Gerechtigkeitsspirale

Gerechtigkeitsspirale (German: "spiral of justice") is a relief carving of a poem at the pilgrimage church of St. Valentin in Kiedrich, in Hesse, Germany.

The text is carved in the form of a spiral on the front of one of the pews for the congregation, creating possibly the earliest known shape poem in the German language.

The tendrils are stylized and include a caricature in the form of a human face in profile, just above and to the right of the last letter of the word "verlorn" (lost).

[2][6] The content of the text recalls the struggle of the virtues and vices described by the early Christian poet Prudentius in his work Psychomachia.

[7] The first lines of the text are used as the epigraph of the 2013 crime fiction book Tod im Klostergarten (Death in the Abbey Garden) by Roland Stark.

The northern aisle of the church.