Law returns to Bonn

Small time Medieval criminals in Britain were often locked into stocks and pillories in town squares for public ridicule. Germany also made its contribution to making a rogues life uncomfortable however – The Pranger. Bonn was no exception, and it took a hefty collision with a lorry to finally end its days outside the Münsterbasilika. Until recently that is.  Another in our series looking at famous and not-so-famous Bonn landmarks.

26 July 2005 in Bonn was a day on which the spirits of many a long dead medieval rogue might have looked down on the Münsterbasilika and smiled. On that day a careless lorry driver felled in a moment the City’s symbol of Civic law at its most public. A symbol that has stood for many years and held captive many criminals.

On 24 July 2007 Mayoress Bärbel Dieckmann unveiled the renovated ‘Bonner Pranger’, back in its former place of honour outside the main door to the Münsterbasilika. Some might argue that on the day she also became the first ‘victim’ for a ‘barracking’ from the public, since Bonn’s ‘Save the Metropol’ initiative took the unveiling as an opportunity to demonstrate it’s displeasure with the Council’s handling of the currently threatened Bonn Theatre.

People who were ‘pranged’ in the Middle Ages certainly had it much worse though. Petty thieves and the like would be chained by the neck to a brass ring on the Pranger’s pole and subjected to any abuse, oral and physical, that the passing Townsfolk might like to meter out. The time chained up though was usually only the start of their misery. It would lead to their being ostrasized by the entire community since being seen with such a person was to be considered as being like them. In short, it meant no further part in the community – and the community was vital at a time when barter was as important as money in the hand.

Proof that the Bonn Pranger is still used to this day

For the record, the Pranger is 2.70m high and made from Roman Sandstone with a trachyte (volcanic rock) base. The top ‘cannonball’ represents the ‘Citizen’s Law’ by which the offenders were tried. Records of the time show that paying for the parading of criminals was a matter of some contention. A list was even drawn up detailing charges for each form of torture carried out.

Some might wish that the brass ring was put back on the Pranger’s forbidding surface and it was again made ‘ready for action’.  For now though we will just have to chain people who annoy us to the post with our imaginations.

Who knows what the future might hold though – the Council wanted it put back after all!