Rothenburg Part II

I was the first to wake up this morning, as I always am, so I took the opportunity to see Rothenburg in the morning light.  I did not get as much sleep last night as I planned because we were right by one of the city gates.  Each city gate has a clock.  Each clock rings the hour, usually the daylight hours.  This one did it all night. 

I did get up though, tired as I was, hoping to get that one great shot with my tiny camera and novice skills. I did enjoy walking around the town for an hour and a half seeing what I could see. I did not get the money shot either as the morning light in these densely packed little towns does not really penetrate until later in the day.

All of us went out later and made a stop at the Medieval Criminal Justice Museum.  Torture was a staple of the system in that day, and the laws invented by which your infraction could subject you to torture were equally as scary. 

They started us off easy with the presses.  Presses for thumbs, legs, other limbs and this local favorite, the tongue screw.

We graduated to various suspension and submersion devices, then on to the Rack, and ultimately the Iron Maiden. 

There was a whole assortment of shaming masks that would be pain to wear let alone how they would clash with your outfits. 

This is a cage in which something called a 'Bakers Baptism' was performed.  This was for Bakers and other craftsman who did not hold up their end of a business deal. They were dunked into the moat repeatedly and mercilessly for their crime. Dunking in regular water is one thing, but the moat was home for the most vile of liquids. 

The girls thought this was fascinating and a little frightening all at the same time. We chatted about how not having a standard in law and justice leads to all sorts of cruel inventions. There were laws about how one should dress in their socio-economist class, to keep one from 'dressing up'. There were laws about not paying attention or not being present at church which subjected you to public shaming. 

Although governments and churches have used the Bible as a pretext for power seizing laws and torture, you will not find trivial laws or torture in the law code presented in the Bible. The idea was to have clear standards which were summed up by Jesus as love 'God and love your neighbor'.  The sanction, apart from the death penalty, was always restorative in nature. It did not involve caging the 'criminal' like an animal and causing him/her to be a further burden on society, but rather to work to restore to the victim what was lost and also to restore the criminal to society.  Our current system does neither very well. 

The death penalty was appropriated in situations where what was taken could not be restored. Such as rape, murder, kidnapping, the sale of a kidnapped victim as a slave and the possession of that stolen person.

Today, while we do not have torture, we have tens of thousands of laws that can be used to take your money through fines, take your property through confiscation, and take your freedom through the penitentiary system all without making whole whomever was actually injured.

When we left the museum we took some time to stroll and let the girls shop a little.  Tara has always been a very active bargain shopper while Riley never liked to shop at all. Something happened on this trip and Riley caught the shopping bug, must be the bed bugs.  While not buying a whole lot, she sure loves to look around with her sister now. As of late she has taken a real interest in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.  One shop that we went into, and both girls agreed it was the coolest ever, had some thing that Riley has been looking for...a dagger, like Sting. She is now armed and dangerous!

Rothenburg was great. The rest of this day was another story for another day, how about tomorrow.

Images in 2015 Rothenburg.