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This post describes the last public execution of a woman by guillotine in Germany (25 July 1907). Shared solely for historical education and remembrance of the victim of the crime.
The Last Public Guillotining of a Woman in Germany – Grete Beier, Freiburg im Breisgau, 25 July 1907
At 6:00 a.m. on Thursday, 25 July 1907, in the courtyard of Freiburg Prison (Baden), 23-year-old Margarethe “Grete” Beier became the last woman ever publicly executed by guillotine on German soil.
Grete had been convicted of murdering her fiancé, engineer Heinrich Pressburger, on 12 May 1906. To avoid an unwanted pregnancy and secure Pressburger’s inheritance, she shot him with his own service revolver during a walk in the forest near Halle an der Saale and staged the scene as suicide. Evidence (including letters and inconsistencies in her story) led to her arrest, trial, and death sentence.
Because the crime was committed in Saxony (where public executions were still legal in 1906–1907), the sentence was carried out publicly despite Baden having abolished the practice years earlier. An estimated 800–1,000 people gathered outside the prison walls; hundreds more watched from windows and rooftops. The guillotine – transported from Saxony – was erected overnight in the prison courtyard.
Grete walked calmly to the machine accompanied by two Catholic priests. She wore a simple black dress and refused the traditional white execution hood. According to contemporary reports, she spoke no final words. The blade fell within seconds.
The execution caused immediate public revulsion. Newspapers across Germany condemned the spectacle; within months Saxony abolished public executions (1908), followed by the rest of the German states. After 1907 no woman was ever again publicly guillotined in Germany.
We remember Grete Beier’s execution today not to revisit her crime, but to honour the memory of her victim, Heinrich Pressburger; to recognise that public executions – even when legally sanctioned – ultimately degraded society itself; and to mark the moment Germany finally turned away from centuries of executing people before cheering crowds.
The blade fell for the last time in public on a summer morning in 1907. Germany never allowed it to happen again.
Official & reputable sources
Sächsisches Staatsarchiv – execution file Grete Beier, 1907
Badische Landesbibliothek – contemporary press reports (Freiburger Zeitung, July 1907)
Evans, Richard J. – Rituals of Retribution: Capital Punishment in Germany, 1600–1987 (Oxford, 1996)
Wette, Wolfram – “Die letzte öffentliche Hinrichtung in Deutschland” (Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, 2001)