The execution of the Dutch Reichstag Fire arsonist is recalled as the guillotining in Leipzig, in January 1934, of the Dutch anarchist held responsible for the Reichstag Fire. The novel does not stage the execution itself; instead, it emerges through later conversations, where the account touches on the new regime’s rise to power and is distinguished from the separate fate of Dieter Kruger.

The Fire and Its Attribution

In a conversation with Gerda Bormann, Angelus Thomsen recounts a story his uncle, Martin Bormann, had told him. He places the Reichstag Fire three weeks after the Nazis’ assumption of power and describes the prevailing belief that the Nazis had set it. The story then turns on a denial: according to Thomsen’s account, they had not, and a Dutch anarchist was responsible. His execution is therefore presented within a politically charged dispute over who caused the fire, rather than as an isolated criminal punishment.

The Execution in Leipzig

Thomsen identifies January 1934 as the month the Dutch arsonist was guillotined. In a separate conversation, Konrad Peters also recalls the Dutch pyromaniac’s execution in Leipzig that January. Peters contrasts the beheading with a preference for hanging attributed to an unnamed Viennese visionary, who, he says, was dismayed to learn that Germany had not carried out a judicial hanging since the eighteenth century. The novel supplies the manner and place of execution, but no account of the condemned man’s arrest, trial, final hours, or the execution itself.

Kruger’s Separate Fate

The recollections place Dieter Kruger near the same history without making him the Dutch arsonist. Thomsen tells Gerda that Kruger had been involved in one of the Dutchman’s earlier arsons, at a welfare office in Neukölln, and that Kruger was executed as well. The distinction matters: the Dutch man is identified as the perpetrator of the Reichstag Fire, while Kruger’s stated connection is to an earlier arson. Peters later wonders whether Kruger may have had some part in the Reichstag Fire, but raises this as a question, not a settled fact.

Narrative Significance

The execution reaches the reader through retrospective, embedded telling: Peters invokes it while discussing Kruger, and Angelus Thomsen repeats his uncle’s story to Gerda Bormann. These accounts make the beheading a point of reference in a later conversation about political violence and responsibility, while withholding the condemned man’s own perspective. The reported execution also anchors the chronology of the surrounding recollections: the fire follows the Nazis’ assumption of power, and the guillotining follows in January 1934. The novel’s separate mention of Kruger’s execution complicates the memory without collapsing the two men or their alleged roles into one.