Friends bite

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Friend Happen (*?; †?) From Meiste (6 km northeast of Rüthen ) was a defendant during the witch hunts in Rüthen in Westphalia .

On July 19, 1660, Freunnd Happen was arrested by the mayor and council of the city of Rüthen on suspicion of the vice of magic in his house and handed over to the court in the city. Happen was held captive and tortured in the Rüthener Hexenturm .

Friend Happen defied the torture and managed not to denounce anyone. After two months of imprisonment and three severe tortures, Freunnd Happen was acquitted on September 23, 1660.

After the magistrate of the court in Rüthen had obtained a legal opinion for this witch trial , Freunnd Happen had to take an oath and confirm in writing that he swore primal feud and did not want to take revenge on anyone, that he was "peacefully in the silence of his household [.. .] and obliged to avoid other society ”. In the final part of the file there is even talk that he is “building a house”.

There may be a family relationship to Ursula Happen from Langenstrasse near Rüthen , who was probably executed as a witch before 1652 . Her name can be found for 1652 in the trial files of the widow Engela Borris of the Gogericht Rüthen.

From 1573 to 1659, 169 witch trials are known from the small town of Rüthen and in the Gogericht Rüthen , including against Grete Adrian . At least 79 people were executed. The high points were the years 1593–1594 with 20 and 1652–1654 with 24 executions.

On March 31, 2011, the city council decided on a socio-ethical rehabilitation of those innocently convicted and executed in the area of ​​today's city of Rüthen during the 16th and 17th centuries as part of the so-called witch persecution.

literature

  • Rüthen city archive, holdings: witch trials, inv. 21st
  • Walter Dalhoff: About the Rüthener witch trials. In: Alfred Bruns: Witches - Jurisdiction in the Sauerland in the Electorate of Cologne. Documentation for the exhibition in the Holthausen Slate Mining and Local History Museum from July 21 to August 4, 1984 . Slate mining local museum, Schmallenberg 1984, p. 188.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Template No. 017/11
personal data
SURNAME Bite, friend
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Defendant during the witch persecution in Rüthen
DATE OF BIRTH before July 19, 1660
PLACE OF BIRTH Most of it , Germany
DATE OF DEATH after September 23, 1660