Florian Mausner (also spelled Florijan Mauzner) was born in 1872, in the village of Jal~abet, V0r0~din District (Croatia), of father Djuro, a knacker, and mother Terezija. About 1879, the family moved to Bosnia, where the father was offered a job in his trade in the city of Zenica. After his father’s death in 1890, Florian followed his mother to Sarajevo, where she opened a knackery in which he was employed as a knacker. Many years later, in her capacity as Wasenmeister, she issued him a certificate testifying that he was skilled in his job.
In 1893, Florian started to occasionally act as an assistant to the hangman Seyfried at executions, and in 1915 he became the latter’s official deputy. In the meantime, he spent three years in military service. He never attended school, but learned to read and write in the army. He was not called for war service, as the authorities took a view that Mausner would be more useful in his executioner’s job. In this period, Mausner convicted of theft on two occasions: in 1896 he was sentenced to 17 days, and in 1914 to three months in prison (with having to fast every fourteenth day). In 1914 he was also fined five Kronen (replaceable by one day in jail) for a traffic offence. In 1910 or thereabout, he married one Rosalia Arpogasch (Rozalija Arpogaš), approximately 28 years old, who had no personal documents nor did she know when and where she was born. She only claimed her parents’ names to be Ivan and Nani. As it was not clear whether she was a Christian or not, she had to be provisionally baptized in a Catholic church in Sarajevo before marriage. Florian and Rosalia had no children; Rosalia’s much younger brother lived with them in the house.
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Mausner hangs a robber in Osijek, 1925 |
When Seyfried’s deputy died, Mausner applied for the job. Seyfried supported the application and described the candidate as „a strong force“. Although he had a criminal record, Mausner got the job, probably because the police report also stipulated that „so far thee is nothing against him in the pol[itical] and moral sense“. This was a turning point in Mausner’s career, because – upon Seyfried’s retirement – it was only natural for Mausner to succeed him. In his application he claimed to have passed the state examination under Seyfried and had performed executions on his own, which Seyfried testified to . Mausner added that he could read and write in the Latin alphabet, but hoped to learn the Cyrillic as well. „morally and politically blameless“ and 0usn5r became a government employee in December 1922, but – for budgetary reasons (no appropriate item was available in the budgetary nomenclature) – he became a janitor at the Sarajevo District Court rather than an executioner, with a stipulation that he was to perform executions and receive additional payment for each. As he himself explained it on several occasions: „I am employed as a janitor in the District Court here, but I perform executions by hanging“, or: „I am employed as a janitor, but I perform executions as a volunteer“. Mausner selected Karlo Dragutin Hart as his deputy.
Unlike his predecessor, Mausner was rather crude and an all around uninteresting man. A journalist once described him as a forty year old fellow with „expressionless face“, dressed in a bowler hat, a short black leather jacket and grey trousers. „If he weren’t an executioner, he would have been a grocer. He actually did try to become one, but failed“. On one occasion, Mausner explained that he never wished to see the victim before execution: „He does not interest me in the least. He can’t be all that terrible. I guess that there must have been more terrible ones around. Mausner objected to being called an executioner by the press, because: „My proper title is the administrator of the death penalty“. He was not notably good at his work. At one execution in Osijek, the agony of the hanged man lasted for full 12 minutes, so that the town physician who had witnessed it cried out: „You do not know how to hang people“ It’s a shame! This is no hanging, this is a knackery!“.In response, Mausner only „smiled contemptuously“.
Like many European executioners, Mausner always carried on him photographs of hanging and the hanged, which he most likely sold to the interested public with or without his autograph. In 1927, when travelling to Pan
evo to hang }arko Lackovi there nd changing from the „Bosnian“ to the „Belgrade“ train in Slavonski Brod, he was pickpocketed in the railway station. The thieves got away with 1,600 Dinars, Mausner’s official pass, and „several photographs“ of hanged criminals.
Mausner served as executioner for less than six years, having died suddenly from a heart failure on 21 October 1928, while visiting his brother, also a Sarajevo knacker by trade.