Bagno (penitentiary)
Bagno (Italian for "Bad", spr. Banjo , Mz. Bagni ; French Bagne , Mz. Bagnes ) have been the penal institutions in Italy and France in which those convicted of forced labor served their sentences since the 17th century . In the literature, the French Bagnos are usually described, less often the Italian ones. The galley penalty is sometimes used as a synonym . It can be compared to a German penitentiary .
France: Bagne
The French state maintained Bagnes in France itself and later in the colonies outside French territory.
The galley penalty disappeared with the abandonment of the galley as a ship type . In France this development began towards the end of the reign of Louis XIV († 1715). In his time Protestants and politically unpopular people were also kept in the Bagnes . In fact, the galley penalty was replaced from 1748 by royal ordinance ( Louis XV. ) Through forced labor in the existing bagnes. At least in German lore, it is still often referred to as a galley penalty. The galleys were also spoken of in French for a long time. The work there consisted of the heaviest and most dangerous jobs in shipbuilding and overhauling in the shipyards . This included in particular the operation of the pumps in the docks . Two prisoners were forged together with iron chains.
The first building set up as Bagne was the one in the seaport at Toulon (built 1682, Bagne: 1748–1873), followed by the one at Brest (1750–1858) and later that at Rochefort (1767–1852). There were also disused ships used as a prison. There were other Bagnes in France in Nice (1792-1811), Lorient (1796-1830), Le Havre (1798-1803) and as a replacement later in Cherbourg (1803-1815), Île de Ré (1873-1897) and in Nîmes and Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue .
By the penal law of September 25 and October 6, 1791, the galley penalty was expressly put in place of the chain penalty (peine des fers) ; a decree of October 5, 1792 gave regulations on the manner of transport to the sea ports. In Article 15 of the Code pénal of 1810, travaux forcés were then expressly mentioned as a type of punishment. In 1828 chain transport was banned and cell wagons were introduced. 1832 was denunciation of lifelong prisoners released. The police on the galleys were reorganized by a circular dated July 15, 1839.
A bagne was built in Antwerp in 1801 when it was part of the First French Republic and abolished again in 1821 during Dutch rule.
After various initiatives from 1840 and 1843, a decree of March 27, 1852 under Napoléon III. the lifting of the Bagnes. Instead, they were deported to penal colonies , first to the Îles du Salut in front of Kourou ( French Guiana ). This decree was further implemented by a law of May 30, 1854 and a decree of September 2, 1863, the latter introducing New Caledonia as a place of exile. The Bagnes in France still served as a depot for the convicts to be deported.
The labor camps in the colonies were also called bagnes and existed until 1938. The famous prisoner of the Bagnes of Cayenne was the writer Henri Charrière , who - according to his own statements - was innocently sentenced to life in forced labor for murder. After his escape, Charriere published his novel Papillon , which became an international bestseller and was made into a film in 1973 with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman in the leading roles.
Italy: Bagno
In the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont , forced labor dominated during the Restoration. There were several galley prisons (bagni penali) , including the bagno centrale in Genoa . The prisoners in question from the Duchy of Parma also served their sentences there. The first reforms began in the 1820s. The main phase of prison reform took place under the reign of Karl Albert (1831–1848), who was personally interested in criminal law and the penal system. In 1839 the new penal code came into force, which abolished torture, considerably reduced forced labor and in return made imprisonment the most important type of punishment.
In the Papal States the criminal law merged in 1832, the galleys (galera) and the public forced labor (opera pubblica) to unity punishment which in the papal galley prisons (bagni) were abzuleisten and so preserved forced labor as the most important of punishment as opposed to the reforms in the rest of Europe. With the exception of youth and women's prisons, the penal institutions of the Papal States were notorious.
In the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies there was also forced labor, which had to be performed in bagni or fortresses.
In the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the prisoners performed forced labor not only in the bagni penale in Livorno , Pisa , and Portoferraio but also in the mines and salt pans of the island of Elba . In 1841 Ronchivecchi reported that the one in Pisa was converted into a “correction house”. Those who had been interned so far were transferred to the other two institutions.
In 1861 the united kingdom of Italy was established . Many of the heroes of the Risorgimento were generally imprisoned in outdated prisons, what got around in Europe and the supposedly backward Italy caused outrage. In 1881 the Regina Coeli was opened in Rome , the first modern prison for men in Italy. (For boys and women there was an innovative prison, the San Michele on the Tiber, for over 200 years .) With the criminal law of 1890, the death penalty and the bagni were finally abolished throughout Italy . The most severe punishment was the ergastolo , in which one could only be transferred to collective silence after seven years of solitary confinement if one continued to behave well.
etymology
Bagno is Italian and means " bath ", "bathroom" or "toilet". Like its German counterpart, it is therefore included in some place names and names of localities. In contrast to German, the plural form bagni is also used for such names. The Italian plural form can be used in German, but it is no longer mandatory. To distinguish the penal institution can also be called bagno penale .
Bagno comes from the Latin balneum . This in turn comes from the Greek balaneion . Both referred to a bathhouse . The plural was mostly only used when there was room for men and women.
In French these prisons are called bagne (Mz. Bagnes ). In French, at least today, it only means “prison”, “penal colony” or “Bagno”. The expression "C'est un vrai bagne." (Literally: "This is a real Bagno") means "This is the purest hell." The bathroom, on the other hand, is now called bain . But there are the health resorts of Bagnères-de-Luchon and Bagnères-de-Bigorre in the Pyrenees and Heinrich August Pierer mentions a sulfur spring near the Swiss town of Bagnes in 1857 . The French form is rarely used in German, even when it comes to the institutions in France.
The English bagnio first appeared in writing in 1599 and today describes a brothel and a (Turkish) bathhouse . In dictionaries from 1838 and 1913 the order is reversed. In the historical context, it also refers to the penal institution or slave accommodation, is marked as out of date and is mainly associated with France and the Orient.
In Constantinople this was the name given to the slave prison next to the baths of the Seraglio . In Italy and France this was the name given to the prisons for the galley slaves in the port cities. The facilities kept the name even when there were no more galleys and other forced labor was done. The later labor camps in the French colonies were also called Bagno or Bagne .
literature
- Lars H. Riemer: The network of "prison friends" 1820 to 1872 . 2 volumes (studies on European legal history) Klostermann, 2005, ISBN 3-465-03405-8 .
- LK: A visit to the Brester Bagno . In: The Gazebo . Issue 1, p. 7–9 ( full text [ Wikisource ]).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Lukas Wieselberg: Every society their prisons. Interview with historian Mary Gibson, science.orf.at, December 10, 2012