![]() ![]() ![]() A woman caught gossiping might be forced into a long-tongued, large-eared mask which connoted how she eavesdropped and spoke out of turn about the business of others. A man who got drunk and sloppy at a tavern or who was dirty and unkempt could be sentenced to wearing a mask with a pig’s snout, for example. Each social transgression was represented by different facial characteristics. Narcissism was just one of several “antisocial” and illegal behaviors punished by the schandmaske, says Hirte. One who got drunk and sloppy at a tavern or who was dirty and unkempt could be sentenced to wearing a mask with a pig’s snout. The punishment itself typically lasted a few hours or perhaps a day, but the shame it brought to the offender lived on long after the mask was removed. For those who didn’t, a placard describing the crime was hung around the neck. ![]() Whether they knew the individual personally or not, the community would have instantly recognized the crime through the mask’s symbolism even today, “cocky” refers to a swaggering, vainglorious man. The wearer’s speech was muzzled by the massive beak but his eyes were left uncovered: all the better to watch the citizens hurling insults while the offender stood chained to a pillory in the marketplace or was slowly escorted through the town. Like all shame masks, the rooster was a full headdress that was pulled over the face and locked in place at the back of the neck. “Many even had bells or a trunk that whistled when the person wearing it would breathe just to garner attention.” “The masks were fashioned to be as eye-catching as possible,’ explains Markus Hirte, the managing director of the Medieval Crime Museum in the central German city of Rothenburg ob-der Tauber, which has one of the most extensive collections of shame masks in the world and one of the last roosters to survive to the 21st century. Peacocking proletariats were sentenced to wear the rooster, a pounded metal schandmaske with a fleshy comb and wattle, elaborately wrought feathers and a long beak. Those who were “cocky”-swaggering, vainglorious-would be forced to wear a rooster mask for hours or even a day. The punishment for such a violation was public shaming, and in 17th-century Germany, as well as elsewhere in central Europe, England and Scotland, not much was more humiliating than the schandmaske, or shame mask. Restoring the social order, though, required more than a monetary payoff. The size of a man’s collar, the fabric used to make his cloak, even the colors in which he dressed, were regulated by law.Ĭommoners who dared to wear the symbols of the upper class were fined for their chutzpah. Wealthy citizens and members of nobility could wear sumptuous garments and drape their homes in finery but not those of lower socio-economic status. Extravagance was not well tolerated in medieval Germany. ![]()
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