Status Updates From Der Scharfrichter. Ein Henk...

“We know much too little of Frantz's personal experiences …. But it can be stated with certainty that it was a singularly purposeful life. Perhaps, in a cruel and capricious world, there is hope to be found in one man defying his fate…and simply persevering amid a series of personal tragedies.Meister Frantz clearly thought so. And that, we can agree with him, is an act of faith worthy of remembrance.” 238

“Schmidt's medical ledgers have not survived. But by his own esti-mate, in nearly fifty years of medical practice he treated more than fifteen thousand patients in Nuremberg…. It means that Meister Frantz saw on average more than three hundred patients a year—at least ten times as many individuals as he tortured or punished…But it was not enough in itself to make him or his family honorable.”193

“A young woman who became pregnant in this manner taced a grim set of options: acknowledge the …. seek an abortion, which was illegal and often deadly; or hide the pregnancy and then abandon the baby. Some women who chose this third option-most of them young, poor, and without family support— labored alone and in desperation committed intanticide, a crime that if discovered meant certain execution.”157

It’s dark

It’s kind of dark.