In 1790 the enlightened Prussian physician and journalist Christian Gottfried Grüner published a pamphlet in which he lauded the humanitarian advances of his century, while lamenting the fact that executioners and skinners had not benefited from such social reforms:

Social commentators in eighteenth-century Germany lamented that the “prejudice” of the dishonor of executioner and other defiled trades persisted “in our enlightened century.” But appeals to reason and humanity notwithstanding, the position of dishonorable people deteriorated in the course of the century. The development is paradoxical. The legal status of executioners and skinners gradually improved. The imperial police ordinance of 1731 legitimated all defiled trades “except the skinner alone.” The imperial decree of 1772 rehabilitated the children of skinners, and reaffirmed that executioners were already honorable. A number of territorial states also issued general mandates rehabilitating dishonorable trades. Austria and Prussia were the most forceful in this regard. But dishonor sparked more social conflict in the eighteenth century than ever before.