The Iron Maiden, a medieval torture device with internal spikes, is now believed to be a hoax by historians. Physical examples only date back to the late 1800s, and it may have been a misinterpretation of other torture techniques. An Iron Maiden was discovered in Iraq in 2003, likely used to punish athletes.
Supposedly, the Iron Maiden, or Eiserne Jungfrau, was used as a torture device in medieval Germany. It consists of a large, roughly human-shaped cabinet with fiercely sharp internal spikes. The victim would be placed inside and the doors would slowly close, causing the spikes to impale him, causing intense discomfort. If fully enclosed in the Iron Maiden long enough, the victim would likely have bled to death, assuming the spikes hadn’t punctured a lung or other vital organ. However, the Iron Maiden story is in dispute, with numerous historians now believing it to be a hoax.
Physical examples of iron maidens only date back to the late 1800s, and some historians have suggested that the device was never actually used during the medieval period, although a host of other unsavory methods of torture were certainly employed. The best example of an Iron Maiden was the Nuremberg Iron Maiden, which was first exhibited in 1892, shortly after it was built, and later destroyed during the Allied bombing of Germany in the 1940s. Several historians suspect that the lurid story of the Iron Maiden was actually an invention of Johann Philipp Siebenkees, an eighteenth-century German philosopher. Accounts of the Iron Maiden cannot be found from any period prior to the 1700s, although most other medieval torture devices were extensively catalogued.
The Iron Maiden could also be seen as a misinterpretation of several medieval torture techniques, including the “cloak of shame,” a wooden construction worn by minor offenders in public. The coat of shame was often weighted, to increase the physical discomfort caused by wearing the device, and the public was invited to hurl insults and objects at the offender as punishment. After the criminal had been sufficiently humiliated, the cloak of shame was taken off, but it no doubt left bruised marks behind. Siebenkees may have decided to take the idea a bit further to illustrate medieval-era brutality, and it’s possible that sensationalists constructed exaggerated iron maidens for display with the cloak of shame as inspiration, though the devices didn’t have ever actually been used.
Several 19th-century Iron Maidens hang in museums around the world, but are unlikely to have ever been employed. Ironically, the Iron Maiden was probably not used until the 20th century. In 2003, an iron maiden was discovered in an abandoned soccer field in Iraq by invading American forces, and former athletes said it was used to punish athletes who didn’t perform up to standard. The device was probably used under the direction of Uday Hussein when he headed the Iraqi Olympic Committee.
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