Henkerhaus, Bernau bei Berlin

The Hangman's House is a listed residential building in the center of Bernau near Berlin. It was built in the first half of the 18th century as a half-timbered house in stud construction. During the reconstruction of the building in the 19th century, it received its plaster facade, which still exists today.

The back of the building closes with the wall ring of the medieval city fortification. The house served as the town's executioner's office until the middle of the 19th century.

The building has housed a section of the Bernau Museum of Local History since 1976. An exhibition presents the history of the executioner's shop. The reconstructed Black Kitchen gives evidence of everyday life in the period from the 17th to the 19th century. Another exhibition deals with the attack of the Hussites on the town in 1432.

In the chronicle of Tobias Seiler 1736 the names of 25 women and 3 men who were tried as witches in Bernau between 1536 and 1658 are listed, including the trial of Dorothea Meermann.

The artist Annelie Grund created the monument to the victims of the witch trials in Bernau next to the executioner's house with the inscription: accused of witchcraft, tortured, killed. It was inaugurated on 31 October 2005.

Witch monument in Bernau