Museum De Waag

The Waag is a building that has been a defining feature of the center of Deventer since 1531. According to the fact checkers, this is the oldest weighing building in the Netherlands that was built for that purpose. Older weighing buildings elsewhere previously had a different function. The Waag is a late Gothic building whose landing at the front is dominant, partly due to the stairs on either side. In the past, goods were weighed in the Waag to determine the amount of tax to be paid. Nowadays it houses a museum: Museum De Waag. These are mainly pieces from the urban collection of Deventer that you can admire here.

A cauldron of boiling oil against counterfeiting
The oldest weighing building in the Netherlands, the Waag on the Brink in Deventer, has a grim history of counterfeiting. The Waag was built between 1528 and 1531 and served to weigh the goods sold on the market before merchants bought them, with the idea that it protected the customer from getting what he was entitled to. This weighing had to be paid for. So you can actually see it as a kind of tax that the city levied on trade. The weighing house was newly built in 1528 because more and more merchants came to the city and a larger weighing house was therefore needed. On one of the side walls of the weigh house in Deventer hangs a large copper cauldron, which is apparently of very old age. It has had its place there for as long as memory goes and every passer-by who sees it inevitably asks about its history. Many Deventer residents know that the large copper cauldron hanging on the Waag was once used to execute a criminal. Many listeners can hardly believe that a villain was cooked in piping hot oil. Yet the facts provide a solid basis for the true and sad story of the counterfeiter. Over the years, the Waag has always had a public function. The weighing house served, among other things, as a place where the main guard was stationed, but also as an office where counterfeiting was prevented. Deventer used to have its own money. From the fourteenth century onwards, the criminal law of many Dutch cities included a specific punishment for coin fraud. This involved tampering with the composition of precious metal coins. This crime was particularly bad when a mint master in office committed it. For him it was very tempting to scrape an edge of gold or silver from the side of the coin or to mix inferior metal with the gold or silver when composing the food. It is equally understandable that thus bringing legal tender into disrepute was considered a serious offence. Criminal law prescribed that the fraudster was 'soaked' in boiling oil. Whether the delinquent was put into the cauldron alive or whether only his head was immersed in the boiling oil is not clear. In any case, it would not have been pleasant for the mint master of the powerful Gelderland lord of Batenburg when his deception was discovered in 1434. The city accounts for that year give an idea of the state of affairs. For example, the unfortunate mint master was served a portion of wine in prison, the external advisor who determined the crime and the executioner received their fees and the coppersmith Johan Peterszoon received his payment for a new boiler weighing 146 pounds. An old and probably worn-out boiler was delivered to the city. Peterszoon's cauldron, which shows the characteristics of being created in the fifteenth century, still hangs at the Waag. The city accounts of 1434 only state that he was not buried in “a decent coffin”, but was buried in “a barrel” in the ground. To deter others, this cauldron was certainly displayed in public later. The sight of the cauldron certainly gives us an unpleasant sensation when we remember the cruel punishment that was once carried out in it, but it will also be accompanied by the pleasant idea that we live in times and countries in which such barbarities, however severe, the crimes may have been, can never take place again. Not only because both criminal law and the composition of the coins have changed, but also because the kettle now looks more like a colander. It is said that they were soldiers of the occupying Napoleonic army who practiced their shooting skills there in 1813 with the boiler as a target. Since Groningen students kidnapped the colossus as a joke, it has also been firmly attached to the wall.