Galley penalty
The galley penalty was a penalty imposed in the Mediterranean region from the late 15th to the 20th century for various serious offenses such as high treason or murder . Members of religious communities such as the Swiss Anabaptists ( Mennonites ) or the French Huguenots were also punished in this way.
The convicts, chained to benches inside the galley, had to operate the oars of the ships. The galley penalty was typically given as an alternative to the death penalty . But even as a temporary punishment it was equivalent to a death sentence for many.
The number of judgments imposed was based on the needs of the sea powers such as Genoa or Venice , which the convicts bought from the respective sovereigns (also from Germany).
Even when there were no more galleys, the term remained a synonym for forced labor in certain penal institutions - the so-called Bagni - that had developed from the galley prisons.
In today's French and especially Italian usage, the expression French (aller) en galère resp. Italian (andare) in galera , always German on the galley (to go) , still a common phrase for going to jail (going) or having to serve a severe sentence.
Antiquity
Contrary to the popular notion of chained convicts, as propagated by films like Ben Hur , there is no evidence that ancient naval forces used convicted criminals as rowers. The ancient galley slave is therefore an anachronism :
"Iron leg shackles, the whip, galleys that were floating concentration camps - all of this belongs to the world of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries and to no earlier epoch."
Modern times
The convict had to serve his sentence as a rower in a galley , forged with iron chains to the rowing bench ("forge on the galleys"). There was both the time-limited, but always perennial, and the lifelong serving. When the sentence began, the convicts could be branded , and life-long prisoners were declared civilly dead . A will from such persons was invalid because their property was considered confiscated. The slightest offense on board was punished with severe corporal punishment. Self-mutilation, which made people unable to row, was punished with death. The general conditions were also miserable, and deaths were not uncommon among the prisoners. The punishment hit peasants and ordinary citizens. On the other hand , high-ranking citizens or nobles, unless they had dishonored the nobility themselves too much, were banished and their property confiscated.
In Rome the galleys 1471 was introduced in Spain from 1502 and the Papal States from 1511. From criminal justice to the landlocked countries in southern Germany ( Baden , Württemberg , Bavaria , Austria and Switzerland ) it was taken in the 17th century, limited experiments already existed before. According to a Bavarian state ordinance of May 16, 1695, for example, "vagabonding or otherwise suspicious freelance and flayers" should be captured and handed over to the Venetians . According to the “Münchner Blutbannbuch” of 1568, 24 people were condemned to the galley and were waiting for their removal. The transport went via Innsbruck , where they were taken over by the Italians .
Galley penalty in the Habsburg Empire
In the Habsburg hereditary lands it was used from 1556 (?) To 1768 (?, Introduction of the Constitutio Criminalis Theresiana ). Naples was under the rule of the Austrian Habsburgs from 1713 to 1734. With an imperial decree of January 2, 1716, Charles VI. the galley penalty for breach of the original feud instead of chopping off the finger. With a patent dated February 11, 1716, it replaced the rod penalty. By ordinance of November 28, 1716, the branding of those condemned to the galley was ordered. In the Wienerische Diarium , published from 1703 onwards , between June 1716 and April 1732 there were reports on 263 perpetrators from Bohemia , Moravia , Lower Austria with Vienna and Passau . They were usually sentenced to one to ten years galley in Naples , one was given a life galley sentence. The latter had been convicted of fraud - he disguised himself as a priest . In 1728 (?), Instead of the galley penalty, forced labor was ordered in the Upper Hungarian mines. Joseph II then introduced ship pulling , which is often compared to a galley penalty and also often ended fatally.
In Tyrol in 1539 the galley penalty was imposed instead of the death penalty in the fight against the Hutterites (Anabaptists). The convicts were brought to Rovereto in southern Tyrol, where they were sold to Venice or Naples. In 1585 the council of the Swiss city of Bern issued an Anabaptist mandate, which the Swiss Anabaptists a . a. punished with the usually fatal galley penalty. The Swiss Mennonites had to work mainly on Venetian and French galleys. Their fates are recorded in the Martyr 's Mirror, first published in 1660 .
Galley convicts in France
In France, under Charles VII (1403–1461) it became a custom to use serious criminals for rowing work. They were called galériens , later called forçats . After the Edict of Fontainebleau (October 18, 1685), Protestant Christians ( Huguenots ) were also sentenced to galley punishment if they did not want to convert to the Roman Catholic state church. The only known autobiography of a galley convict comes from Jean Marteilhe , who was sentenced to this sentence in 1701 for the reasons of belief mentioned above. The total number of people sentenced to galley punishment for religious reasons is 1550. In fact, the galley punishment disappeared with the abandonment of the galley as a type of ship , legally often much later. In France , this development began towards the end of the term of office of Louis XIV († 1715), in fact it was replaced from 1748 by royal orderly ( Louis XV. ) Through forced labor in the Bagnos . The term “galley penalty” remained in French usage until the late 19th century, when convicts were already deported to Guiana . German traditions also speak mostly of galley punishment, since the word "Bagno" is largely unknown.
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 Art. 15 of the Code pénal of 1810, travaux forcés are expressly mentioned as a type of punishment. At that time there were penal stations in the seaports of Brest , Toulon , Lorient and Rochefort ; the latter two were abolished in the course of time (Lorient as early as 1830). In 1828 chain transport was banned and the cell car was introduced. The police on the galleys were reorganized by a circular dated July 15, 1839.
After the initiatives of 1840 and 1843, a decree of March 27, 1852 under Napoléon III. the lifting of the Bagnos. Instead, they were deported to penal colonies , first to Devil's Island . 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.
Other countries
In Spain it was gradually restricted by various legislative changes in the 19th century and was finally abolished in the First Spanish Republic . In Turkey the punishment was used until the 20th century.
literature
- Jean Marteilhe, edited by Daniel de Superville (the younger) (ed.): Commemorative writings van een protestant, veroordeelt op de galeijen van Vrankryk, ter oorzoken van der godsdienst. Jan Daniel Bemann en zoon, Rotterdam 1757 (Dutch); French under the title Mémoires d'un protestant, condamné aux galères de France pour cause de religion. Société des Écoles du dimanche, Paris 1865; German under the title Galley convict under the Sun King: Memoirs. , from the French by Hermann Adelberg, ed., revised from the original text and with explanations and an afterword by Eberhard Wesemann, Beck, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-406-32979-9 ; English under the title Autobiography of a French Protestant , available online
- Paul Frauenstaedt: On the history of galley punishment in Germany. In: Journal for the entire field of criminal law . 16, 1896, pp. 518-546.
- Louis Carlen: The galley penalty in Switzerland. In: Journal for the entire field of criminal law. 88. 1976, pp. 558ff.
- Hans Schlosser : The disgraceful punishment of the galley. In: Karl Kroeschell (Ed.): Festschrift for Hans Thieme on his 80th birthday. Thorbecke Jan Verlag, Sigmaringen 1986, ISBN 3-7995-7050-0 , pp. 253-263.
- Hans Schlosser: The penalty of the galley. In: Journal for Modern Legal History . 10. 1988, p. 19.
- Hans Schlosser: Galley penalty . In: Concise dictionary on German legal history. 2nd Edition. Berlin 2008.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Except for a possible case in Ptolemaic Egypt . See Lionel Casson : Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World . Princeton University Press , Princeton 1971, pp. 325-326 .
- ^ Lionel Casson: Galley Slaves . In: Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association , Volume 97 (1966), pp. 35-44 (44)
- ↑ a b Galley penalty RechtsAlterTümer - online, Austrian Academy of Sciences
- ↑ Gerhard Köbler: Legal dictionary " G ( Memento of the original from August 7, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. "
- ↑ Martin Scheutz: Everyday life and crime: attempts to discipline in the Styrian-Austrian border area in the 18th century (= communications of the Institute for Austrian Historical Research . Volume 38 ). Oldenbourg Verlag, 2001, ISBN 978-3-7029-0452-4 , pp. 174 .
- ^ Johann-Christian Gräff: Attempt of a history of the criminal legislation of the regional and ban courts, tortures, primal feuds, also of the witchcraft and magic being in the Steyermark . Miller, Grätz 1817, § 50, p. 70 ( online in Google Book Search [accessed December 12, 2012]).
- ↑ Susanne Hehenberger, Evelyne Luef: Crime in and around Vienna 1703 to 1803. A database. Retrieved on December 12, 2012 (query for galley in the penalty field).
- ↑ Wolfgang Häusler: From mass poverty to the labor movement . Democracy u. social question in the Viennese revolution of 1848. Jugend und Volk, Vienna 1979, ISBN 3-7141-6550-9 , p. 29 ( archive.org [accessed December 12, 2012] habilitation thesis).
- ↑ Horst Penner : Worldwide brotherhood . Weierhof 1984.
