Anna Roleffes

Anna Roleffes , Roleff or Roloffs , widowed Kage (* around 1600 in Walle or Harxbüttel ; † December 30, 1663 in Braunschweig ), commonly known as Tempel Anneke , was a German innkeeper , maid , healer and fortune teller . She was one of the last women to be accused of being a “ witch ” and executed in the city of Braunschweig . The 210-page files of their trial are now in the Braunschweig City Archives .

Legal basis for the witch hunt

Constitutio Criminalis Carolina

The legal basis for the prosecution of witches or wizards was the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina , introduced in 1532 in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation , usually referred to as "Carolina" or in German translation as "embarrassing neck court order of Charles V ". In addition to other criminal offenses, “sorcery” was also considered a serious crime, especially when it came to so-called “ harmful magic” ( Latin: maleficium ) in which other people or things were harmed. The Carolina stated: “Tight the magic. Item if someone harms or disadvantages people through magic, one should tighten from life to death, and one should do it tight with the fire ”. In one such case, the accused awaited the stake if convicted .

Witch hunt in the Duchy of Braunschweig-Lüneburg

Duke Heinrich Julius

The persecution of witches in the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg had taken on frightening proportions , especially during the reign of Duke Heinrich Julius (1589–1613). A chronicle from 1590 reports: “During the fasts of that year, the duke had many sorcerers burned at Wolfenbüttel, when all the maleficants were brought together and judged at one place from the country of Braunschweig, Göttingen and the Cahlenberg region ... As then at Wolfenbüttel Day 10, 12 and more burned, and the place of the Lecheln wood from the magic stakes was to be seen as a small forest. "

One of his successors, August the Younger (1579–1666), although regarded as one of the most learned princes of his time and founder of the fame of the Duke August Library named after him in Wolfenbüttel, was a notorious witch hunter who was responsible for burning 70 “witches “ Is responsible in Hitzacker .

Witch trials in the city of Braunschweig

From the 15th to the 17th century there was evidence of several trials for alleged witchcraft, sorcery or the like. The oldest known case comes from the year 1475. In the Festungsbuch des Weichbildes Neustadt it is noted that Jutte Schomakers , known as “the Herdesche”, was accused of “magic” and convicted. However, she was not punished with death, but, as was customary at the time, expelled from the city after an original feud . The second documented case is Geseke Albrechts, who was accused in 1501 of having charmed cows with milk. She was beheaded and her body subsequently cremated. More cases followed until 1525.

"Temple Anneke"

Anna Roleffes had three brothers. She attended school for three years and learned to read that way. From her mother Ilse, b. , The five years in a lily Bader near Wolfsburg worked as a healer, she was then trained in the healing arts and also had two books inherited from her. She married Hans Kage, who ran an inn called "Tempel" at the "Tempel Hof" in Harxbüttel, a small village a few kilometers northwest of Braunschweig . The property belonged to the Braunschweig St. Blasius Stift . The couple also ran the farm that belongs to it together. They had a son named Hans. On September 3, 1641, Anna's husband was stabbed to death by a soldier at Lechlumer Holz , near Wolfenbüttel, during the siege of Wolfenbüttel in the Thirty Years' War . The son then took over the farm on which his mother continued to live.

She was given the nickname "Temple Anneke" either because she lived in the "Temple courtyard" or because she and her husband ran the temple jug until his death. At that time it was known in the wider area under the name "Temple Anneke". In order to be able to earn a living as a widow , she hired herself as a maid and also worked as a healer and fortune teller, where she was particularly well versed in tracking down thieves and stolen property. As she is said to have been quite successful at this, she was eventually suspected of being a sorceress and of being in league with the devil.

The process

August the Younger : The trial of Tempel Anneke fell during his reign.

At the time of her arrest in June 1663, Tempel Anneke was about 63 years old. She stated her year of birth by stating that she was five years old when Duke Heinrich Julius besieged Braunschweig in 1605. As a result, she was born around 1600.

The first written evidence of allegations made against them dates back to August / September 1662 from the town of Neubrück , a few kilometers west of Braunschweig. Even then, there were official investigations into her actions, as she was independently accused of witchcraft by two people. Temple Anneke was finally arrested in June 1663 on the basis of new allegations relating to the theft of things stolen from roofer Hans Tiehmann. Thereupon the higher court initiated proceedings in which various witnesses were heard and allegations, some of which were already many years ago, were investigated. The proceedings began with the interrogation of the witnesses in the Neustadtrathaus and were then carried out in the higher court of the Weichbildes Hagen . It lasted from June 25th to December 30th, 1663.

Witnesses

The old town hall of Neustadt (drawing by AA Beck before 1772)

On June 25, 1663, the following witnesses appeared in the Neustadt town hall to testify against Anna Roleffes:

• Hans Tiehmann, citizen and roofer of Braunschweiger Neustadt, reported that at the end of 1662 various tin kitchen utensils and various food items had been stolen from him. On the advice of a neighbor, he went to Harxbüttel to have Temple Anneke read from his hand to find out something about the whereabouts of the stolen goods. She is said to have prophesied that she would frighten the thief to such an extent that the robbery would get his property back within 24 hours. The next day, Tiemann found the pewter dishes in front of a neighbor's door. When she visited Tempel Anneke again, she told him that she had put the thief she knew under so much pressure that he had brought the equipment back.
• Hans Harves from Harxbüttel, also known as "Temple Hans" because he was the Kruger of the "Temple" in Harxbüttel, had refused to give Anneke another one without payment five weeks earlier, after she had already borrowed several beers from him on one day. As a result he fell ill in the evening and could only explain this sudden illness by saying that Tempel Anneke had "bewitched" him because he hadn't wanted to give her any more beer. Harves also stated that Tempel Anneke had also helped other people to find stolen property and that she was therefore widely believed to be a “sorceress”. By brewing a potion, she also ended the cattle dying in Harxbüttel.
• Anna Harves, b. Steinmann, wife of Hans Harves, stated that Tempel Anneke gave her a cure for her swollen arm and that she was probably responsible for a man's illness, which she learned from Tempel Anneke's own daughter-in-law. After all, she knows that Temple Anneke has not been to church or at the sacrament for 20 years .
• Hennig Roloff from Wenden testified that in the past year several of his sheep died within a very short time, whereupon he asked Tempel Anneke for help so that his entire herd would not die. This actually cured the animals by burning a dead animal to powder and then giving it to the sheep. Shortly afterwards, however, he himself fell ill without her being able to help him. So he sought advice from “the Ebberschen” in Vordorf , which “this Anneke Herre temple would be”. But she couldn't help him, but told him that Tempel Anneke had done the disease to him. In the end he went to Tempel Anneke again, who tried to cure him but failed.
• Jürgen Roloff, brother of the aforementioned Hennig Roloff, stated that his brother had been "stupid" for five years because his head had been "eaten by the bad things". He therefore does not doubt that Tempel Anneke is also responsible for this, but does not want to claim this.
• Author Barnsdorf or Bahrensdorff from Watenbüttel reported that six years earlier, when he was still at the Kreuzkloster , he had lost several horses under mysterious circumstances. But Tempel Anneke knew where they were, and he soon found his horses again.

Interview and statement by Temple Anneke

On July 1, 1663, Tempel Anneke was questioned about the information provided by the witnesses. In contrast to today's processes, the 66 questions that were asked to her had already been put in writing before the survey, so that it was not possible to formulate new questions, e.g. B. derived from their answers to previous ones. This was the common practice, but it might have As a result, the following questions later contradicted the answers given earlier. The interviewee did not answer some questions. Overall, however, she contradicted the statements made, provided that they were associated with witchcraft, sorcery or machinations with the devil.

Urgicht and execution

First page of the Urgicht dated December 28, 1663. (The transcription is on the picture description page .)

On December 30, 1663 Temple Anneke was on the hangman's cart through the city to the place just outside of Brunswick when Wendentor down. She was accompanied by two clergymen. Some mayors and officials as well as the executioner of the Hagen, Hans Pfeffer or Hansen Pfefferkorn, who, after negotiating the case with Otto Theunen, the Vogt des Hagen again in abbreviated form, were already waiting at the place of execution . In view of her repentance and her confession, Tempel Anneke was granted a special token of mercy : she was given the painful death by fire at the stake , instead she was beheaded and her body subsequently cremated.

The following is noted in the chamber book:

"6 mr champion Hansen Pfefferkorn the judge Scharff which verbrennete TA [sic] decoliret , verbrente, even the latter number mahl güttlich andt greulich Hear the loud statements give regular 21 Aprilis 1664"

- Rohmann : Temple Anneke: The trial of the last “witch” from Braunschweig 1663…. P. 106.

Case files

It is unusual that court records from a 17th century trial - even if it was a "witch trial" - have survived to the present day. According to the procedure at the time, it was not customary to keep the files, let alone archive them, after the end of criminal proceedings . As a rule, they were disposed of immediately. It is all the more astonishing that the files in the "Temple Anneke case" are almost completely preserved and are now in the archives of the city of Braunschweig. The files were initially in the possession of the von Vechelde family from Braunschweig for around 200 years until they were handed over to the court registrar and archivist Karl Wilhelm Sack . In addition to the files of the trial, numerous related invoices have been preserved in the “Chamber Book of the Common City”.

Temple Anneke as a legendary figure

The events of Anna Roleffes found their way into stories since the middle of the 19th century under the nickname "Temple Anneke". Richard Andree mentions them in his work "Braunschweiger Volkskunde", published in 1901, in which he mentions the story of the witch Temple Anneke under the aspect of folklore . Also Ricarda Huch refers to the events in "In the old empire. Life pictures of German cities ”from 1927. In Peukert and Petschel's, Tempel Anneke can then be found in 1948 - having become a legend - in“ Monuments of German Folk Poetry ”and in 1964 and 1983 in Peukert's“ Lower Saxon Legends ”.

Commemoration

Harxbüttel commemorates the fate of Anna Roleffes with a plaque.

Later witch trials

For a long time, the trial against Tempel Anneke was considered the last witch trial in Braunschweig. Wilhelm Görges was the first to claim in his three-volume work Vaterländische Stories and Memorabilia ... in the chapter "Temple Anneke", published between 1843 and 1845 : "How pleasant is it that the last witch was executed in Braunschweig as early as 1663". This was subsequently repeated by other authors, such as Ludwig Ferdinand Spehr in the revised new edition of Görges' work from 1881 or by Wrampelmeyer in 1910, most recently by Karlwalther Rohmann in 1983 in his book Tempel Anneke: The Trial against the Last "Witch" of Braunschweig , in which he stated that "it was the last trial of this kind that was held in the city of Braunschweig."

In fact, however, Albert Rhamm already pointed out in 1882 in his work Hexenglaube and Hexenprocesse, especially in the Braunschweigischen Lands , that there were combing invoices from 1698, which proved the execution at the stake of the 20-year-old Katharina Sommermeyer, who had been convicted of " devil's compensation " . Richard Andree pointed out the contradiction between Görges and Rhamm in "Braunschweiger Volkskunde". In his book Trial of Tempel Anneke: Records of a Witchcraft Trial in Brunswick, Germany, 1663 , published in 2005, Peter A. Morton also demonstrated that there were at least two other trials and executions for witchcraft in addition to the above-mentioned trial against Katharina Sommermeyer in the city: in 1667 Elisabeth Lorentz was indicted and convicted and in 1671 Lücke Behrens. The complete files of these two processes are now in the city ​​archives .

literature

• Wilhelm Bornstedt : The ducal "High Court" in the Stöckheimer Streithorn am Lecheln Holze, from the 16th to the 19th century (theft, murder, robbery and burning of witches). In: Preservation of monuments and history (building blocks of the town home keeper). No. 11, Braunschweig 1982.
• Wilhelm Görges : Patriotic stories and memorabilia of the past with many images of cities, towns, villages, castles, palaces, monasteries, churches, ancient buildings a. the country of Braunschweig and Hanover, for the most part as they appeared 200 years ago, together with portraits and other illustrations that were deemed necessary. Volume 1, Braunschweig 1844, pp. 84-93 ( digitized version ).
• Claudia Kauertz: Roleff (also Roleffes), Anna, called Temple Anneke. In: Horst-Rüdiger Jarck , Dieter Lent et al. (Ed.): Braunschweigisches Biographisches Lexikon - 8th to 18th century . Appelhans Verlag, Braunschweig 2006, ISBN 3-937664-46-7 , p. 593 .
• Joachim Lehrmann : Faith in witches and demons in the state of Braunschweig. The story of persecution from a regional perspective. Greatly expanded and revised 2nd edition. Lehrmann, Lehrte 2009, ISBN 978-3-9803642-8-7 .
• Peter A. Morton (Ed.): Trial of Tempel Anneke: Records of a Witchcraft Trial in Brunswick, Germany, 1663. Broadview Press, Toronto 2005, ISBN 1-55111-706-1 ( excerpts from Google Books ).
• Albert Rhamm : Faith in witches and witch trials mainly in the Braunschweigischen lands. Julius Zwißler Publishing House, Wolfenbüttel 1882 ( digitized version ).
• Karlwalther Rohmann: Temple Anneke: The trial of the last "witch" of Braunschweig 1663: commented and presented according to the original protocol . Lax, Hildesheim 1983, ISBN 3-7848-4063-9 .

See also

• Katharina Sommermeyer
• Witch persecution in the city of Braunschweig
• List of known people who were executed for witchcraft

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c} Peter A. Morton (Ed.): Trial of Tempel Anneke: Records of a Witchcraft Trial in Brunswick, Germany, 1663. S. 14.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Horst-Rüdiger Jarck, Dieter Lent et al. (Ed.): Braunschweigisches Biographisches Lexikon: 8th to 18th century. P. 593.
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Wilhelm Görges: Patriotic stories and memorabilia…. P. 84.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Karl Walther Rohmann: Temple Anneke: The trial of the last "witch" of Brunswick 1663: commented and presented by the original protocol. P. 11.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Karl Walther Rohmann: Temple Anneke: The trial of the last "witch" of Brunswick 1663: commented and presented by the original protocol. P. 1.
6. ↑ Signature of the trial files in the Braunschweig City Archives: HV 250, see: Peter A. Morton (Ed.): Trial of Tempel Anneke: Records of a Witchcraft Trial in Brunswick, Germany, 1663. S. XXXIV, FN 1.
7. ↑ Old place of execution in Lechlumer Holz (with reconstruction sketch) on denkmalpflege.bsl-ag.de
8. ↑ Peter A. Morton (ed.): Trial of Tempel Anneke: Records of a Witchcraft Trial in Brunswick, Germany, 1663. S. XXIX.
9. ↑ A. Rhamm: Hexenglaube and witch trials mainly in the Braunschweigischen lands. P. 72f.
10. ↑ A. Rhamm: Hexenglaube and witch trials mainly in the Braunschweigischen lands. P. 73.
11. ^ Peter A. Morton (Ed.): Trial of Tempel Anneke: Records of a Witchcraft Trial in Brunswick, Germany, 1663. S. XIV.
12. ^ ^{A b} Peter A. Morton (Ed.): Trial of Tempel Anneke: Records of a Witchcraft Trial in Brunswick, Germany, 1663. S. XIII.
13. ↑ Karlwalther Rohmann: Temple Anneke: The trial against the last "witch" of Braunschweig 1663: commented and presented according to the original protocol . P. 12.
14. ↑ Peter A. Morton (Ed.): Trial of Tempel Anneke: Records of a Witchcraft Trial in Brunswick, Germany, 1663. S. 3f.
15. ↑ Wilhelm Görges: Patriotic stories and memorabilia…. P. 86.
16. ↑ ^{a b} Wilhelm Görges: Patriotic stories and memorabilia…. P. 87.
17. ^ Peter A. Morton (Ed.): Trial of Tempel Anneke: Records of a Witchcraft Trial in Brunswick, Germany, 1663. S. XXXV
18. ↑ Peter A. Morton (ed.): Trial of Tempel Anneke: Records of a Witchcraft Trial in Brunswick, Germany, 1663. pp. 9-13.
19. ↑ Karlwalther Rohmann: Temple Anneke: The trial against the last "witch" of Braunschweig 1663: commented and presented according to the original protocol . P. 19.
20. ↑ Karlwalther Rohmann: Temple Anneke: The trial against the last "witch" of Braunschweig 1663: commented and presented according to the original protocol . P. 106
21. ↑ Karlwalther Rohmann: Temple Anneke: The trial against the last "witch" of Braunschweig 1663: commented and presented according to the original protocol . P. 3.
22. ^ Gerhard Schormann: Criminal justice in Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel 1569-1633. In: Braunschweigisches Jahrbuch. Volume 55, Braunschweig 1974, p. 90.
23. ↑ Karlwalther Rohmann: Temple Anneke: The trial against the last "witch" of Braunschweig 1663: commented and presented according to the original protocol . P. 5.
24. ^ ^{A b} Richard Andree : Braunschweiger Volkskunde. 2nd edition, Braunschweig 1901, p. 385.
25. ↑ Ricarda Huch : In the old kingdom. Images of life in German cities. The North. Bremen 1927, p. 49.
26. ^ Will-Erich Peuckert at Google books
27. ↑ Memorial plaque for Anna Roleffes, commonly called Temple Anneke, in Harxbüttel
28. ^ Wilhelm Görges: Patriotic stories and memorabilia of the prehistoric times of Braunschweig and Hanover. Second edition, completely revised and enlarged by Ludwig Ferdinand Spehr , first part: Braunschweig. Braunschweig 1881, pp. 421-430.
29. ↑ Wrampelmeyer: The last witch trial in the city of Braunschweig. A contribution to German cultural history according to the trial files. In: Hannoverland. Monthly for history, regional and folklore, language, art and literature. Born in 1910, October issue, Hannover 1910, pp. 218–221.
30. ^ Albert Rhamm: Witches' belief and witch trials primarily in the Braunschweigischen lands. P. 80.