Shooting Society (Nuremberg)
Shooting societies or shooting clubs are associations for the care of shooting sports . They have their origins in cities in the late Middle Ages. The local citizens had to protect themselves against attacks by local rulers. The rifle company of St. Johannes was founded in Nuremberg in 1429 . This year the rifle shooters parted ways with the " crossbows ". The “Privileged Main Shooting Society”, which still exists today, is a successor organization.
Shooting houses
The houses of the rifle clubs were called the shooting range. The Nuremberg Privileged Main Rifle Society built such a house in 1462 at the Johannisfriedhof.
The men's shooting house , a sandstone renaissance building also built as a shooting house, still stands today in the St. Sebald district (address: Am Sand 8). The pillar hall on the ground floor is open on one side to a 90 m long shooting trench. As early as the 15th century there was a shooting range at this point in the moat of the penultimate city fortifications. When the penultimate city wall (whose gate tower, the “Laufer Gate Tower” can still be seen nearby) was abandoned, the ditch was not filled in, but continued to be used as a shooting range and has survived until today. The men's shooting house above the shooting range was built in 1582–1583 by the master builder Hans Dietmair from Schaffhausen and used as a military hospital from 1808 and as a school building from 1905 .
literature
- Pablo de la Riestra: Nuremberg. The historic old town . Imhof, Petersberg 2005, ISBN 3-86568-008-9 , pp. 68-70
