The executioners in Prussia and the German Empire are a largely overlooked area in historical research. Descendants can be traced everywhere; only the most prominent figures who executed condemned individuals seem to be elusive when it comes to their family backgrounds. The widely held belief that executioners and their families played an outsider role proves to be inaccurate upon closer examination. Instead, a completely new picture emerges of this group of supposed social outsiders, who - at least since the beginning of the 19th century - had access to bourgeois life. While executioners primarily executed murderers until 1933, from the time of the Nazi rise to power, they increasingly executed a broader range of individuals.