from:
Angus Fraser
The Gypsies
Blackwell, Oxford/UK, Cambridge/USA, 1992
pp 178/179:
... we have found concentrations near the frontiers between France and Spain, between German states, and between Lorraine and the Empire; in the Scottish Borders; and in the easternmost parts of the Dutch Republic. Within national boundaries, there were often local demarcations which could be similarly turned to advantage. Many broke up into small groups when it was necessary to avoid attention; conversely, others gathered into larger bands to facilitate self-protection, perhaps ganging up with gadé(Romani: non-Gypsy) as they did so, and sometimes resorting to violence. Certain Gypsy brigands gained notoriety in eighteenth-century Germany, large tracts of which were overrun with robber companies of mixed and varying origins. Some of Some of these had a strong Gypsy element: numbering perhaps 50 or 100, armed and defiant, they stole for their sustenance and skirmished with the soldier-police sent to confine them. One of the more noted of these bands, in Hesse-Darmstadt, was led by Johannes la Fortun, commonly known as Hemperla. When at last he was rounded up in 1726 and imprisoned at Giessen along with a number of other Gypsies, all the necessary confessions were extracted by prolonged torture with rack, thumbscrews and Spanish boot (a leg-vice) and sentence was passed. Hemperla and three others were broken on the wheel and decapitated, nine were hanged and thirteen (mostly woman) beheaded. A contemporary artist captured the scene of the mass execution and the vast crowds of spectators it attracted.
There are several accounts of the case, e.g. Simson, History of the Gypsies, pp. 79-86; E.M. Hall, 'Gentile cruelty to Gypsies', JGLS(3), 11 (1932), pp. 49-56. All go back to J.B. Wiessenbruch, Ausfuehrliche von der famosen Zigeuner- Diebs- Mord- und Rauber-Bande, welche zu Giessen justifiziert worden (Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1727)
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