We have now reached the South or Lorenz-quarter of the town. From the river the wall ran straight on along the Nonnen-gasse to the inner Frauenthor, which was destroyed in 1499. Cross the Lorenzer Platz and go down the Theatergasse opposite. Behind the theatre there is still a piece of open ditch—the old Lorenzer shooting-trench, and near the old inner Frauenthor is the entrance to the Herrenkeller, which goes under the Königstrasse to beneath the Great Hall. The old moat was converted into this cellar, which is 447 feet long, and supported by twenty-six pillars. Over it the architect Hans Behaim erected the Neue Kornhaus and the Great Hall or Grosse Wage, a deep-roofed building, also called the Mauthaus, because it is now used as a Custom House. Going straight on down the north side of this hall we come to the Frauengässlein, a fascinating old street, which stretches behind the old arsenals (r) (now used as storehouses for hops) to the Färbergasse, and marks the further course of the walls, which, from the arsenals to the White Tower (Weissturm) is easily traced. For a considerable part of the old moat (Färbergraben) and a piece of the old wall, with its large curved blocks of sandstone black with age, are still visible. At the end of the Frauengasse turn first to the right and then to the left into the Breitegasse, when the White Tower will confront you. The lower portion of the White Tower, or inner Spittlerthurm as it used to be called (a name, like that of the modern Spittlerthor, derived from the St. Elizabethspital), is, as we have noted, thirteenth-century work. The tower was renovated in the fifteenth century and fitted, like the Lauferschlagturm, with a chiming clock. The outer gate (Vorthor) is still preserved. Keeping on the inside of the White Tower cross the Ludwig Strasse and go down the Waisen Strasse, which brings you to the Brewery. Keep on down the same street with first the Brewery and then the Unschlitthaus on the right till you reach the river.
Beyond the White Tower the moat was long ago filled up, but the section of it opposite the Unschlittplatz remained open for a longer period than the rest, and was called the Klettengraben, because of the burdocks which took root there. Hereabouts, on a part of the moat, the Waizenbräuhaus was built in 1671, which is now the famous Freiherrlich von Tuchersche Brewery. Here, too, the Unschlitthaus was built at the end of the fifteenth century as a granary. It has since been turned into a school.
We have now reached one of the most charming and picturesque bits of Nuremberg. Once more we have to cross the Pegnitz, whose banks are overhung by quaint old houses. Their projecting roofs and high gables, their varied chimneys and overhanging balconies from which trail rich masses of creepers, make an entrancing foreground to the towers and the arches of the Henkersteg. The wall was carried on arches over the southern arm of the Pegnitz to the point of the Saumarkt (or Trödelmarkt) island which here divides the river, and thence in like manner over the northern arm. The latter portion of it alone survives and comprises a large tower on the north bank called the Wasserthurm, which was intended to break the force of the stream; a bridge supported by two arches over the stream, which was the Henkersteg, the habitation of the hangman or Löb as he was called, of whom and of whose duties we shall have to speak in the next chapter; and on the island itself a smaller tower, which formed the point of support for the original, southern pair of arches, which joined the Unschlitthaus, but were so badly damaged in 1595 by a high flood that they were demolished and replaced by a wooden, and later by an iron bridge.
After the great Wasserthurm, all trace of the old wall is lost. Probably it stretched in a straight line across the Weintraubengässlein, along the back of the houses of the Karlstrasse, and across the Irrergasse to the Lammsgasse. Mummenhoff fancies that he can recognise one of the towers of it in an exceptionally high house on the north side of this latter street. There too stood the inner Neuthor. The houses at the back of Albrecht-Dürerstrasse show pretty clearly the further course of the wall until at the Thiergärtnerthurm it finally joined the fortifications of the Castle.
Thus we have completed the second circuit of the old Imperial town as it was in the thirteenth and most of the first half of the fourteenth centuries. It was then a city of no mean size for the middle ages, but it was far from having attained its full development. New monasteries and churches and new suburbs sprang up outside the new line of fortification. As usually happens, the majority of the dwellers outside the walls were of the lower class: but, besides their houses, there were, especially towards the east, splendid gardens and properties belonging to the patrician families and also several large buildings, including the Katherine and Clara Convents, the Mary Hospital, and the Carthusian Monastery (now part of the German Museum). Buildings of this kind, close to and outside of the gates of the old town, would, if they fell into the hands of an enemy, be a continual menace to the peace and safety of the burghers. Hardly, therefore, was the second line of fortifications completed when it became necessary to protect the new suburbs with wall and ditch like the old town. It may be noted that even when the new enceinte, that is the third or outer town wall, was finished, the second wall was still carefully preserved as a second line of defence. This was directly contrary to the advice of Macchiavelli “not to establish within the circuit of a city fortifications which may serve as a retreat to troops who have been driven back from the first line of entrenchments ... for there is no greater danger for a fortress than rear-fortifications whither troops can retire in case of a reverse; for once a soldier knows that he has a secure retreat after he has abandoned the first post, he does, in fact, abandon it and so causes the loss of the entire fortress.” The Nurembergers, however, never favoured any policy that could even remotely suggest that of burning their boats. For a long time they kept their second line of defence. Thus in 1509 it came to the notice of the authorities that “the inner moat near the arsenals and granaries were filled up with dirt and rubbish, which at some future time might do harm to the town, and the neighbours were forbidden to empty any more rubbish into the moat, and the town architect was ordered to see to it that what had been thrown into it was either levelled or taken out and that the parapet was renewed.” Similarly and in the same year the inhabitants of the neighbourhood of St. Katherinagraben (the present Peter Vischerstrasse) were refused leave to build a bridge over the existing moat.
That part of the town which lay between the second and third lines of fortification continued for a long time to retain something of a suburban character. People of small fortunes who came to settle in Nuremberg were at first admitted only into the district outside the older wall and were only allowed to move into the inner town after they had been domiciled in the outer town for several years. The suburban character of the outer town was and is still in some degree apparent also from the large open spaces there and, especially on the eastern side, from the extensive farms and gardens belonging to the richer citizens, such as the Holzschuhers, the Volkamers and the Tuchers.
Somewhere in the second half of the fourteenth century, then, in the reign of Karl IV., they began to build the outer enceinte, which, although destroyed at many places and broken through by modern gates and entrances,[29] is still fairly well preserved, and secures to Nuremberg the reputation of presenting most faithfully of all the larger German towns the characteristics of a mediæval town. The fortifications seem to have been thrown up somewhat carelessly at first, but dread of the Hussites soon inspired the citizens to make themselves as secure as possible. In times of war and rumours of war all the peasants within a radius of two miles of the town were called upon to help in the construction of barriers and ramparts. The whole circle of walls, towers, and ditches was practically finished by 1452, when with pardonable pride Tucher wrote, “In this year was completed the ditch round the town. It took twenty-six years to build, and it will cost an enemy a good deal of trouble to cross it.” Part of the ditch had been made and perhaps revetted as early as 1407, but it was not till twenty years later that it began to be dug to the enormous breadth and depth which it boasts to-day. The size of it was always a source of pride to the Nurembergers, and it was perhaps due to this reason that up till as recently as 1869 it was left perfectly intact. On the average it is about 100 feet broad. It was always intended to be a dry ditch, and, so far from there being any arrangements for flooding it, precautions were taken to carry the little Fischbach, which formerly entered the town near the modern Sternthor, across the ditch in a trough. The construction of the ditch was provided for by an order of the Council in 1427, to the effect that all householders, whether male or female, must work at the ditch one day in the year with their children of over twelve years of age, and with all their servants, male or female. Those who were not able to work had to pay a substitute. Subsequently this order was changed to the effect that every one who could or would not work must pay ten pfennige (one penny). There were no exemptions from this liturgy, whether in favour of councillor, official, or lady. The order remained ten years in force, though the amount of the payment was gradually reduced.
Whilst the enceinte was in course of erection the Burggraf Frederic VI. sold (1428) to the town the ruins of his castle. Steps were immediately taken therefore to fortify the whole of the Castle grounds with ditch and large revetted circular bastions. Paul Stromer was the director of the works. At this time we first find distinct mention of the Vestner Thor, and the Vestnerthorbrücke. The other main gates, the Neue Thor, the Spittler Thor, the Frauen Thor, and the Laufer Thor had begun to be built about 1380.
WALLS AND DITCH
WALLS AND DITCH
The Wührderthürlein and the Hallerthürlein were constructed probably about the same time as the Vestnerthor—i.e. circ. 1430. It was against the gates that the main attacks of the enemy were usually delivered, and they were therefore provided with the most elaborate means of defence. Each principal gate in fact was an individual castle, a separate keep: for it was defended by one of those huge round towers which still help to give to Nuremberg its characteristic appearance. The Laufer, Spittel, and Frauen towers, and the tower near the new gate were built in the above order in their present cylindrical shape (1555-1559) by the architect George Unger, on the site of four quadrilateral towers that already existed. The towers are about 60 yards in diameter. They are furnished on the ground story with one or two gun-casemates, which would command the parapet wall if that were taken. Above, beneath the flat roof, is fixed a platform blinded with wood relieved by embrasures capable of receiving a considerable number of cannon. Guns indeed were in position here as recently as 1796, when together with all the contents of the arsenal they were removed by the Austrians.
At the time of the construction of these and the other lofty towers it was still thought that the raising of batteries as much as possible would increase their effect. In practice the plunging fire from platforms at the height of some eighty feet above the level of the parapets of the town wall can hardly have been capable of producing any great effect, more especially if the besieging force succeeded in establishing itself on the crest of the counterscarp of the ditches, since from that point the swell of the bastions masked the towers. But there was another use for these lofty towers. The fact is that the Nuremberg engineers, at the time that they were built, had not yet adopted a complete system of flank-works, and not having as yet applied with all its consequences the axiom that that which defends should itself be defended, they wanted to see and command their external defences from within the body of the place, as, a century before, the baron could see from the top of his donjon whatever was going on round the walls of his castle, and send up his support to any point of attack. The great round towers of Nuremberg are more properly, in fact, detached keeps than portions of a combined system, rather observatories than effective defences.[30]
They were perhaps the last of their kind. Tradition has quite incorrectly ascribed them to Albert Durer. Not only were they built thirty years after his death, but they are in principle entirely opposed to the views expounded in his book on the “Fortification of Towns.” This book, which appeared in 1527, broke completely with the old mediæval art of fortification (the theory of which may be said roughly to have consisted in an extensive use of towers), and recommended the construction of such bastions as the Köcherts-zwinger, or that in the neighbourhood of the Laufer Thor (1527) which form the starting-point of modern fortification.
The round towers, however, were not the sole defences of the gates. Outside each one of them was a kind of fence of pointed beams after the manner of a chevaux-de-frise, whilst outside the ditch and close to the bridge stood a barrier, by the side of which was a guard-house. Though it was not till 1598 that all the main gates were fitted with drawbridges, the wooden bridges that served before that could doubtless easily be destroyed in cases of emergency. Double-folding doors and portcullises protected the gateways themselves. Once past there, the enemy was far from being in the town, for the road led through extensive advanced works, presenting, as in the case of the Laufer Thor outwork, a regular place d’armes. Further, the road was so engineered as not to lead in a straight line from the outer main gates to the inner ones, but rather so as to pursue a circuitous course. Thus the enemy in passing through from the one to the other were exposed as long as possible to the shots and projectiles of the defenders, who were stationed all round the walls and towers flanking the advanced tambour. This arrangement may be traced very clearly at the Frauen Thor to-day. The position of the round tower, it will be observed, was an excellent one for commanding the road from the outer to the inner gate.
The entrance and exit of the Pegnitz were two weak spots, calling equally with the gates for special measures of defence. They were completely barred by “Schossgatter” as they were termed—strong oak piles covered with iron—set beneath the arches that spanned the river. Strong iron chains were stretched in front of them, forming a boom to prevent the approach of boats. The tower at the exit of the Pegnitz was erected, we know, in 1422. It is mentioned by sixteenth-century chroniclers as the Schlayerturm, and, though it has lost its former height, it serves to-day in conjunction with the adjoining building over the water as a jail.
The most vulnerable points were thus provided for. The rest of the enceinte consisted of the ditch and walls and towers. There were two lines of walls and towers enclosing a space which in peace-time served as a game-park. Celtes in his poem in praise of Nuremberg boasts of the rich turf growing there, upon which grazed splendid herds of deer. The Tiergärtner Thor, however, did not derive its name from this game-park (Tiergärten), but from another earlier one belonging to the Burggrafs.
The interior line of walls was the first to be built. It was made about three feet thick and twenty-two feet high. Originally there were no buttresses to it (as one may gather from the short length of old wall, north of the Spittler Thor, where the inside of the wall is plain), but afterwards buttresses were added along the whole of it, at a distance of eighteen feet or so from centre to centre. About four feet broad, they projected some two feet beyond the actual wall. They are joined by circular arches, the coins of which are walled up. The blinded galleries thus formed are still frequently used as workshops.
The top of the wall is about three yards broad, thanks to a coping stone which projects on each side. Along the outer edge of the coping stone runs a crenelated wall, only a foot and a half thick. Seeing that it was already at the time of construction exposed to artillery, the thinness of this wall is somewhat surprising. Probably the Nurembergers knew that the neighbouring nobility could not afford a heavy and expensive siege-train. A roof, composed, according to the poet Celtes, of tiles partly glazed, was erected over the crenelated wall and thus formed a covered way. The crenelles were furnished with hanging shutters, which had a hole pierced in them and were adapted therefore either to the fire of small pieces or of arquebuses.
At intervals of every 120 or 150 feet the interior wall is broken by quadrilateral towers. Some eighty-three of these, including the gate towers, can still be traced. What the number was originally we do not know. It is the sort of subject on which chroniclers have no manner of conscience. The Hartmann Schedel Chronicle, for instance, gives Nuremberg 365 towers in all. The fact that there are 365 days in the year is of course sufficient proof of this assertion! The towers, which rise two or even three stories above the wall, communicated on both sides with the covered way. They are now used as dwelling-houses. On some of them there can still be seen, projecting near the roof, two little machicoulis turrets, which served as guard-rooms for observing the enemy, and also, by overhanging the base of the tower, enabled the garrison to hurl down on their assailants at the foot of the wall a hurricane of projectiles of every sort. Like the wall the towers are built almost entirely of sandstone, but on the side facing the town they are usually faced with brick. The shapes of the roofs vary from flat to pointed, but the towers themselves are simple and almost austere in form in comparison with those generally found in North Germany, where fantasy runs riot in red brick. The Nuremberg towers were obviously intended in the first place for use rather than for ornament.
Parallel with the interior town wall there ran an exterior lower one, which, together with the former, enclosed a space, to which we have already referred, varying from fifty to twenty feet in breadth. We know very little about the original height and form of this exterior wall. It suffered many changes and can no longer be traced in its original shape. Experts hold diametrically opposite views both as to the use and the height of it. But that is the way of experts. We shall probably not be far wrong in concluding that this wall was originally a mere crenelated crowning[31] of the escarp of the ditch; that catapults were worked from the space enclosed by the two walls; and that the chief object of the outer wall and the enclosure was to prevent the enemy from working at the main, or inner, wall and towers with his rams and moveable turrets. Later, when the use and effectiveness of artillery developed and guns supplanted catapults in vigour as well as in fact, some time at the end of the fifteenth or the beginning of the sixteenth century, we may suppose that this old crenelated wall was removed, and the escarp wall of the ditch was raised and strengthened and provided with embrasures for large cannon, and rounded off on the outside so as to neutralise the effect of shot striking the face of the walls. In this form the exterior wall is well preserved, and can be seen at many places in the course of a walk round the outside of the town. At many points in the circumference, but chiefly where the fortifications are accessible (e.g. near the Frauen Thor) the parapets of this curtain-wall present a somewhat remarkable arrangement. The parapets, pierced with embrasures for cannon, are surmounted by timber hoards or filled in with brick and mortar, like the old English half-timbered houses. In these hoards (wooden galleries roofed in with tiles) arquebusiers and even archers, who were still employed at that period, might be placed. Pieces in battery were covered by these hoards just in the same way as pieces in the “‘tween decks” of a man-of-war. The crenelles of the hoards were closed by shutters opening on the inside, in such a way as to present an obstacle to the balls or arrows fired by the assailants placed on the top of the glacis.
The outer, like the inner wall was provided with towers. These were thicker in construction but lower and less numerous than the interior ones. They were placed at intervals of 200 to 250 feet and amounted in all to forty or thereabouts. The chief purpose of them was to flank and command the ditch and thus to prevent the enemy from building a dam across it. With this object they projected some distance into the ditch.
Simultaneously with the alterations of the exterior wall small bastion-like towers were also constructed, chiefly at places where the wall formed an angle, and where the enemy could not therefore advance in line. From these towers a searching fire could be maintained in all directions, sweeping both the ditch and the ground in front. The strong, low, semi-circular tower at the Haller Thor is supposed to be the oldest work of this description.
Lastly, in the second half of the sixteenth century, the large bastions which bring us in touch with modern ideas of fortification were built. We may instance the bastion adjoining the Neue Thor, called the Doktors Zwinger because the doctors had their summer garden there. And in 1613 the Vöhrderthor-Zwinger was added to the old town-wall. It was designed by Meinhard von Schönberg, and built by Jakob Wolf, the younger. But in 1871 this magnificent structure, with the armorial devices which decorated the four corners of it, was enclosed in the Vestner Thor Zwinger.
An account of the fortifications of Nuremberg would be incomplete if no mention were made of the Landwehr—a continuous line of defence which was thrown up at some little distance from the town about the middle of the fifteenth century, in the time of the first Marggravian war. The Landwehr was a ditch with an earthen parapet strengthened by stockades, barricaded at the crossings of the roads with obstacles and moveable barriers, and defended by blockhouses in which guards were always kept. The main object of this fortification was to afford shelter to the country people, and to secure them and their goods and cattle from the raids of the enemy. Only the merest fragment of the “Land-ditch” remains, viz., the Landgraben, running through the Lichtenhof meadow.
It will be gathered from these dry details that the chief note struck by the fortifications of Nuremberg is that of picturesque variety. The defences have been built at different times and form no stereotyped pattern. Walls, towers, and bastions of varying types and shapes, suggesting the ideas of different ages, succeed each other in pleasant confusion. The walls themselves, now high, now low, now with, now without roofing, here crenelated with narrow loopholes and arrow-slits, there fitted with broad embrasures for heavy guns, seem to be typical of the place and to suggest to us the recollection of her chequered career.
At the end of our long perambulations of the walls it will be a grateful relief to sit for a while at one of the Restaurations or restaurants on the walls. There, beneath the shade of acacias in the daytime, or in the evening by the white light of the incandescent gas, you may sit and watch the groups of men, women, and children all drinking from their tall glasses of beer, and you may listen to the whirr and ting-tang of the electric cars, where the challenge of the sentinel or the cry of the night-watchman was once the most frequent sound. Or, if you have grown tired of the Horn- and the Schloss-zwinger, cross the ditch on the west side of the town and make your way to the Rosenau, in the Fürtherstrasse. The Rosenau is a garden of trees and roses not lacking in chairs and tables, in bowers, benches, and a band. There, too, you will see the good burgher with his family drinking beer, eating sausages, and smoking contentedly.
WE have seen how in gradual and piecemeal fashion the Council, as representative of Nuremberg, acquired the character of an imperial state on an equality with the reigning princes and territorial lords. The special mark of sovereign power, the higher jurisdiction, was accorded in perpetuity to the Nuremberg Council through an edict of Frederick III., 1459. The Council was composed originally of such burghers as the community saw fit to elect. But gradually it came about that only the moneyed classes, large merchants, large land-owners, and court-officials admitted to the citizenship took part in the election, and that, within this circle again, those who had already held office formed themselves into a specially privileged group. So there resulted in Nuremberg, as everywhere else, the formation of a special town-aristocracy of those families eligible to the Council, which in Nuremberg particularly, where the original suffrage soon had to give place to the Council’s right of self-election, developed into the most pronounced exclusiveness. The final result was the separation of the citizens into the governing families and into the remaining classes cut off from any influence upon the town government, and represented in general by the Trades Guilds. This antithesis, which existed in all towns, led everywhere, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, to violent conflicts; in our town, to the riots of 1348, to which we have already referred.
The families eligible to the Council composed the Patriciate, the origin of which can no longer be traced in detail. The Patricians were not, as often in other towns, burghers of long standing, for in the fourteenth century and later, even up to the beginning of the sixteenth century, it happened that foreign families settling here were at once accepted as eligible to the Council. This is a circumstance which does not at all correspond to the usual conception of the burgher exclusiveness in the Middle Ages; but on the contrary it betrays a certain liberality.
The Patricians appear with others of the nobility as witnesses to documents, and are not infrequently given precedence over the territorial nobility. They carried shield, helmet, and seal; their hatchments hung in the churches, they held fiefs from the princes, and were eligible to church dignities. The Patriciate, however, did not by any means occupy itself wholly with military service and knightly exercises. Many of them carried on wholesale businesses and manufacturing trades. This occurred pretty generally throughout the Middle Ages, as also in the sixteenth century, though their descendants denied that they were ever connected with trade.
As the burghers were in general capable of bearing arms, the governing families especially kept themselves in military practice. They led the armed burghers or the mercenaries in the wars of their country, and many of them obtained in the service of the Emperor, or elsewhere, the dignity of knighthood.
As early as the fifteenth century the Patrician families claimed the rights of knighthood and heraldry like territorial nobles. Probably the tourney held in 1446, on the occasion of a Patrician wedding, and represented in life-size stucco-work on the ceiling of the upper corridor in the Town Hall, by Hans Kuhn, 1621, was intended as a manifesto to this effect.
At any rate it is recorded that this tourney vexed the nobles very sorely, “as they opined, it did not become the Nuremberg families to tilt in noble conflict or to indulge in such knightly pastime; it was indeed generally held that this tourney had had no little influence in bringing about the great Margravian War which soon followed.” In the year 1481, and again in 1485, in the Heidelberg and Heilbronn tournament regulations, the Town Patriciate’s right of tourney was formally contested.
Though we do not know how their prerogative arose, we certainly find that by 1521 the number of actual Patrician families was limited to forty-three, whilst, by the end of the century, only twenty-eight are left eligible for the Council. They formed a close and very exclusive corporation, clinging very tightly to their fabricated privileges. “Anno 1521,” runs an old statute, “it was declared and set down by the Elders of the Town of Nuremberg which families have always from time immemorial danced and may still dance in the Town Hall.”
We cannot deny that the short-sighted policy so often pursued by Nuremberg to her own undoing was due to the narrow and selfish oligarchy thus formed. But if we blame them for the decay we must also give them full meed of praise for the ripening of the prosperity of Nuremberg. The truth seems to be that the government of oligarchies of this nature, formed, not of all the wealthy families, but of a Patrician order of certain families, is, owing to the varied interests of the remaining society over whom they rule, peculiarly difficult to overthrow. Moreover, it is at first likely to lead on the State to success and prosperity: for at first the prominence of particular families represents the triumph of the fittest, the rise of those best able to govern, to conduct commerce, to encourage industry and art. But when in the course of nature these families begin to decay and cling all the more obstinately to their rights, it is then that the weakness of the position appears and the State is involved in the ruin of its most degenerate members.
It is noticeable that many of the early measures of the Council bore a decidedly socialistic character. We may instance the establishment of public baths, and the storing up of corn against the time of famine, besides the foundation of a great town brewery, which is the origin of the famous Tucher brewery of to-day, and the keeping of public stallions to improve the breed of horses, a measure that resulted in Nuremberg becoming famous for its chargers. On the other hand, as an instance of the jealous tyranny of the Council, we may quote the case of Christoph Scheurl. When he, the “Oracle of the Republic” as he was called, threatened to appeal to the Imperial Chamber against a sentence of the Council they replied by torturing him in the cruellest fashion for three weeks.
The public attitude of the Councillors being of this somewhat grandmotherly kind, it is not surprising that they left the young members of their families very little liberty in placing their affections. Love affairs and marriage for love were in fact not regarded with favour. Girls were betrothed by their parents at eight years of age and married at fourteen, often to old men of sixty or seventy. A couple were very seldom permitted to initiate for themselves an affair of the heart. So when Leonhard Groland, against good manners and tradition, had begun a love affair with Catherine, daughter of Hans Hardörfer, and this was discovered, the precocious lover was punished with two months’ imprisonment and banished for five years from the town. When a father did allow his son to choose his own wife he very seldom allowed him to woo her. They tell us how when the young Paul Tucher said that he would like to marry Ursula, daughter of the late Albrecht Scheurl, his father did the wooing for him, and went to Andreas Imhof, her guardian, and these two “with unshaken calm and dignified respectability” arranged the dowry and settlements. The public betrothal took place first in the Rathaus and then in the house of the bride. The wedding, after many formalities, took place not in the church, but before the portal of the church,[32] and only after the marriage service was completed did the bridal pair enter the church to partake of the holy sacrament. After the service the bridal party danced in the morning and then, after dinner at the bride’s home (where it was customary for the pair to reside for a year), another dance took place in the evening; in the case of members of the Patriciate, in the Rathaus. These proceedings were regulated by laws by which the Council continually strove to repress the tendency to luxury and extravagance which always accompanies commercial prosperity.
The Rathaus, the heart of the old trading Republic, fronts the chancel end of the Sebald-kirche, a position architecturally unfortunate. The original Councilhouse, which was shared by the Council with the Clothiers Guild, stood in the present Tuchgasse. But in 1332 the Council bought from the Heilsbronn Monastery a house on the site of the present Rathaus, and here they built themselves a new Council-house into which they first moved in 1340. In its oldest form the Rathaus consisted only of a large hall, large enough to hold with comfort and dignity the numerous assembly that might gather there on the occasion of a Reichstag. All that now remains intact of this hall is the outer architecture on the east side. The oldest portions of the Rathaus are to be seen from the interior quadrangle and from the Rathausgasse, the street at the back.
In 1514 new rooms were added. They are mostly by Hans Behaim and are very good specimens of late Gothic. In 1520 the Rathaus Hall was renovated and altered and the side walls were painted after Durer’s designs, by Georg Pencz and other pupils of the master. The hall was again restored and adorned with new pictures in 1613. Two years later the great chandelier, by Hans Wilhelm Behaim, was placed there. Two copies of it were added in 1874.
The Rathaus took almost its present form in 1616. The architect, Eucharius Karl Holzschuher, adapted, so far as possible, the old Rathaus to the new Italian style of building which now enclosed it. The outbreak of the Thirty Years War, however, prevented the completion of his plan. The north-east portion of the Rathaus has indeed only recently been finished after the designs of Dr A. von Essenwein. The imposing Renaissance façade confronting St. Sebald’s is nearly 300 feet long and consists of two stories containing thirty-six windows apiece. Three Doric portals form the entrances, and are ornamented with sculptures of reclining figures—Justice holding the scales and Truth with a mirror, Julius Cæsar and Alexander, Ninus and Cyrus—by Leonhard Kern. The sculptor received the moderate wage of 100 gulden per figure.
Entering the first court by the central portal, we see in front on the right the charming old Gothic gallery, supported by three pillars. In the centre of the court is a bronze fountain by Pankraz Labenwolf (1556); in the second court is the Apollo fountain of Hans Vischer.[33] The principal[34] staircase (r of central entrance) leads to the Great Hall or Council Chamber already referred to (1332). The arched wooden ceiling dates from 1521. The hall is 130 feet long and 40 feet wide and contains the chandeliers and the paintings after Durer’s designs mentioned above. The latter, on the north wall, have been much spoiled by the effects of time and of incompetent restoration. The first of them represents the Triumphal Car of Maximilian I. drawn by twelve horses. Victory holds a laurel wreath over the Emperor, who is attended by the various Virtues. Behind the car follows an animated procession of Nuremberg town musicians. The second design is on the well-worn subject of Calumny—Midas with his long ears sitting in judgment on Innocence who is accused by Calumny, Fraud, Envy, and so forth, whilst in the background appear Punishment, Penitence, and Truth. On the right of the judge (our left) who sits between Ignorance and Suspicion, are the words: Nemo unquam sententiam ferat priusquam cuncta ad amussim perpenderit, on the left the same sentiment in German:
Over the little door is written “Eins manns red ist eine halbe red. Man soll die Teyl verhören bed.” (One man’s rede is but half the rede. The other side should be heard.)
The frescoes (now scarcely visible) between the windows are by Gabriel Weyer (1619?). As both Bædeker and Murray state that “among them is a representation of the guillotine, which is thus proved to be two centuries older than the French Revolution,” it may be worth while to remark that nothing of the sort is proved. The falling-axe, fall-beil, the Italian caraletto here represented, was of course much used at this time, as the engravings of Lucas Cranach, Georg Pencz and others and as our own Halifax Gibbet and Morton’s Maiden show. But the guillotine, properly so-called, was a revived and modified form of this. The instrument then took its name from the inventor of these modifications, M. Guillotin, a philanthropic French physician, who designed “to reduce the pain of death to a shiver” by this machine;
as the royalist song first phrased it.
The bronze railing, by Peter Vischer, which once separated the lower from the upper half of the hall has now disappeared.
The small hall on the second floor is used now as the city court. It has recently been repaired and contains, besides portraits of modern Nuremberg worthies, some pompous allegorical paintings by Paul Juvenell (1579-1643).
In the Rathaus as in the Castle and Museum some very fine specimens of old German stoves are to be seen. The stucco-relief on the ceiling of the corridor on this floor we have already mentioned more than once.[35]
The Municipal Art Gallery (gratuity) on the third floor contains an interesting collection of paintings that deal with the history of Nuremberg. The most remarkable historically is the Banquet held in the Rathaus on the occasion of the Peace of Westphalia (1649), by Joachim von Sandrart (1606-1688). Thirty of the forty-seven figures at the table in this piece are portraits from life.
The power over life and death was given, as we have said, to the Council along with the other rights of the Schuldheiss in 1459 by Frederick III. Till then the Emperor had reserved to himself the power to give to any individual he chose this right, “Ban über das Blut in der Stadt zu richten.” It was an evil thing now to fall into the hands of the Council. Prisoners even during their detention before trial were made to suffer more severely than the worst modern convicts. The accused were put into the Loch, the hole which formed a part of the cellar of the old Rathaus, where there are twelve underground cells, each about two yards square, and two yards high.
Entering the Rathaus by the portal nearest to the Schöner Brunnen we turn to the right, ascend a flight of steps and ring the bell for the Hausmeister,[36] who will guide us with lanterns to those gloomy caverns which like the Piombi of Venice cry shame on the inhumanity of man. We follow our guide down a narrow stone staircase to the dungeons cold and dark as the grave. Over the various entrances were symbolic figures of animals: the two last being ornamented with a red cock and a black cock. No one seems able to say what these strange hieroglyphics denote.
The cells were never cleaned, but were warmed by a brazier in the winter. Two of them are furnished with stocks; in each there is an angular wooden couch; in some, when the sight has got gradually accustomed to the darkness, we become aware of a ghastly cleft in the floor. Flaubert, Poe, Scott, and Victor Hugo never fail to make my blood run cold with their descriptions of tortures, but the pages of “Salammbo,” of the “Pit and the Pendulum,” of “Old Mortality,” or “Les Misérables” have no such terrors for my imagination as the actual sight of these deep and horrid dungeons wherein so many hundreds, innocent and guilty alike, have been incarcerated and suffered, with no Anne of Geierstein to deliver them. Presently we pass on to a room of still more horrible interest—the torture-chamber where the judges (Die Blutrichtern) sat, whilst their wretched victim, far removed from human aid and human sympathy, was “examined” till a confession was wrung from him. This vaulted room in the Loch was called the “Chapel.” Over it is written “Folterkammer, 1511” (Torture Chamber). On the wall was inscribed the jingling verse—
Revolting as the idea of torture is to us, it would not be fair to concentrate our indignation on the Nurembergers, as we are tempted to do, when we see these things and still more when, in the Castle, we visit the stupendous collection of torture-instruments, those melancholy monuments of human error. For torture as a system of trial, as the great alternative to the ordeal, has received the sanction of the wisest lawgivers throughout far the greater portion of the world’s history. It is, indeed, only quite recently that we have in practice acknowledged Quintilian’s objection to torture—that under it one man’s constancy makes falsehood easy to him whilst another’s weakness makes falsehood necessary. History, too, has shown us the evil effects of this system upon the judge, who became inevitably eager to convince himself of the guilt of the poor wretch whom he had already caused to suffer. How completely the prisoner thus became a quarry to be hunted to the death is shown by the jocular remark of Farinacci, a celebrated authority in criminal law, that the torture of sleeplessness invented by Marsigli was most excellent, for out of a hundred martyrs exposed to it not two could endure it without becoming confessors as well. This form of torture was practised in England even without the continental limit of time. But on the whole, torture in England fell short of the best continental standard. Still, it remains true to say that human ingenuity could not invent suffering more terrible than was constantly and legally employed in every civilised community. Satan himself, one writer exclaims, would be unable to increase its refinements. A visit to the Tower of London will prove that Nuremberg was not a solitary and disgraceful exception to the manners of her day. The robber-barons, who flourished under King Stephen in England used the same methods as their German brethren to extract ransoms from the rich merchants they captured, using knotted ropes twisted round the head, crucet-houses, or chests filled with sharp stones in which the victim was crushed, sachentages, or frames with a sharp iron collar preventing the wearer from sitting, lying, or sleeping. A visit to the Castle of Nuremberg shows us that the rich merchants were ready to use similar arguments to the robber-barons.
When the prisoner had been brought into the torture chamber and the professional gentlemen (the Hangman and the Secretary) had decided how much the patient could bear, operations began. A circular opening on the inside of the room above the entrance marks the place behind which sat the person who took down the prisoner’s confession. Innumerable devices and instruments had been invented, as we see in the Castle, by using which separately and in combination the confession was extorted. Burning candles held under the arms were found very effective and the favourite Spanish methods, the Strappado (suspension by the arms behind the back with weights to the feet), pouring water down the throat and applying fire to the soles of the feet were in frequent use. We find many varieties of the “little ease” or rack in the Castle. The severity of the instrument is attested by the signature of our Guy Fawkes before and after being submitted to that ordeal. But even less attractive than this must have been the peine forte et dure. John Gow, it will be remembered, in “The Pirate,” stands mute even when his thumbs were squeezed by two men with a whipcord till it broke, and again when it was doubled and trebled so that the operators could pull with their whole strength. But his fortitude gave way and he confessed when he had seen the preparations for pressing him to death with the peine forte et dure, a board loaded with heavy weights. A peculiar atrocity marked the torture system of Scotland. Torture retained its place in that kingdom’s laws as long as she preserved the right of self-legislation. Her system could not surpass, but it serves to illustrate the fiendish barbarities of the Nuremberg questions. Readers of Sir Walter Scott will remember his description of the “boot”—an iron frame in which the leg was inserted and broken by iron wedges driven in with a hammer. The penni-winkis, thumb-screws, and caschielawis, iron frames for the leg heated from time to time over a brazier, were also favourite instruments both there and here.
It is not surprising that such persuasion usually succeeded in producing a confession from the prisoners, whether true or not, of their own or of other people’s guilt. They were not infrequently compelled to confess to crimes which they had never committed[37] and were hanged for murdering persons who afterwards were found to be alive and well. Real criminals, however, often refused to speak; for habitual and professional malefactors used to torture each other regularly in order to be hardened when brought to justice. But in that case their wives and children often proved less reticent. Confession having been secured the Council appointed a day of judgment for the armen, “poor fellow,” as they termed him. If when he came before them he still persisted in his confession he was condemned. But condemnation depended on the confession of the criminal, and the Church had long maintained that confessions obtained under torture were invalid. If, therefore, when brought before the Council he recanted he was tortured again, and as often as he retracted this process was repeated until a confession apart from torture was obtained. The humane intervention of the Church thus resulted in a redoublement of cruelty. Even after condemnation, if the convict told the clergyman, who came to prepare him for death, that he was really not guilty but had confessed only because of the torture, the Council on hearing of it had to begin all over again. This became such a nuisance that they warned the clergy not to talk to the condemned too much about temporal matters! After sentence had been passed by the Council a public trial of an entirely formal character was held, very wearisome to the condemned wretch, who probably knew that it was so empty a form that it was held even if the prisoner had already succumbed to the torture or committed suicide in the cells.
In Nuremberg, as elsewhere, various methods of punishment were employed. Much ingenuity and some humour were displayed in making “the punishment fit the crime.” The shrew was tamed, as in England, by the application of the Brank or scold’s bridle—an iron framework placed over the head in such a way that a plate covered with spikes, which was attached to it, fitted into the mouth. Thieves, like English authors, had their ears cut off. This operation was performed on the Fleischbrücke. The tongues of blasphemers were torn out, and if the banished returned to the city their eyes were gouged out. The latter treatment was often applied in the East to junior princes not required to be heirs. But there the removal of the eyeball gave way, in later times, to the drawing of a red-hot sword blade across the eyeball. In Italy the use of a heated metal basin (bacinare) was preferred. Whilst, in England, we punished drunkenness, as lately as 1872, with confinement in the stocks, the use of the ordinary Nuremberg punishment—“The Drunkard’s Cloak”—a barrel worn after the manner of a cloak—was almost confined to Newcastle. The ancient Moslem punishment for wine-drinkers—the pouring of melted lead down the offender’s throat—does not appear to have been in vogue. Other devices shown in the Five-Cornered Tower are the Spanish horse, which suggests the modern American method of “riding on a rail,” the finger-cramp for bad musicians, pipes for excessive smokers, faces to be worn by husband-beaters, ducking-stools and the wheel, last used in 1788, and the cradle, last used in 1803.
Even the sentence of death was variously performed. Robbers were hanged; murderers beheaded; worse criminals were torn asunder by horses or broken on the wheel. Sinners against the Church were exposed barefooted and bareheaded and hanged before the church doors; sinners against morality were branded. Jews—if it was a question of hanging them—were always hung from the end of the gallows’ beam, so that they and the Christians might swing from a different place. Boiling oil does not seem to have been indulged in, though it was used in France for mere counterfeiters, and in England for poisoners. The Bishop of Rochester’s cook for instance was treated in this manner in 1630. Terrible as these atrocities were, they are also terribly recent. The last burning at the stake in Germany took place in Berlin, 1786, and in the same year at Vienna occurred the last case of breaking on the wheel. The victim was tortured with red-hot pincers as he walked to the place of execution. And in England the execution of the rebels after the “45” was carried out in exact accordance with the statute of treason of Edward III., 1351, by which the unhappy victim of justice must be drawn to the gallows and not walk; be cut down alive and his entrails be then torn out and burnt before his face.
Women in Nuremberg, as in France and England, were not exposed on gibbets in chains but were buried alive, till 1515, when at the hangman’s request they were drowned instead. In 1580 they took to being decapitated. Women who had murdered their husbands were bound to a cart on the way to execution, bared to the waist and tortured with red-hot tongs. The condemned criminal usually walked from the
HENKERSTEG (HANGMAN’S TOWER)
HENKERSTEG (HANGMAN’S TOWER)
Rathaus over the Barfüsserbrücke to the Frauenthor, where the gallows stood. On the way priests confessed him; pious people prayed for him and supported him with draughts of wine. It is satisfactory to learn that the feeling of the people was usually in favour of the “poor” thing. Fellow-feeling made them wondrous kind, so that if the hangman bungled his business and failed to kill his subject outright the mob might prove dangerous. But the executioners, who lived in the picturesque Henkersteg, were usually masters of their art.[38] They tell us of one great artist who in 1501 killed two robbers almost at a blow. He placed them back to back, two or three yards apart, and took his stand between them. He beheaded the first one, who was kneeling, then with the same sweep, swinging round in a circle, he whipped off the other’s head. Clearly he was not devoid of professional pride, and worthy was he to be compared with the executioner in Anne of Geierstein who boasted that