Why Early Modern Mass Incarceration Matters: The Bamberg Malefizhaus, 1627–31

• Published in: Journal of social history Vol. 56; no. 4; pp. 719 - 752
• Main Author: Weinreich, Spencer J
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Oxford University Press 01.06.2023
• Subjects: 17th century; Confessions; Early modern period; Economic history; Imprisonment; Middle Ages; Modernism; Oppression; Prisons; Questioning; Social life & customs; Solitary confinement; Sophistication; Torture; Violent crime; Witchcraft
• ISSN: 0022-4529; 1527-1897
• DOI: 10.1093/jsh/shac066

Abstract In 1627, at the height of the Bamberg witch-hunt (1595–1631), the prince-bishopric erected the Malefizhaus (“witchcraft-house”), the first cellular prison purpose-built for solitary confinement. This article recovers the history of the Malefizhaus to establish the importance of imprisonment and carceral institutions to the early modern witch-craze. The prison at once concretized the ideology of the hunt and furnished a fearsome weapon of persecution, extracting the confessions without which no inquisitorial campaign could function. By reconstructing the singular architecture and internal regimen of the Malefizhaus, this article demonstrates the sophistication of early modern interrogations, a process distorted by an outsized interest in torture. Having recognized the Malefizhaus as a driver of the witch-hunt, it is possible to recognize the prison’s impact upon Bamberg’s seventeenth-century history—disrupting political and economic relationships, displacing populations, and disciplining social life. The case of the Bamberg witches’ prison counters the modernist slant of the study of the prison, proof that medieval and early modern carceral institutions shaped the history of their societies, despite smaller scales and weaker state apparatuses. In turn, the essay argues that the critical tools of carceral studies, developed to study contemporary mass incarceration, can profitably be applied to premodern practices and institutions, offering insight into patterns of violence, the development of repressive structures, and the problems of “crime” as a historical category.