Anyone who enjoys a nice cool drink on the Grote Markt or the Grote Kerkplein in Zwolle on a not too chilly autumn day will soon be rid of all dark and lugubrious thoughts. That may be the case in 2023, the alley in between used to be the place where criminals sentenced to death took their last steps, from death row to the gallows. The name of this short street is a reminder of that eerie history: the Korte Ademhalingssteeg.
Until the early nineteenth century, criminals were publicly executed on the scaffold on the Grote Markt, to set an intimidating example. Citizens with evil intentions could thus see what horrible fate could befall them if they continued with their evil plans. The death penalty in peacetime was abolished throughout the Netherlands in 1870 – and was last carried out ten years earlier, for a man who had murdered his mother-in-law. The last execution in Zwolle dates back to 1837.
It is not possible to say with certainty what the short breathing refers to. Could it be fearful gasping, even hyperventilation, that overtakes the criminal as he is taken away to his last breath? Or does it refer to the minimal length of the alley that can be bridged in a short breath? The latter would make a striking connection with the Hanengeschrei, an alley of nothing in Utrecht, discussed earlier in this section. There were many theories about that striking name, but it turned out to be accurate at a short distance. Both the Hanengeschrei and the Korte Ademhalingssteeg only occur once in the Netherlands.
It is interesting that the judges who pronounced the death sentence had a room on the first floor with a view of the scaffold. What is now particularly eye-catching in the area is the three and a half meter high Glass Angel, a work of art by Herman Lamers that represents the archangel Michael, Zwolle’s patron saint.
In the alley, on the wall of the Grote or St. Michael’s Church, a facade stone can be seen showing Abraham and three angels. In Latin it reads: ‘Praemiafert vite locus ut domo ista: venite!’ That means something like: ‘A place like this house gives the reward of life: come!’ Perhaps hopeful for religious churchgoers, for this life and the next, but the question is whether a death row inmate who read these as his last words also felt the same way.