ANTIQUARIAN’S FREAK

Southland Times, Issue 21331, 27 February 1931, Page 3

ANTIQUARIAN’S FREAK

NUREMBERG’S “IRON MAIDEN.”

ALLEGED TORTURE INSTRUMENT.

Tourists and museum curators the world over, says the Berlin correspondent of the Observer, London, will be surprised and delighted respectively to learn that the famous “Iron Maiden” (“Eiserne Jungfrau”), chief treasure of Nuremberg’s collection of medieval instruments of torture, is a “fake.” This has been argued for many years by antiquarians, and just as energetically denied by the average Nuremberg citizen, proud of the attraction exerted by this horrifying show-piece on travellers of every nationality. The “Iron Maiden,” which is preserved

in the pentagonal tower of the historic Burg, was presumed to have been fashioned in the fourteenth century. Hundreds of sightseers from all over the world have shuddered at it. A more than life-size female figure clad in a cloak reaching to the ground opens on heavy and creaky hinges to disclose blood-stained spikes, where the eyes, breasts and abdomen of the victim thrust within might be expected to be. A moving platform under the figure provided for the casting of the body in a stream below. Two strong men were necessary to press the unwilling victim within the grim doors, of which the two sides of the cloak masked the exterior. In view of the problem of how the impaled corpse was ever extracted from the spikes historians have always been doubtful of the “Maiden” ever having been used at all. But the bloodstains were so genuine, the rust so age-old, that their voices were silenced. Revelation of the Hoax. News recently came from Nuremberg that the owner of the “Iron Maiden” had just died. He had only lent it to the city’s museum in the Burg, together with the other collection of instruments of torture

for which that romantic castle is justly famous. In his will, however, he gave the whole collection to the town in perpetuity. As he had inherited everything from his father-in-law, an antiquarian, it is doubtful whether he ever questioned the fact of the “Maiden’s” genuineness. But in connection with proving the will a native of the neighbouring spot, Eibach was discovered, who stated that his father made the “Iron Maiden” to order of the antiquarian. This was one Herr Geuder, a keen student of Nuremberg legends. He ordered a model of a fifteenth century burgher’s wire in wood from a clever carpenter of special gifts. The figure was therefore first made in wood.

Old files of bills now prove that this wooden model was covered with iron plates. Who put the finishing touches of the greenish mould and rusty spikes and hinges is unknown but the fact is that in the late eighteen-sixties the “Iron Maiden” was ordered and finished within a few months. Details of how the figure grew in his father’s barn, which was used as a workshop, have been given by the son of this carpenter, Herr Geisselbrecht, who says he can also remember the tales his mother told him of the legend at the time. The Original Instrument. Commenting on these revelations, a writer in the Frankfurter Zeitung says that “English Maiden” was the name of the original instrument of torture, with which Geisselbrecht’s copy has nothing to do. Germany took the idea from Henry the Eighth’s warden of the Tower, Leonard Sheffington. The English model was called at home “Lord Skeffington’s daughter,” which later degerated into “Scavenger’s daughter.” Nuremberg had originally a genuine “English Maiden” right enough, according to ancient chronicles, well thumbed by the antiquarian Geuder, about the middle of last century.

The correspondent, commenting on the corruption of names, points out that, as everybody in Germany knows to-day the “Iron Maiden" is now the term given to

the automatic telephone apparatus which relentlessly refuses to give forth the coin once dropped in, whether a call has been