Richard Puller von Hohenburg
Twice he escaped charges of sodomy – in 1482 an Alsatian knight and his servant were burned alive in Zurich, in a trial where love and power politics were entangled.
Richard Puller von Hohenburg came from a wealthy noble family in Alsace and was probably born in the late 1420s. In 1455 he married Sophie Bock, the daughter of a Strasbourg magistrate; after the death of his father and elder brother he became head of the family and soon became entangled in feuds and lawsuits.
In 1463 one of his servants was arrested because he wore expensive clothes and had more money than his position allowed. Under torture the servant confessed that Puller had courted him. Puller lost his fiefs but was not put on trial. In 1474 he was again accused of sodomy and again escaped with the help of letters of recommendation, some of them forged. He was to confess, give up his property and go into a monastery – instead he fled.
From 1476 he lived in Zurich, which hoped for a profitable feud with rich Strasbourg, from which Puller now demanded an entire inheritance. But Zurich found no allies in the Swiss Confederation, and the knight became a political burden. In 1482 the city discovered his relationship with his servant Anton Mätzler; once again the servant had boasted of precious clothes and fine shirts. Under torture Puller confessed to relationships with Mätzler and other men.
On 24 September 1482 both men were burned alive in Zurich’s market square in front of a large crowd. Puller refused to repeat his confession: the charge, he said, was only a pretext to seize his property, and he named among others Hans Waldmann, later mayor of Zurich. Contemporaries noted how conveniently the execution eased relations with Strasbourg; one source claimed the city had paid for it. Waldmann himself was executed in 1489.