Shame punishments
Iron masks and worn barrels — public humiliation rather than pain.
Holger Uwe Schmitt — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Holger Uwe Schmitt — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Holger Uwe Schmitt — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Holger Uwe Schmitt — CC BY-SA 4.0
It did not survive whole — around forty per cent of the town was bombed in March 1945. But what was destroyed was rebuilt with great precision, funded partly by international donations, many of them from Americans who had fought in the war or visited the town before it. The walls and towers largely survived. Today it is hard to tell the rebuilt from the original by eye.
By car it is about ninety minutes from Nuremberg, which is easiest. By train it needs two changes via Steinach ending on a short branch line, taking about two and a half to three hours. The town is small and entirely walkable, so make a day of it: the museum, the wall walk, and the old town.
Sign in to write your review of this place.
No reviews yet — be the first.
A museum of the history of law and punishment in Europe, in the walled town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, and among the most important museums of legal history in Europe. What distinguishes it is that it is not an entertainment torture museum, despite what the name may suggest. The displays are arranged to explain how the idea of justice developed: how accusation was proved, what trial by ordeal was and how it left judgment to fire or water, when and how the principle of evidence emerged, and how punishments were public and symbolic as much as painful. A large section covers shame punishments: iron masks for gossips, instruments for playing bad music, barrels worn as clothing — penalties whose purpose was public humiliation rather than pain. These illuminate a society in which reputation was everything. The museum also treats the witch trials with historical seriousness rather than as spectacle. The town itself is among the best-preserved walled medieval towns in Germany. Interpretation is in English.
Iron masks and worn barrels — public humiliation rather than pain.
When judgment was left to fire or water, before the principle of evidence.
Complete walls you can walk along, and medieval streets.
Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Bavaria