Case Study One — Germany

Abstract

When compared to many other European countries, 18th and 19th-century Germany followed a notably mild approach with regard to capital punishment. Although policy in the various small principalities that formed pre-modern Germany varied widely, use of the death penalty was relatively sparing and merciful, especially compared with contemporary English policy. Under Beccaria’s influence — and sometimes at his express urging — Prussian and Austrian rulers often experimented with abolition or moratoriums on capital punishment. Even when capital punishment was retained or reintroduced, the general trend in Central European absolutist monarchies in the late 18th and early 19th centuries was to limit capital punishment to an ever-decreasing number of extremely serious crimes, as part of an overall Enlightenment criminal-law reform agenda (Evans 1996:132–7).