Debt tower was - particularly in the Middle Ages and the early modern times - a prison, in which defaulting debtors an indefinite time in a tower were kept imprisoned.

The detention served primarily the pressure practice on the debtor (so-called press ion detention). Also the possibility partly existed of serving its debts (e.g. in Nuremberg).

Before introduction of the debt tower one knew the debt farmhand shank (often accompanying with a processing possibility) and the detention in private prisons (so-called private detention). The public imprisonment for debt became in the late Middle Ages and at the beginning of the early modern times in completely Germany the rule. The term debt tower became on the basis of the cure-Saxonian constitutions the key word for the public imprisonment for debt in the debtor's prison. The public imprisonment for debt became only in 19. Century in the entire German Reich abolished.

In most cities the towers served the city attachment as urban prisons. For certain sanctions there were own prisons, and the towers received from it partly also its name (e.g. blood tower, thief tower, debt tower).

As metaphor the term is today still in the political-social like also the legal language common. One speaks for example of the "“eternal debt tower"” or a "“debt tower obligation"” and means with the fact that a debtor cannot free itself from his crushing burden of debts from own Kraft. This problem was defused however by the introduction of the consumer credit law and balance of debt release.

Literature

• Steffen Bressler: Debt farmhand shank and debt tower. To the Personalexekution in the Saxonian right 13. - 16. Century. 487 S. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot 2004. ISBN: 3428113489 () ()

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