Before going to the scaffold, Reinsdorf ate a hearty meal, smoked a cigar, and sang a song. He walked steadily into the court-yard, where the scaffold was standing, guarded by a squad of soldiers, besides about a hundred other persons.
“Are you August Reinsdorf?” asked the sheriff.
“Yes, that I am.”
The death warrant was then read and the royal signature shown to him. The executioner then bore him to the scaffold. Reinsdorf’s last words were: “Down with barbarism; hurrah for Anarchy!” The axe fell and the head was severed from his body.
The atonement for the decapitation of Reinsdorf followed quickly. The sentence had hardly been carried into execution when, on the 13th of January, 1885, “the miserable Rumpff,” as they called him, was stabbed and killed by the hand of an Anarchist at Frankfort-on-the-Main. Sic semper tyrannis.
With such an example of courage before them, and the revenge his execution invited, it is almost needless to remark that the bloodthirsty Anarchists of Chicago read with eager avidity anything pertaining to their hero. Accordingly, in the Vorbote of December 16, 1885, the following is to be found:
REINSDORF’S INHERITANCE.
In the pamphlet about Reinsdorf there is a letter published which our great martyr wrote the day previous to his decapitation. We are able now to publish two other letters which Reinsdorf wrote at the same time, to his parents and to his second brother.
One letter reads as follows:
Halle, February 6, 1885.