Witch tower

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The Jülich witch tower
The Rheinbach Witches Tower

Hexenturm is a common name for a tower that was part of a medieval city ​​fortification or castle and served as a prison in the past.

history

The name refers to the time of the witch hunt . Some of these towers were actually used at the time to imprison people suspected of witchcraft until they were tried, tortured and sentenced.

Other witch towers got their name from the 19th century, when one looked back with a shudder at the atrocities of the witch trials. These then only served as normal prison towers or they were sometimes just simple towers of the city walls.

Witch towers can be found in a variety of cities, such as Aschersleben , Coburg , Frankenberg (Eder) , Fulda , Gelnhausen , Geseke , Heidelberg , Herborn , Hofheim am Taunus , Idstein , Jülich , Kaufbeuren , Kirchhain , Lahnstein , Landsberg am Lech , Marburg , Markdorf , Memmingen , Olpe , Rheinbach , Rüthen , Treysa , Windecken and many others. Nowadays the towers, when renovated, are occasionally used as museums.

A legend says that witches were actually burned at the Wildenstein Castle Hexenturm . Witch trials from the Upper Danube Valley area can be found in the archives.

In Babenhausen a special beer specialty , the witch , is brewed, which shows a picture of the local witch tower on the label of the flip-top bottle .

In Salzburg there was a 15th century witch tower in the city wall , which served as a prison and later as a warehouse. In 1944 it was destroyed by an aerial bomb and the ruins were torn down. Only one image on the facade of Wolf-Dietrich-Strasse and Paris-Lodron -Strasse reminds of this building.

Still existing witch towers

No longer existing witch towers

Other buildings named Hexenturm

photos

Web links

Commons : Hexentürme  - Collection of images, videos and audio files