Defenestration (fromNeo-Latindefenestrā[1]) is the act of throwing someone or something out of awindow.[2]The term was coined around the time of anincident inPrague Castle in the year 1618 which became the spark that started theThirty Years' War. This was done in "good Bohemian style", referring to the defenestration which had occurred in Prague'sNew Town Hall almost 200 years earlier (July 1419), and on that occasion led to theHussite war.[3] The word comes from theNeo-Latin[4]de- (down from) andfenestra (window or opening).[5]
By extension, the term is also used to describe the forcible orsummary removal of an adversary.[6]
The term originates from two incidents in history, both occurring inPrague. In 1419, seven town officials were thrown from the New Town Hall, precipitating theHussite War. In 1618, two Imperial governors and their secretary were tossed from thePrague Castle, sparking theThirty Years' War.[7] These incidents, particularly that in 1618, were referred to as theDefenestrations of Prague and gave rise to the term and the concept.
The word itself is derived fromNeo-Latindefenestratio; withdē meaning "out" +fenestra meaning "window" +-atio as a suffix indicating an action or process.
Around the 9th century BC, QueenJezebel was defenestrated by her own eunuch servants, at the urging ofJehu, according to theHebrew Bible. (2 Kings 9:33)
It has been suggested by several chronicles (notably the Annals of Westhide Abbey) thatKing John killed his nephew,Arthur of Brittany, by defenestration from the castle atRouen,France, in 1203.
In 1378, the crafts and their leaderWouter van der Leyen occupied theLeuven city hall and seized the Leuven government. Most of the patricians left the city and fled toAarschot. After negotiations between the parties, they agreed to share the government. The patricians did not accept this easily, as it caused them to lose their absolute power. In an attempt to regain absolute control, they had Wouter Van der Leyen assassinated inBrussels. Seeking revenge, the crafts handed over the patricians to a furious crowd. The crowd stormed the city hall and defenestrated the patricians. At least 15 patricians were killed.
TheBishop ofLisbon D. Martinho deZamora is thrown by the revolted populace from the cathedral's bell tower, as depicted byRoque Gameiro, in 1904.
In 1383, to celebrate theacclamation of KingJohn I of Portugal, it was ordered for all churches of the realm to ring their bells. However, upon the lack of any ringing coming from thecapital's cathedral the populace ofLisbon revolted and rammed their way inside the building.Bishop Dom Martinho ofZamora was accused of treason by the populace for beingCastilian and supportingAntipope Clement VII and was, therefore, defenestrated from one of the bell towers. His corpse was assaulted and dragged toRossio Square, where it was left to rot and be eaten by dogs, until the populace had enough of its smell and buried it in the square.[8]
On May 16, 1562,Adham Khan,Akbar's general and foster brother, was defenestrated twice for murdering a rival general,Ataga Khan, who had been recently promoted by Akbar. Akbar was woken up in the tumult after the murder. He struck Adham Khan down personally with his fist and immediately ordered his defenestration by royal order. The first time, his legs were broken as a result of the 12-metre (40-foot) fall from the ramparts ofAgra Fort but he remained alive. Akbar, in a rare act of cruelty probably exacerbated by his anger at the loss of his favorite general, ordered his defenestration a second time, killing him. Adham Khan had wrongly counted on the influence of his mother and Akbar's wet nurse,Maham Anga, to save him as she was almost an unofficial regent in the days of Akbar's youth. Akbar personally informed Maham Anga of her son's death, to which she famously commented, "You have done well." She died 40 days later of acute depression.[9]
In 1572,French KingCharles IX's friend, theHuguenot leaderGaspard de Coligny, was killed in accordance with the wishes of Charles' mother,Catherine de' Medici. Charles allegedly said "then kill them all that no man be left to reproach me". Thousands of Huguenots were killed in theSt. Bartholomew's Day massacre after soldiers attacked Coligny in his house, stabbed him, and defenestrated him.
In 1618, rebel Protestant leaders in Praguedefenestrate two Catholic Royal regents and their secretary, who survived the 20-metre (68-foot) fall out of the windows ofPrague Castle.
On June 11, 1903, a group of Serbian army officers murdered and defenestratedKing Alexander andQueen Draga.
In 1922, Italian politician and writerGabriele d'Annunzio was temporarily crippled after falling from a window, possibly pushed by a follower ofBenito Mussolini.[10]
In March to April 1932,Ivanovo region ofSoviet Union, due to ration cuts and labor intensification measures, strikes and spontaneous assemblies broke out. Ten thousand demonstrators ransacked the party and police buildings with slogans like "Toss the Communists . . . out the window."[11]
On March 10, 1948, the Czechoslovakian minister of foreign affairsJan Masaryk was found dead, in his pyjamas, in the courtyard of the Foreign Ministry below his bathroom window. The initial investigation stated that he committed suicide by jumping out of the window, although some believe that he was murdered by the ascendant Communists. A 2004 police investigation into his death concluded that, contrary to the initial ruling, he did not commit suicide, but was defenestrated, most likely by Czechoslovak Communists and their SovietNKVD advisers for his opposition to theFebruary 1948 Communist putsch.[12]
On November 28, 1953, the U.S. biological warfare specialistFrank Olson died after a fall from a hotel window that has been suggested to have been an assassination by theCIA.[13]
On May 29, 1960, the Turkish physician and politicianNamık Gedik who served as theminister of interior during the mid-1950s, committed suicide throwing himself out of a window in Ankara when he was in custody.[14][15][16] Gedik was arrested on 27 May 1960 immediately following themilitary coup along with his colleagues. Some witnesses suggest he was beaten unconscious by a small group of young military officers and subsequently defenestrated.
On April 15, 1966, two suspects in the so-calledBathroom Coup inSri Lanka, Corporal Tilekawardene and L. V. Podiappuhamy (otherwise known as Dodampe Mudalali), were said by the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) to have jumped to their deaths from the fourth floor of the CID building in the Fort. At the inquest, following receipt of new evidence, the magistrate altered the verdict of suicide to one ofculpable homicide.[18] The remainder of the suspects were acquitted.
In 1969, ItalianAnarchistGiuseppe Pinelli was seen falling to his death from a fourth floor window of the Milan police station after being arrested because of claims of his involvement in thePiazza Fontana bombing, of which he was later cleared.[19]
In 1977, as a result of political backlash against her sonFela Kuti's albumZombie,Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti was thrown from a second-story window during a military raid by one thousand Nigerian soldiers on Kuti's compound, theKalakuta Republic. The injuries sustained from the fall led Ransome-Kuti to lapse into a coma; she would remain in a coma for more than a year, and eventually succumb to her injuries on 13 April 1978.[21][22] Ransome-Kuti's death would be commemorated in her son's protest song "Coffin for Head of State".[23]
The2000 Ramallah lynching included throwing the (already-dead) body of either Vadim Nurzhitz or Yossi Avrahami out of a second-floor window, after those two Israeli soldiers had been lynched.
On March 2, 2007, Russianinvestigative journalistIvan Safronov, who was researching the Kremlin's covert arms deals, fell to his death from a fifth floor window. Friends and colleagues discounted suicide as a reason, and an investigation was opened looking into possible "incitement to suicide".[24]
In 2007 in Gaza, gunmen allegedly affiliated withHamas killed aFatah supporter by defenestration, an act repeated the next day when a Hamas supporter was defenestrated by alleged supporters of Fatah.[25]
In 2017, retired French physician and teacher Sarah Halimiwas killed in an attack on her home near Paris that ended with her being pushed from a third-floor window. Her death was widely perceived as an example ofIslamist terrorism andantisemitism. Her assailant was ruled to be not criminally responsible due to having committed the act in apsychotic episode brought on by his heavy use ofcannabis.
On September 1, 2022,Ravil Maganov, a Russian businessman who criticized the country'sinvasion of Ukraine, died after falling from a window ofa hospital in Moscow on the same day the hospital was visited by Russian PresidentVladimir Putin.[26] Some people who knew Maganov well said his death was unlikely to have been a suicide, and some media hypothesized a connection with various othersuspicious deaths of Russian businesspeople occurring around the same time.[27]
In October 2024, Mikhail Rogachev, a Russian businessman and former vice president ofYukos, was found dead after falling out of the window of his apartment building.[28][29]
For the suicide method of jumping from height, out of a window, seeAutodefenestration.
A stuntman diving out a window
Autodefenestration (orself-defenestration) is the term used for the act ofjumping, propelling oneself, or causing oneself to fall, out of a window.
In theActs of the Apostles in theNew Testament, the accidental autodefenestration of a young man ofTroas namedEutychus is recorded. TheApostle Paul was travelling toJerusalem and had stopped for seven days in Troas. While Paul was preaching in a third-story room late on a Sunday night to the local assembly of Christian believers, Eutychus drifted off to sleep and fell out of the window in which he was sitting. The text indicates that Eutychus did not survive but was brought back to life after Paul embraced him. (Acts 20:6–12)
In December 1840,Abraham Lincoln and four other Illinois legislators jumped out of a window in a political maneuver designed to prevent aquorum on a vote that would have eliminated the Illinois State Bank.[30]
During theRevolutions of 1848, an agitated crowd forced their way into the town hall inCologne and two city councilors panicked and jumped out of the window; one of them broke both his legs. The event went down in the city's history as the "Cologne Defenestration".[31]
In 1961, while being arrested by communist secret service Polish activistHenryk Holland jumped out of window, which led to his death. This event was then widely discussed by dissidents and theories of a possible murder were popular.[32]
In 1991, British informerMartin McGartland was abducted by members of theProvisional IRA. As he waited to be interrogated, McGartland escaped the IRA by jumping from a third floor window in aTwinbrook flat where he was taken for interrogation following his abduction, and survived the fall.
On July 9, 1993, the prominentToronto attorneyGarry Hoy fell from a 24th story window in an attempt to demonstrate to a group of new legal interns that the windows of the city'sToronto-Dominion Centre were unbreakable. He performed the same stunt on several previous occasions – dramatically slamming his body against the window – but this time it popped out of its frame and he fell to his death. The accident was commemorated by a 1996Darwin Award and has been re-enacted in several films and television shows.[33][34][35]
In 1995, the French philosopherGilles Deleuze jumped from his Paris apartment to his death.[36]
In 1999, popular German Schlager singerRex Gildo committed suicide by jumping out of the window of his apartment building.[37]
In his poemDefenestration,R. P. Lister wrote with amusement about the creation of so exalted a word for so basic a concept. The poem narrates the thoughts of a philosopher undergoing defenestration. As he falls, the philosopher considers why there should be a particular word for the experience, when many equally simple concepts do not have specific names. In an evidently ironic commentary on the word, Lister has the philosopher summarize his thoughts with, "I concluded that the incidence oflogodaedaly was purelyadventitious."[38][39]
There is a range of hacker witticisms referring to "defenestration". For example, the term is sometimes used humorously amongLinux users to describe the act of removingMicrosoft Windows from a computer.[40]
The indie video game developer Suspicious Developments has released three games (Gunpoint,Heat Signature, andTactical Breach Wizards) with a focus on throwing enemies out of windows. After releasing Tactical Breach Wizards in 2024, the developers have started referring to these three games as their "Defenestration Trilogy".[41]
^Mikkelson, Barbara; Mikkelson, David P. (1996)."1996 Darwin Awards: Lawyer Aloft".Darwin Awards.Archived from the original on September 3, 2011. RetrievedSeptember 5, 2011.
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The dictionary definition ofdefenestration at Wiktionary