on West German soil, albeit the overwhelming majority of them were carried out by the Allied occupation authorities, not German authority. The last common criminal to be executed in the Western Zones under German authority was Richard Schuh (murder and robbery) on February 18, 1949; the last execution in West Berlin was of Berthold Wehmeyer (murder, rape, and robbery) on May 12, 1949. Despite the newly founded Federal Republic's protests, the Western Allied powers continued for some time to practice capital punishment in their separate jurisdiction. The last seven condemned men, all of whom were war criminals, were executed by the U.S. military at Landsberg Prison on June 7, 1951. Until 1990, some "criminal actions against the Allied Occupating Powers' interests" remained capital offenses in West Berlin, being under Allied jurisdiction without complete force of the Basic Law. However, no capital sentences under this authority were carried out. East Germany abolished capital punishment in 1987. The last execution in East Germany is believed to have been the shooting of Werner Teske, convicted for treason, in 1981; the last execution of a civilian (after 1970, capital punishment was rare and used almost exclusively for espionage and occasionally Nazi war criminals) was Erwin Hagedorn, for sexually motivated serial child murder. By then, East German courts had imposed death sentences in 227 cases. 166 were executed, of which 52 for assumedly political crimes (espionage, sabotage etc.), 64 for crimes under Hitler's rule and 44 for common criminality (mostly murder under aggravated circumstances). Most of these took place during the 1950s; three known executions took place in the 70s and two in the 80s. The guillotine (called the Fallschwertmaschine, "falling sword machine") was used for the last time on sex murderer Günter Herzfeld in 1967, after which it was replaced by execution by shooting (an "unexpected close shot in the back of the head"; "unerwarteter Nahschuss in das Hinterhaupt"). The convicts were not told they had been denied clemency until the day of their execution. They would be transported to Leipzig Prison early in the morning, and then taken to an office. There, an official read out two sentences to the convict: "The petition for clemency has been rejected. Your execution is imminent." The convict was then taken to the death chamber and suddenly shot by another officer behind them. In 2018 the state of Hessian voted in a Referendum on the Death Penalty.