming that she is the executioner now, but the next day she may become a victim herself.

The political aspect, however, is giving me a lot of trouble. While the Revolution-era France was a dictatorship, it never hinged on one man, being a constant struggle of various factions, cliques and popular movements trying to oust each other while trying to establish a new order as they saw fit. And contrary to common knowledge, the role and power of iconic villains - Robespierre and Saint-Just - was exaggerated, mostly to absolve several people who went on to serve Napoleon after eagerly enforcing the Revolutionary rule with considerable body counts. This means that the Republique can be run by faceless Committees - conveniently for the story, at least until I’ll have to explain why it’s about a whole group of women sentenced to death for their political motivations.

The criminal aspect, however, is easy. Revolutionary governments are typically tough on crime in general, and on economic crime like hoarding and price speculation in particular. Very often, they’re also obsessed with punishing moral turpitude, although that one is so overplayed, particularly on A Certain Website, that I don’t expect getting much mileage out of that charge. As an aggravating circumstance - maybe. As the main charge - not likely.

Everything up to now starts to make a solid but unoriginal frame of the first planned story: from the point of view of a stodgy accusateur public, a crime of passion committed by a teenage girl is a particularly reprehensible act, unbecoming for a proper young female citizen, and instead of forgiveness because of her young age, it deserves a harsh punishment. This is a sentiment that is true even now: when I read about the real-life incident, where a 15-year-old girl stabbed the 17-year-old boyfriend of a girl she had some conflict with, a lot of people in the comments were demanding the return of the death penalty, to my absolute lack of surprise. As in, capital punishment, for a teenage girl, in an European Union country, in the 21st century. Luckily, we have a well-established and mostly sane legal system that won’t be used by the ruling party to grab extra votes based on this sort of popular outrage, but in a setting that’s over two centuries backwards, run by populists and having a very selective view of “the rights of man and citizen”, this kind of situation would play out completely differently. And much like Charles-Henri Sanson becoming sick after executing Cécile Renault and the rest of supposed plotters of the failed assassination of Robespierre, La Citoyenne would also break down after this kind of ordeal.

Because okay, I mentioned my fascination with the opening scene of “Quills” and Mademoiselle de Renard being violently brought out of her masochistic fantasy and into the grisly reality, saying that the director, Philip Kaufman, made guillotine sexy, but this story is not supposed to be sexy. Maybe some other time, with a more conventional victim, I’ll give you a wild ride along the lines of “Ruby Slippers”, but this one is supposed to be a hard whump. Much like “A Family Affair”, but with even more focus on the crowd baying for blood and the girl not even able to curse them like Rosina did. Maybe with La Citoyenne tightly grabbing her arm to show her that it isn’t worth it. Anything to make the story its own thing instead of a simple mashup.

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#TIL that announcements of executions in the UK were displayed at the prison entrance - for example, these bills informing that the execution of Ruth Ellis is scheduled for the next day, that it was performed and that the prison surgeon indeed confirmed the condemned was dead.

Oh my, now I can make notes for Officer 432 stories a little more accurate.

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Since we're at faceless committees and conveniently blaming the dead...

Made this for convenient use

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Word of the Day:

Hybristophilia (from Ancient Greek "hubrizein" - "to commit an outrage against someone" + "-philia"): A paraphilia involving attraction to somebody who has committed a crime or outrage (from Wiktionary).

I learned that one from the NotebookLM summary podcasts about my stories. Well, maybe it is so. After all I did say that in my stories, the characters pretty much have to break the law, and feel good doing it. Sometimes, to help others or break out from some kind of oppression.

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Pre-war photos of a firing squad post at the North Caponier of Bastion IV of the Warsaw Citadel.

After WW2, the communist government built a monument commemorating the three communists executed there in 1925 for an assassination attempt on the main witness of the prosecution in the case of supposed bombing of the Citadel's Powder Storage two years earlier. The monument was torn down in 2018, during the renovation of the surrounding park.

Firing squad was used as the method of execution in pre-war Poland until 1926, when the new law replaced it with hanging.

In addition to ordinary court cases, "special courts" that focused on sentencing people to death in less than two weeks were active for the entire pre-War period, despite the public outcry that compared them to their infamous Soviet counterparts.

And since we're at capital punishment and the Warsaw Citadel, here is a pre-war photo of the Tsar-era gallows at the Ivan Paskevich Gate, renamed "Execution Gate" after the liberation of Poland. Located at the eastern wall of the Citadel and originally surrounded by a smaller wall extending to the East Caponier that was torn down in the 1930s, the gallows served as a patriotic relic that survived the war (unlike the neighboring Mirecki Gate that was destroyed during WW2) and suffered only after an inept attempt at conservation in 1952. Now, one of the uprights is encased in an obelisk at the spot where the gallows originally stood.

Pre-war photo of the gallows and the Mirecki Gate.

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Told on 18 May that it would be another day before the executioner arrived, Queen Anne said she had heard the executioner was very good and she had but a little neck, putting a hand around it. Laughing, she joked that clever people would name her ‘ la royne Anne sans tete', translated as Queen Anne Lackhead. Constable Kingston was perturbed at her levity, saying he had seen many men and women executed but that Anne showed 'much joy and pleasure in death'. She spent the night praying with her almoner. Before and after she received the sacrament, on damnation of her soul, she said she had 'never been unfaithful to the king'

~ ‘The Tudor Socialite’ by Jan-Marie Knights , page 111

Oh. Oh my.

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And here I thought that coming up with the backstory to things like "View from the Window", the Special Officer 432 series and anything I'm going to write about La Citoyenne was pointless...

maybe monsterfucker erotica doesn't need a plot but it certainly gives the whole thing a bit more substance

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Photos of the execution chamber in the Łódź prison in Poland, taken by press photographer Jacek Marczewski in the early 1990s. In his words:

"I expected a large room with a raised platform where the gallows stood. A place of some importance. (...) The place reminded me of a shitter. (...) We walked downstairs, to a basement. The guards opened an ordinary door, revealing a cramped room. Trapdoor at the end, foot lever for dropping the condemned next to it, twelve square meters in total."

"The pit under the trapdoor was rather shallow. When I pointed it out, the guards said that in this position, a 40 centimeter drop is enough to break the spinal cord."

...I wonder if that's really so.

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I was told about these two illustrations depicting the execution of a woman in 18th century.

It's curious how all the historical research on this subject in Poland is focused on Silesia. Historians can rattle off entire lists of ordinary people executed over entire centuries, even find their bodies based on the records (like the Exner family that inspired one of my stories). But elsewhere? Barely anything aside from causes celebres.