Rossmann medieval chastity-belts

Submitted by: Chris

Altairboy, Coming across your website(s), I found some interesting photos concerning the "Rossmann belt", which is made in Carinthia (Austria) .

http://www.tpe.com/~altarboy/not80515.htm
http://www.tpe.com/~altarboy/not90507.htm

Although the cuts were taken from a German TV-station show in 1996/97 or so, I might add some further information given in an article - dated Sunday, 16.Jan. 1994-, seen in the weekend edition of a daily newspaper, called "Kronen Zeitung" (www.krone.at) , about the manufactorer and the belt.

Manufacturer and Residence:
Herbert Rossmann, blacksmith with a faible for the medieval ages
Friesacherstrasse
Sankt Veit an der Glan
A-9300 Austria (Carinthia)
Translator: GRISU(m)

I've no permission from the publisher nor the editor nor anyone else to post that article, but it seems to me that you and your site-visitors interested in the topic of CB's should get to know this article, besides it's an old one.!?

Article: Title: HOT STUFF - Chaste, Further Than Waist Line
Editor of the Article: Trude Sagmeister (f)
Lexica: Florentine- or Venus Belt:

Metal belt with Padlock, worn by women around the abdomen and genitals during the absence of the husband to preserve chastity, in use since the crusades.

I don't want to complain about the circumstances writing this article, as I'm sitting in a soft-cushioned seat in my comfortable and well-heated private office, though something strange disturbs the daily routine.

It tickles, squeezes, clangs, rattles and even hurts, thinking about intimate urgencies and needs is illusionary and frustrating, until the last line of the article has been written (for obvious reason as the belt is lined with leather inside the steel or brass parts). I wouldn't wear it to last consequence but till the end of this report to get a short glimpse of what in medieval times (and nowadays?) Sweet Gwendoline and their Sisters in Fate had to endure,

namely "enforced chastity".

It's almost (really?) impossible to imagine function of this device, as it looks like a tank-chain but reduced to measure the human (female) anatomy. The instep is covered with two sheet-metal plates, the front piece features a small notched slit that prohibits any intrusion from outside and the rear one is the anus piece which allows to defecate through a hole (1.25" to 1,5"diam.) while belted (if the wearer wants or has to soil the inner lining).

All of the adjoining sheet-metal parts are hinged and hot rivetted to achieve a snug fit and of course locked with a single padlock at the belly where the waist-band and the instep-band meets. There would be no sense in the whole affair to fabricate a metal-chastity-belt without a padlock.!?

Mr Rossmann, due to the fact that he restores and copies knights inventory and funeral blacksmith handiwork as crosses and fences and hellebardes and...for primary business, came across an old drawing of a chastity device and thereupon decided to manufact an imitate of this belt. As the blacksmith said, it's a high quality handwork wich would cause problems to make as it needs to be welded, rivetted and filed with acuracy and "feeling" in your fingertips for purpose of wearing it next to the skin.

Off to dozens (!?!) the steel chastity belts leave Mr Rossmanns working place since first advertising, but as you know handmade quality has it's price, he demands about 300 US$ (without padlock, stock steel) up to 1600US$ (antique brass beaten/ Velvet or leather lining/ original medieval padlock imitation brass).

Anecdotes by Mr Rossmann: (2)

Three days ago a young maiden just asked me to deliver the chastity belt (made to measure(ments) were taken some times ago) with the key right on time, which means on wedding day just before the official ceremony. She puts on the device, snapped it shut, and gave the key to her husband right after the official ceremony...

For advertizing, Austrian, German and Canadian TV-stations got some models, who put on the chastity-belt underneath voluntarily(!?!) and has them lead trough the X-Ray-Service at Klagenfurt Airport You can imagine the faces, moods of the supervising officers searching for the hidden metal !?!.

Please excuse to my "Ingles narrativa".

chr_grisu@yline.com (26. Oct. 1999)


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