The collection dates back to a small private collection belonging to the publisher and archivist Karl Albrecht in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The collection was housed in what was known as the "Rothenburg Torture Chamber" in the castle hotel tower on Klostergasse (Monastery Lane) and was based on GFGeuder's famous Nuremberg torture chamber exhibit.
The Rothenburg Torture Chamber collection and building were taken over, expanded and presented as a museum by the artist couple Ernst Paul Hinckeldey and Marta Hinckeldey-Wittke. Since the 1950s, their son Christoph Hinckeldey and his wife Hildegard have continued the collection and expanded the exhibition area to include the castle hotel cellar.
The gradual extension of the collection and the expansion of the museum facilities into a comprehensive museum for law and justice within the German-speaking region necessitated the expansion of the museum premises in the 1970s. For this reason the museum moved to the former Commenda di San Giovanni in Burggasse in Rothenburg in 1977.
In late 1993, the founding family transferred the museum's main building and parts of the collection to a foundation under public law based in Rothenburg ob der Tauber. The city of Rothenburg donated the nearby Johanniterscheune (St. John's granary) to the foundation. The purpose of the foundation was to promote the pursuit of science and research in addition to the management of the museum.
After the death of the founder Christoph Hinckeldey, Dr. Karl-Heinz Schneider took over the management of the Medieval Crime Museum. From 1994 to 1996, the Johanniterscheune was refurbished in line with monument conservation guidelines and has been used for exhibitions, conferences and the café since 1997. Since June 2013, Dr. Markus Hirte, LL.M. he was the head of the Museum of Medieval Crime.
Meanwhile, the Medieval Crime Museum includes around 50,000 artifacts from over 1,000 years of German and European legal history and is one of the most important and popular legal and criminal museums in Germany and Europe.
The Medieval Crime Museum is located in the former St. John's Commandery in Rothenburg, built between 1393 and 1410 together with the nearby St. John's Church. In 1718 the building was transformed into the Baroque style that characterizes the architecture of the building today.
During the period of secularization, in the 19th century the building passed to the Bavarian electorate (which became the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1806) and housed the Royal Bavarian District Authority.
In 1919 the building was used as the administrative headquarters in the Rothenburg district. During the reform of the rural district and the dissolution of the Rothenburg rural district in 1972, the house was no longer needed as an administrative building and was purchased by the founder's family.
After extensive restoration and transformation works.
Medieval Crime Museum
Address: Burggasse 3-5, 91541
Phone: +49 9861 5359
Site:
https://www.kriminalmuseum.eu/?lang=enLocation inserted by
giulia