Dukatenscheißer Goslar: Medieval Carving & Lore

On the northeastern corner of the historic Kaiserworth building in Goslar, Germany, sits one of the most unusual architectural details of the Late Middle Ages: the Dukatenscheißer. Created in 1494, this Late-Gothic wood-and-stone console carving depicts a crouching man with his breeches lowered, expelling gold coins from his bare buttocks while gripping a twisted stone column.

Positioned on the building at Marktplatz 3, the figure forms an exterior corner bracket that is freely visible from the public street. Though foreign travelers sometimes confuse the motif with Catalonia’s festive caganer traditions, the Dukatenscheißer belongs firmly to the civic history of Lower Saxony.

Guild Wealth and Gothic Satire

During the late 15th century, the Free Imperial City of Goslar flourished financially due to the nearby silver, copper, and lead deposits of Mount Rammelsberg. Goslar's cloth merchants (Wandschneider) built the Kaiserworth as their opulent guildhall, decorating the exterior with statues of emperors and allegorical figures to broadcast their civic standing.

Directly above the Dukatenscheißer stands a statue of Abundantia, the Roman goddess of wealth and harvest. The architectural pairing deliberately contrasts high classical allegory with blunt Northern European scatological humor. Historians interpret the figure directly beneath Abundantia's feet as an ironic critique of merchant capitalism, unregulated lending, and the fantasy of effortlessly producing wealth out of thin air.

The Debtor Shaming Ritual of Butarschen

Beyond artistic satire, local tradition connects the carving to a public insolvency practice known as Butarschen (or Bottarschen). Located roughly 90 centimeters beneath the figure is an angled stone seat.

Debtors who were unable to repay guild loans were subjected to a formal shaming ceremony at this spot. Before an assembled crowd, the debtor was required to turn their pockets inside out, lower their trousers, and press their bare backside against the cold stone block below the Dukatenscheißer. While this humiliating procedure formally erased the individual's monetary debt, it resulted in permanent Ehrverlust—the total forfeiture of civic honor and social standing.

Linguistic Legacy and Symbolism

The penal nature of the carving is reinforced by the twisted column the figure holds, traditionally identified as a Schandpfahl (pillory or whipping post). Over the centuries, the imagery and the insolvency ritual left an indelible mark on the German language.

German folklore links the Butarschen ceremony directly to the modern idiom "die Hosen runterlassen" ("to pull down one's trousers"), which means to make a full, unvarnished disclosure of one's financial position. Additionally, the term Dukatenscheißer entered everyday speech as a sarcastic comeback to excessive financial demands, roughly translating to the English sentiment, "I am not made of money."

The Site Today

In 1831, the former merchant guildhall was converted into an inn. Today, the structure operates as the historic Hotel Kaiserworth. Situated at the junction of Marktplatz and Worthstraße within Goslar's historic town center, the small carving remains affixed to its original corner perch, looking down onto the market cobblestones below the grand red facade and Gothic arcades.