March 28, 1811 - Jean-François Heidenreich
Heidenreich occupied a unique institutional role in French history: the first to hold centralized, nationwide authority over state executions, consolidating what had previously been a distributed network of regional executioners into a single office. He carried out that work across three successive French governments, a span that itself reflects how durable and politically agnostic the machinery of capital punishment can be. His inclusion here reflects not personal criminality but proximity to state-sanctioned death at its most systematic — the bureaucratization of the guillotine.
From Wikipedia
Jean-François Heidenreich (March 28, 1811 – March 29, 1872) was a French executioner and the first person to hold the position of Chief Executioner of France.
His father, François-Joseph, had himself been an executioner in Chalon-sur-Saône until 1806.
From 1849 until 1871, Hendenreich served as an executioner of Paris and held this job through the Second French Republic, Second French Empire, and Third French Republic. In 1871, he became the first sole executioner of France, as local executioners positions were eliminated. He acted briefly in this capacity until his death.
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