Child murderer Johann Arnold von Wykon decapitated in Luzern

Only the third known copy of a dramatic murder pamphlet, containing the text of a Standrede (execution speech) delivered just after the beheading of Swiss child murderer Johann Arnold von Wykon in Lucerne, February 21, 1846.

Von Wykon “lived in sin” with Anna Wollemann, who bore another man’s child. After she gave birth, he murdered the infant and continued the illicit relationship—until justice caught up with him. He was publicly decapitated in Lucerne, his body still lying "im Blute" as the cleric delivered the speech.

The pamphlet is both a macabre relic of Swiss legal history and a striking example of the genre of Standreden, moralizing sermons meant to warn the public against sin and crime. In this speech, lust (Unzucht) is portrayed as reducing the sinner to an animal state, inevitably leading to decline and murder, a popular trope in 19th-century execution sermons.

A highly scarce survival of 19th-century Swiss crime literature and execution ephemera, of interest to collectors of murder pamphlets, criminology, or religious history.