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Pursuit(Continued from Page V)a tourist office in the present-day city, where officials are still insisting that there is no Nuernberg Virgin.“A couple of years ago,” says one of them, a little indignantly, “there were reports that the Iron Virgin was up for sale in London. And some silly people here wanted the city to bid for it — bring it back. We did nothing of the sort.”The tourist officials mention that a converted medieval jail at Rothenburg ob der Tauber, 50 miles away, now houses a rich collection of art from that age and suggest that the Iron Virgin — or someone who knows the fate of it — might be found there. They are so glad to see me off that they phone Rothen-burg’s tourist office to announce my coming.OTHENBURG ob der Tauberthanks to many generations of Ro-thenburgers who liked it that way — is probably the finest surviving example of a medieval town. The population stands at about 12,000 but the town has never recovered the wealth, influence, and political power it held before the Thirty Years’ war (1618-48).Cold rain was falling on the “Gem of the Middle Ages” when we — my wife and I lt;— oriented ourselves in the tourist office at the eroded but stately townhall (which has dungeons in the basement). We announced that we were looking for the Iron Virgin of Nuernberg.“The Iron Virgin? Then you want to see Herr Hinckeldey — Christoph Hinckeldey — but he’s on a trip to Africa. He’s the proprietor of our Foelter-kammer—torture chamber.”A town map showed that the Hinckeldey museum perches high above the Tauber river within walls, gates, and watchtowers stormed in 1631 by the imperial general, Count Tilly, because Rothenburg had gone Protestant.“But you will find Frau Hinckeldey, his mother, at the Burg hotel,” the girl added. “Also the Iron Virgin of Nuernberg!”She put no exclamation point on that sentence, but we did!IT WAS still raining when we got there, clammy gray noon time. The hotel was closed to guests, but the young woman in charge listened gravely to our plea. We could not possibly wait until Herr Hinckeldey returned from his safari. Could we talk to liis mother? Maybe, but just what did we want? The girl would go and ask.We want to see the Iron Virgin.”“I’m afraid that’s impossible. It's inthe workshop under restoration.”“But we’ve driven hundreds of miles just for a glimpse!”Counting the trip to Nuernberg, that wras the truth.She considered briefly. “Come this way,” she said.The young woman led us through a narrow ground floor hallway to the back of the small hotel. I thought we were on our way to Frau Wittke Hinckeldey, the mother. But were were not. At the end of the corridor, the girl opened the door to a tiny room which, from its size, I took to be servants’ quarters.Then we recognized it! Her.The Iron Virgin lay head first before us on a trestled platform and a padding of excelsior. But not all of her. One of the two doors that make up the front of her iron-sheathed cloak stood against the wall, and on another support by the single window was a pile of rust, ‘dust, and powdery, dead-rotted w'ood in bits and chunks from her decaying pineInterior.It was like entering a morgue to Page VIIIidentify a body. The figure lay 7% feet long in her hellish cloak. We saw the resemblance at once to the Virgin shown in a tiny drawing—the only representation we had found—on a bound packet of postcards entitled “Romantic Nuernberg,” which had somehow escaped thegeneral Verbot.M' WIFE gingerly touched the pitted iron mantle where it seemed to button for the closure of the two-front door. I examined the other door, the one against the wall, without touching it, but at such an angle that I could see the spikes. Indeed, they seemed newer, or better preserved, than the ironwork of the figure. They were of steel, each with four tapered sides like daggers.Now Frau Hinckeldey had joined us in the crowded little room, a kindly, white-haired wisp of a gentlewoman who is a sculptor. She seemed, however politely, to disapprove of our presence and inspection of the Jungfrau.“This figure no longer exists,” she said, explaining that her son had bought the Virgin with the intention of putting iLsafely away from public view forever. ‘It’s too grausam—too cruel!’’She waved away my argument that time—the centuries—had left the Virgin merely an interesting curio. I'was certain now of its antiquity if not of my argument.“But this is the genuine figure,” she went on. “Fop many years, up to the end of the war, Nuernberg had only a replica. Yes, this one has been to America and back.”Then she dropped what, for me, amounted to a bombshell. She said thather son had purchased the Virgin (for about $5,000) at Sotheby’s in 1968. So this was to be the final irony: After chasing all over the German countryside, with detours into Dracula country, trying to track down the Nuernberg Virgin I was to learn that she had been publicly offered for sale moi’e than a year earlier at the famous London auction house.And not only that. I was also to discover, during my later investigation,that another, altogether different IronVirgin had been sold by Sotheby’s in 1965 to Adrian Conan Doyle, son of the creator of Sherlock Holmes, and that this one had come from the collection of William Randolph Hearst, the late newspaper magnate.Checking Sotheby's records, I found that the Jungfrau Hinckeldey possessed had been in the tower of the Nuernberg castle only until 1890, when she fell into the hands of the earl of Shrewsbury. Shewas later acquired near the turn of the century, by Henry Walters of Baltimore, but her subsequent history, before sheturned up at Sotheby’s in 1968, is not a matter of public record. Hinckeldey bought her from an anonymous seller.HUS, there were, or are, at least two Iron Virgins of Nuernberg, one probably the replica of the other — indeed, there may be a whole Germanic family of these horrors. That being established, it takes no Holmes-Watson detective work to deduce that if the Shrewsbury-Walters-Hinckeldey line of ownership forthe Virgin is correct, and it is acceptedas genuine, then these conclusionsfollow:1. Nuernberg had only a replica of theVirgin between 1890 and 1945.2. The Nuernberg city council may have been correct in saying the city’s Jungfrau had never been used — just as tourist officials now speak of a falsification in the last century.3. American soldiers and/or others who “liberated” the Virgin from the bombed tower in 1945 passed on a phony or at best another antique of the same genre.4. If there are only two figures, then Hearst got the phony and Adrian Conan Doyle bought it from him — for 2.200 pounds sterling, as the price wasreported.That last point, however, appearsdisputable on at least two grounds.Charles R. Beard considerably upped theVirgin count in 1941 with a scholar!;article in a London collector’s magazine,in which he authenticated the Jungfrauowned by Hearst. And in 1967, a London dealer in antiquities, Peter Dale, advertised for sale a collection of gruesome devices, from thumbscrews to witching tools, and an Iron Virgin of Nuernberg” besides *— all for 50,000 pounds ($120,000).And to accept Stoker’s description in “The Squaw” at face value, and with it the surviving but questionable Nuernberg tradition of a cast-iron figure — I was surprised as a little boy,” said one guide, “to discover that the Iron Virgin was made of wood” — is to hypothesize still another now lost in the mists of memory.Will the real Iron Virgin (or Virgins) of Nuernberg please stand up and lie counted?(c) 1970 Chicago Tribune.V V-V' ' y«■s'VS’■-s-'AnvJA.m•V•v JO*\*y.V'N' .V.S' -■y.\sxrm.v- ..•ft-«V.vAVA1’v - VJ. -r. _.yvs *■K: :.V.v V:■ a*vAt-■tv’s*■ • ■Of ■ - Jtv-AA;,1.Xi%•v . ,m-X*.’v ' \ ,\• VS\'p4''■a-vNo..s lt;shi*?.vS..A-vV»S VVV' S' ’|VA-•a;-: » * A'VOtomi*'V.N-s .t.v CfvN**vA’ibA VitJXA Awv-» rT-N '} ’ »A’iL;,v.X V. vV. s'*iw-v.•V1»’yI rmx-h-■v.sXv*■41-l?* ;'.v-V:.s-*o :•-A ■ VivS -Vwr.'tfo, ■ a-;Vv'S-• .A- ,V*-t lt;A-N-,vr•a'I ^n'AV'A. 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' 'y :•■*§ . :.nw.Yv^ .‘.v.-vx-\\ • ‘ - +* Vm iiw* M.'.A.S -V«*. v:v;*• o.-fi**'.--. ■.s'OO Jl ... •' - ' -NVOld postcard shows Iron Virgin when it was a more popular tourist sight..• • ' 1 r -V, 'n ' * , •*. ■ '•' '■ s, \i j. v^: • v*:ivfI111ItITHE STARS AND STRIPESSunday, October 4, 1970-*t’.‘.4,X|f i. 1-t ■ /*111»•»£1A2]iImhyft%Ssifnai1
Newspaper Details
European Stars and Stripes
Darmstadt, Hesse, DE
Sun, Oct 04, 1970
Page 19
Full Page
Clipped by
Gary P.
IL, USA 29 Jun 2023
Other Publications Near Darmstadt, Hesse
Allgemeine Kirchen Zeitung
European Stars and Stripes
