Switzerland’s last execution—and the long road to abolition

# Overview

# Early debate and public executions In the 18th century, thinkers influenced by Cesare Beccaria, Voltaire and Montesquieu questioned torture and the death penalty in parts of Switzerland such as Bern. Despite those intellectual challenges, executions continued and were often public spectacles through the 19th century. Research cited in the story describes these events as staged to punish offenders, deter onlookers and restore public order.

# Cantonal patchwork of policy Abolition did not happen uniformly. Nidwalden's last execution was in 1817 and it prohibited the death penalty in its constitution in 1877. Other cantons moved more slowly. Obwalden carried out the country's last civilian execution in 1940. The revised federal constitution of 1874 initially banned the death penalty nationwide, but a 1879 constitutional amendment allowed cantons to restore it. As a result, Switzerland's approach to capital punishment was a mosaic of cantonal laws and practices for decades.

# The last civilian execution: Hans Vollenweider, 1940 On October 18, 1940, Hans Vollenweider was guillotined at Sarnen in Obwalden after conviction for murdering a policeman, Alois von Moos, and two other men. Had his crime occurred across the cantonal border in Nidwalden, he might not have faced execution — illustrating how local differences determined life-or-death outcomes.

# Federal criminal law and World War II military practice

# Final legal steps to abolition Military capital punishment remained on the books until 1992. The 2000 federal constitution then made the ban explicit, completing the transition to formal nationwide abolition.

# Attempts to reintroduce the death penalty There were isolated efforts to bring back capital punishment. A 1985 initiative proposing the death penalty for drug trafficking failed to gather enough signatures to proceed. A 2010 proposal calling for capital punishment for murders involving sexual abuse was briefly public but withdrawn by its sponsors a day after it appeared in the Federal Gazette.

# What the timeline shows The end of capital punishment in Switzerland was incremental and uneven. Intellectual critique began in the 18th century, cantons phased out executions at different rates, federal criminal law removed civilian capital sentences in 1942, wartime military executions continued for a time, and full constitutional prohibition was not in place until 2000.