Beggar with Staff and Linen Bag (17th Century)
Beggars were universal figures of city life. After the Thirty Years War, when poverty reached new extremes, beggars could be sentenced to severe corporal punishment and sent to work houses along with petty criminals. Woodcut by Ludolph Büsinck (1590-1669), 17th century.
© Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz
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