Iron Maiden
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The Iron Maiden is a device that is said to have been used to torture and execute people. It is a wooden or metal hollow body, usually in the form of a woman, which was studded with nails or thorns pointing inwards.
Nuremberg Virgin
According to tradition, the death row inmate stood in the figure, whereupon the figure was closed and the tips bored into the body. In the case of the so-called Nuremberg Iron Maiden , the body then fell through an opening in the floor into the river below. This type of execution is said to have been called The Virgin Kiss and the entire process is said to have been called The Secret Court . The idea is based on a Nuremberg Chronicle news of 1533 by the Altdorfer professor Johann Philipp Siebenkees 1793 hawked was and medieval ideas in the context of former kangaroo court stands. The preserved devices are probably reinterpretations of early modern cloaks and were only later riddled with nails (or with bayonets from the Napoleonic era, as in the Nuremberg specimen). Therefore, the nails contained in the “Iron Maiden” exhibited in the Crime Museum in Rothenburg ob der Tauber were removed .
"Apega" of King Nabis
The first iron maiden is called Apega , which the Spartan king Nabis (207–192 BC) had built. In contrast to the early modern Iron Virgins, it was a construction with inserted nails. In the Torture Museum of Volterra (Italy) such an object is issued. In the accompanying text, however, it is stated that the thorns or nails were sized so that they did not dig deep enough into the flesh to kill the torture victim. However, they penetrated deep enough to begin the process of bleeding to death, resulting in a far more excruciating death than if vital organs were pierced.
reception
The Iron Maiden is still considered the epitome of medieval justice in popular culture, but also in literature. In several books (e.g. Kurt Vonnegut's novel Schlachthof 5 ) and films (e.g. Sleepy Hollow ) the myth of the Iron Maiden is taken over without reflection. (Engl. After Iron virgin iron maiden ) a plurality of fictitious characters are named (especially in computer games, z. B. dungeon keeper or Resident Evil 4 ).
The most famous Iron Maiden, which was shown in Nuremberg until 1945 , inspired the Dracula author Bram Stoker to write his scary story The Squaw . There the Iron Maiden is still used in the popular performance: a visitor to the cabinet of curiosities in the Nuremberg Castle squeezes into the Iron Maiden out of exuberance. A museum attendant holds the rope that prevents the locking mechanism. A cat, whose cub the man had accidentally killed earlier, jumps at the museum attendant. He lets go of the rope and the door closes. This is how the man dies in the Iron Maiden.
additional
- In the 1961 feature film The Pendulum of Death , one of the leading actresses is locked in an iron maiden.
- The band Iron Maiden , founded in 1975, was named after the Iron Maiden.
- In 2003, Time magazine reported that an iron maiden had been found outside the Iraqi Football Association office, headed by Udai Hussein .
- In the film The Old Guard from 2020, a supporting character of the immortals in the Middle Ages is locked up in an iron maiden in the sea as punishment.
literature
- Wolfgang Schild : The Iron Maiden. Poetry and Truth (= series of publications of the Medieval Crime Museum Rothenburg o. D. Tauber . No. 3 ). Rothenburg o. D. Tauber 2000.
- Fritz Traugott Schulz : The Nuremberg Iron Maiden: a criminalistic-cultural-historical study . Tümmel, Nuremberg 1932.
- Georg Christian Friedrich Lisch : The iron maiden on the castle in Schwerin . In: Yearbooks of the Association for Mecklenburg History and Archeology . No. 6 , 1841, p. 198–200 ( lbmv.de [accessed July 13, 2020]).
Web links
- Stoker at www.dingo.saar.de
- Stoker at www.gutenberg.org ( English )
- Sur la vierge de fer ( French )
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Wolfgang Schild: The history of jurisdiction . Nikol, Hamburg 1997, p. 50 .
- ↑ Johanna H. Wyer: Torture and torture methods in the Middle Ages: In the name of justice . neobooks, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-8476-2867-5 .
- ↑ Aparisim Ghosh: Iron Maiden Found in Uday Hussein's Playground. Time Magazine, April 19, 2003, accessed February 7, 2006 .