Monday, December 14, 2009

Studentenkarzer Heidelberg











Well the week before I leave Heidelberg I am doing all my Christmas shopping and doing a little Heidelberg sight seeing while packing up and getting ready to fly back to the states on Friday. On Monday, I visited the Studentenkarzer. It is Heidelberg University's student prison. Of course it was shut down in 1914 and is now just a tiny little museum of sorts. Back as far as the 16th century, citizen complaints of carousing students lead to the opening of the Studentenkarzer where academic misfits were kept off the streets for three days to four weeks. It is about the size of a large apartment and had a door connected to the Old University so the prisoners could go to school during their confinement. There is student graffiti all over the walls, floor and ceiling and it actually became a right of passage at the University to spend a little time behind bars. Didn't seem like it could have been too bad. Back in that time before World War I, you may have been sent to the "prison" for disturbing the peace, womanizing, unruly drunkenness, and setting the townspeoples pigs free. Just image what they would have done for the types of misconduct students do now. Overall, a pretty interesting place. Cool find.

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