Marian Muzyka entered the town hall building with a renovation crew at the end of the 1960s. The workers were intrigued by a room with a hook driven into the ceiling, beneath which there was a trapdoor, while the walls bore, as the witness put it, “some scribblings in German.” The sight was so intriguing that even years later, Mr Muzyka could not forget it.
We asked historians from the Museum of Ceramics whether it was possible for a gallows to have been located in the town hall. Anna Bober-Tubaj replied that it was very unlikely, but the story and the witness herself greatly interested her, and she promised to contact Mr Muzyka.
When asked whether the hook he had seen and the trapdoor could have been a place of execution such as the restored starvation dungeon, the witness denied this. Asked whether the hook might have been used to lift heavy objects, he also firmly denied that. He believed that the strange construction looked as though it had been a gallows.
Gallows in Bolesławiec: the prestige of stone execution sites
Our readers and local-history enthusiasts know that three gallows existed in Bolesławiec at various times. One of them stood in the market square. During the Thirty Years’ War, a second one was built there. The third, a massive masonry structure, was located southeast of the town center, near Gallows Pond, in the vicinity of the primary school on Bielskiej Street.
A masonry gallows was not so much an execution tool as a sign of the town’s prestige. In practice, it indicated that the town could invest in a monumental and durable structure.
Towns competed to build the larger and more capacious gallows. Even places without municipal rights could persuade a patron to build a gallows, and wealthy landowners funded construction in order to raise the place’s standing on the regional map.
The architecture of masonry gallows, although always simple and usually tower-like, was not uniform. In Bohemia, they were built on a quadrangular plan, while in Switzerland they had a triangular plan. The most important elements of the structures were stone pillars, on which wooden beams used to attach ropes were placed.
Among the places recorded in chronicles as locations “where, several hundred years ago, hanged men dangled from masonry gallows” are Jawor, Świdnica, Kąty Wrocławskie, Sobótka, Świebodzice, Strzegom, Bolesławiec, Kamienna Góra, Jelenia Góra, Lądek Zdrój, Lewin Kłodzki, and Legnica.
According to historians, Lower Silesia may have had as many as 300–400 stone gallows. In light of historical sources, the first of the currently known Silesian gallows was erected in Wrocław.