The badge of shame

The little heads with pointed hats you can see in a row over the giant’s door represent Jews. In 1267 a council is held in St. Stephen’s, at which the big-wigs of the church are hell-bent on restoring order and purifying stock in a Vienna ‘gone to rack and ruin’. Even then, the Jewish population are the scapegoat and a dress code is established to differentiate between Jews and Christians. Jewish people are forced to where a pointy, yellow hat, the pileus cornutus. Incidentally this is common practice in most Christian countries in Europe at the time: in Italy we find the red cape, in France a white and red cross. At the end of the Middle Ages the pileus is replaced in Germany with a yellow patch on the chest, a so-called badge of shame. When NS Minister for Propaganda Joseph Goebbels orders Jews to wear the star in 1938, he is in fact observing a historical model, just in a new form.