Torture devices: the iconic Iron Maiden

As anticipated in my very old post on my trip to Germany in June, while I was staying in Rothenburg ob der Tauber I had the chance to visit the Mittelalterliches Kriminal Museum aka Criminal Museum of the Middle Ages and there I saw her, without even knowing she was kept there, the one and only IRON MAIDEN , which is the most famous torture device in the world!

The most famous iron maiden was that of Nuremberg, first displayed possibly as far back as 1802. The original was lost in the Allied bombing of Nuremberg in 1944. A copy "from the Royal Castle of Nuremberg," crafted for public display, was sold through J. Ichenhauser of London to the Earl of Shrewsbury in 1890 along with other torture devices, and, after being displayed at the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893, was taken on an American tour. This copy was auctioned in the early 1960s and is now on display at the Medieval Crime Museum, Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

Historians have ascertained that Johann Philipp Siebenkees created the history of it as a hoax in 1793. According to Siebenkees' colportage, it was first used on August 14, 1515, to execute a coin forger.

It was built in the 19th century as a probable misinterpretation of a medieval "Schandmantel" ("mantle of shame"), which was made of wood and tin but without spikes.

It was anthropomorphic, probably styled after primitive "Gothic" representations of Mary, the mother of Jesus, with a cast likeness of her on the face. It was about 7 feet (2.1 m) tall and 3 feet (0.91 m) wide, had double doors, and was big enough to contain an adult man. Inside the tomb-sized container it had dozens of sharp spikes.

A crude copy was supposedly found among the palace effects of Uday Hussein in Iraq.

Several 19th-century iron maidens are on display in museums around the world, but it is unlikely that they were ever employed.

Inspiration for the iron maiden may come from the Carthaginian execution of Marcus Atilius Regulus as recorded in Tertullian's "To the Martyrs" (Chapter 4) and Augustine of Hippo's The City of God (I.15), in which the Carthaginians "packed him into a tight wooden box, spiked with sharp nails on all sides so that he could not lean in any direction without being pierced," or by the account of Nabis of Sparta's deadly statue of his wife, the Apega.

British heavy metal band Iron Maiden got their name from the torture device.

The Sandman - part 2

The Sandman is an American comic book series written by Neil Gaiman and published by DC Comics. Artists include Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, Jill Thompson, Shawn McManus, Marc Hempel, and Michael Zulli, lettering by Todd Klein, and covers by Dave McKean. 

 It tells the story of Dream of the Endless, who rules over the world of dreams. It ran for 75 issues from January 1989 to March 1996, with Gaiman's contract stipulating that the series would end when he left it.

The main character of The Sandman is Dream, also known as Morpheus and other names, who is one of the seven Endless. The other Endless are Destiny, Death, Desire, Despair, Delirium who was once Delight, and Destruction who turned his back on his duties. Each of the brothers and sisters inhabit and are the anthropomorphic personifications of their concepts. The Sandman is a story about stories and how Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams, is captured and subsequently learns that sometimes change is inevitable.

On the cover of Sandman #01 the face of Dream is inspired by
Bauhaus' Peter Murphy's face.

‘The Sandman: Overture’ Recreates Goth Culture With A New Take On Death'

Artist J.H. Williams talks MTV News through his artistic process on the new comic book.

Writer Neil Gaiman created goth culture in 1989 when he introduced the Death character into his seminal comic-book series “The Sandman.” Or maybe goth culture created Death?

It’s a little confusing on the timeline, and we’ll get to why in a second. But which came first, the chicken or the Death isn’t as important as the fact that 25 years later, Death — and The Sandman himself — is making her comeback in a prequel series being released by Vertigo Comics on Wednesday (October 30).

The series, titled “The Sandman: Overture,” is again written by Gaiman, and drawn by critically acclaimed artist J.H. Williams III. In the book, Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams, is drawn into an interstellar conflict and may cause the eventual doom of his brothers and sisters, The Endless, in the process. One of those siblings? The soft-spoken, generally cheerful Death, a far cry from the skeletal figure depicted in most media.

“I don’t know how much the artists early on in the series would think of this, but I always saw [Death as] being taken off of Siouxsie Sioux, from Siouxsie and the Banshees,” Williams told MTV News on the phone in anticipation of the books’ release. “In some ways, Death played off of that, and turned around and influenced goth culture, and the goth look for music. There’s kind of like this circle going on there.”

 source: www.mtv.com