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;
“Qui simplement nous tuera
Et que l’on nommera,
Guillotine.”
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—