Isabella Mueller Baroness of Stainton le Vale
There is a gruesome place of horror located on Jungfernturmstraße in the Bavarian capital of Munich. I visited this legendary place on my birthday. Not far from the city center, I arrived at the remains of the former Jungfernturm (Maiden’s Tower). The Jungfernturm was part of Munich’s city fortifications, of which only the rear wall made of raw bricks remains today. The Jungfernturm was once a massive defensive tower, built in 1493 with a steep gabled roof between the outer and inner city walls and demolished in 1804. A commemorative plaque still commemorates it today, as the remains of the monument are now listed as a historical monument. According to legend, cruel tortures and executions were carried out in the tower with the Iron Maiden torture device. This instrument of torture is also said to have given the Jungfernturm its name. The Iron Maiden is an instrument of torture that looks like a coffin in the shape of a woman. Its interior is studded with knives and metal spikes. The victims had to enter the coffin. It was then closed and the knives pierced the prisoner’s body. After agonizing, painful bleeding, the victim died. The corpse then fell through a trapdoor into a 20-meter-deep dungeon in the windowless tower. To this day, the screams of the murdered souls can be heard on dark nights. In addition, every year on the night of January 6 to 7, the ghost of Captain Franz von Unertl, who was murdered there on January 6, 1796, is said to haunt the tower. I was lucky during my visit and neither encountered a ghost nor heard loud screams. The Jungfernturm, with its gruesome legend of the Iron Maiden, gave me an insight into the dark side of the Middle Ages, when people were tortured and killed with perverse brutality. Unfortunately, despite the worldwide ban on torture, people are still being brutally tortured and killed in many countries today. But where there is shadow, there is also light, and light always gives us hope for a better world. I would like to conclude with the words of civil rights activist Mahatma Gandhi, who once wisely said: “Violence remains and always will be the weapon of the weak.”
