“Buy such an infamous instrument of murder – that I wouldn’t do at any price! If I were in authority the makers would have been put in the pillory and the machines themselves I would have had publicly burned by the hangman – What! Let the children play with such a horrible thing – put murder and shedding of blood into their hands as a pastime – no, no good can come of that.”
— Goethe’s mother in response to a request to buy her grandson a toy guillotine in Frankfurt.