Witch hunt in Lemgo

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Witches mayor's house in Lemgo

The witch hunt in Lemgo in North Rhine-Westphalia took place mainly between 1509 and 1681. Lemgo was the only city ​​in Lippe to receive blood jurisdiction from the sovereign Simon VI. and thus had the right to decide on the life and death of its citizens in certain criminal offenses. Lemgo was one of the cities in Germany where the witch trials were particularly intense.

The approximately 200 trial files preserved in the Lemgo City Archives are among the most extensive local evidence of witch trials in Germany. They show that an estimated 250 people fell victim to the trials, half of them from 1653 onwards. In fact, the number is likely to be higher. Of those accused of witchcraft , around 80% of whom were women, a confession was obtained under torture, which after the death sentence was mostly followed by execution by burning at the stake .

Historical background

Market square in Lemgo around 1840

Lemgo was the most important and largest city in the county of Lippe until the beginning of the 17th century . It owed its prosperity above all to its membership in the Hanseatic League and the associated long-distance trade of merchants. The Lemgoers were correspondingly self-confident and made this clear to the sovereign in Detmold . As early as 1518, Luther's theses were being read in Lemgo and, alongside Lippstadt , Lemgo became the center of the Reformation . In 1530 an open conflict began between the Lemgoers and the sovereign. Count Simon V was angry and spoke of rebellious peasants who would not tolerate any authority over themselves. When Simon sought support for military action against Lemgo in 1533, Philip I of Hesse intervened. In the same year, Lemgo took over the Braunschweig church order and thus officially became Protestant-Lutheran .

The introduction of the Reformed Confession according to John Calvin was the personal work of Simon VI. The date of its introduction in Lippe is considered to be the year 1605. Only the city of Lemgo resisted and adhered to the Lutheran creed. This attitude led to a grueling conflict that lasted for years, in which Lemgo even turned its guns against the sovereign castle in Brake . The disputes in the Röhrentruper Rezess were not settled until 1617 , the city remained Lutheran and was granted extensive sovereign rights, including blood jurisdiction. The city council remained the determining ecclesiastical and secular authority in Lemgo.

Already at the beginning of the 17th century there were clear signs that the city's heyday was coming to an end. In the course of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) there was a dramatic crisis within the population of Lemgo. Lippe was hit particularly hard in the last years of the war. As everywhere in Germany, the Lippe cities lost around two thirds of their population by the end of the war; in the countryside the loss was around 50 percent. Lemgo was looted twice by the Swedes in 1636 and 1646 and plague epidemics ravaged the city. Almost half of the approximately 1,000 residential buildings were destroyed at the end of the war. The population decreased from 4,700 in 1629 to 1,400 in 1648, until the retreat of the people who fled began. Over two million Reichstaler had to be paid in contributions , two thirds of them from Lemgo alone.

At the end of the century there was again a violent conflict between the city and the sovereign, which was sparked by the election of the council and the question of religion. In the meantime, the balance of power in Lippe had shifted in favor of the sovereign, who was able to push through the election of a reformed mayor.

Belief in witches

Depiction of the Witches' Sabbath in the chronicle of Johann Jakob Wick

The belief in witches was a superstition widespread mainly in Christian Europe , the roots of which can be found in the pre-Christian belief in gods, and gained in importance especially in the 14th century. In the course of the 15th century, the general image of witches and wizards developed into the witch cult with meetings and rites that were to lead to the takeover of world domination. The main element of the belief in witches was the devil's pact , which represented both a contract with the devil and an apostasy from God and heresy . Closely connected with this was the devil's captivity , the sexual intercourse between witch and devil. The third element was the Witches' Sabbath in connection with the flight of witches and the fourth element of the witch doctrine was the magic of damage .

In 1487, the Dominican Heinrich Institoris published a book under the title Hexenhammer , which appeared in 29 editions by the 17th century. The book, a compendium of the widespread belief in witches at the time, served as a guide for the persecution of witches and wizards. To defend oneself against the accusation of witchcraft was almost impossible, because under the embarrassing questioning or the torture almost every accused confessed. Every inhabitant of Lemgo at this time was in danger of being persecuted and charged with witchcraft or sorcery. As a rule, an accusation, the gaping , from the neighborhood or from relatives and acquaintances was enough . Even more serious, however, was the testimony blackmailed under the torture about those who knew about it, the so-called testimony of a convicted witch. The reasons for gaping were diverse, such as adultery and jealousy, envy and resentment, greed, disputes and power struggles, covering up one's own wrongdoing and other motives.

The witch trials

Mass execution of alleged witches in 1587

The process periods

The probably oldest document about a witch trial in Lemgo dates back to 1509. In terms of time, a total of four periods can be identified in which the main focus of the Lemgo witch trials were. Around 200 trial files are preserved in the Lemgo city archive, which form the most extensive local records of witch trials in Germany.

The first two periods lasted from 1564 to 1566 and from 1583 to 1605/6, the exact number of deaths is not known. The first trial of sorcery, the files of which have been preserved in the Lemgo city archive, took place in 1566 and the verdict was expulsion from the state. The first witch trials whose files have been preserved took place in 1583. Here, too, the sentences were seldom for death, but usually for expulsion from the country. It was not until the beginning of the 17th century that the trials became more inhuman and the judgments more cruel. From 1628 all witch trials ended with the death of the accused.

The third period, from 1628 to 1637, fell during the Thirty Years War, and at least 110 people were accused of witchcraft and 84 of them were executed. These were mainly members of lower-income groups, including six men. The arrival of the Swedes in Lemgo is assumed to be the reason for the end of the wave of persecution.

The trials of the fourth period from 1653 to 1681 were led by Mayor Heinrich Kerkmann in the years from 1653 to 1656, but Hermann Cothmann was responsible for the subsequent trials up to 1681 , who from 1666 was director of the Embarrassing Court, a newly created office, and from 1667 was mayor. The entire fourth period of the trial fell during the tenure of executioner David Clauss the Elder . During this period, the gender and social profile of the defendants had also changed. While the proportion of men was six percent before, it increased to around 25% from 1653 and the number of defendants from the middle class rose significantly in the course of this wave of persecution. The total number of deaths in the Lemgo witch trials is estimated at around 250 people, more than half of them after 1653, i.e. almost 130 trial victims.

The court

There were two criminal courts for the witch justice system in Lippe, on the one hand the court appointed by the sovereign, which met in Detmold , Horn or Brake , and on the other hand the court in Lemgo administered by the Lemgo City Council.

The Lemgo court was made up of two twelve-member councilors that change every year. A delegation elected from these councils, whose members were called witches' deputies , conducted the investigation. The mayor presided, from 1666 the director of the embarrassing court . In the event of legal uncertainty or to secure the judgment, the court occasionally obtained an expert opinion from a university, in some cases even various universities were commissioned. The legal costs were usually paid from the assets of the accused or their family members and in part also from the pardons that were due in the event of a "pardon" for execution with the sword. From 1663, after many years of disputes, Count Hermann Adolph zur Lippe was granted the full right to pardon and the associated pardons. The treasury bills available in the Lemgo city archive since 1557 provide information on this.

The process flow

Water sample, title page of the writing by Hermann Neuwalt , Helmstedt 1581
Embarrassing interrogation

Charges were often preceded by rumors or denunciations from neighbors, acquaintances or relatives. The indictment could also be based on a denunciation, which was sometimes extorted under torture by an already imprisoned witch, the so-called denunciation . Alleged witches were rarely given the right to a defense.

There were no prisons in the current sense of the word at the time of the witch persecution, so the accused were imprisoned in cellars, dungeons or towers. At the beginning of the trial, the accused was completely stripped and shaved ( depilation ) so that she could not hide any magic substance and to break her magic power. Then she was examined all over her body for a witch mark and if necessary subjected to a needle test.

The interrogation was carried out in Lemgo by the witch deputies. A distinction was made between three phases, namely first the amicable questioning , second the territion , that was the questioning with demonstration and explanation of the instruments of torture, and third the embarrassing questioning , in which the torture was used. The amicable questioning consisted, among other things, of intimate questions, for example about dating the devil to sexual intercourse with him. If the accused did not make a confession, she was shown the torture tools along with a detailed description of the agony to be expected. In the third phase, the interrogation took place under torture, the embarrassing questioning, which usually led to a confession. Here came thumbscrew and stretching bank and other instruments of torture used. If no confession was obtained, the torture was repeated. Another means of proving the witch's guilt was through the witch trial . The best known was the water test in which the witch was tied hand and foot and thrown into cold water. If the defendant swam up, it was considered evidence of witchcraft, but if she went down, that was far from counter-evidence. It was believed that the pure element of water would repel witches and wizards. In this case, they needed a “miracle” to be acquitted. If the defendant did not swim, she was pulled out of the water again, which could lead to unwanted deaths.

Responsible for carrying out the torture was executioner with the help of his henchmen. Nobody was allowed to be convicted in a witch trial without a confession. As a rule, however, the victim was tortured until a confession was obtained. In a final interrogation phase, the statement was made, in which the accused were asked about the names of other witches, sometimes with repeated use of torture.

A convicted witch was always punished by death by fire at the stake so that her soul could be purified. The witch was tied to a stake in the middle of a pile of brushwood by the executioners and burned alive or previously beheaded by the executioner with the sword, which was regarded as an act of mercy and had to be paid for by the relatives. The ruler of Lippe also had a certain influence on the trials, was able to proclaim pardons for death by the sword and collect the associated fees. The pyre was usually set up on the Lemgo market square and was a great spectacle for the population. The witch trials in Lemgo were officially ended in 1715 when the infamous Black Book , in which all witchcraft accusations were collected, was publicly burned in the market square.

The victims

Executioner in preparation

On April 25, 1509, according to Bernhard Witte in his Historia Westphaliae, 14 women and one Scholasticus were arrested for poisoning. One of the women had sold a mother a drug intended to bring about reconciliation with her son. But the latter died after taking the remedy. Seven of the women captured confessed to numerous crimes under torture and died by fire. This started the series of witch trials in Lemgo. Below are some of the most prominent victims, all of whom were convicted during the fourth period.

  • Margarete Siekmann was married to the tree silk maker Bernd Krevetsiek for the second time. She was referred to as a witch by her six-year-old foster child after his mother was beaten and reported to the magistrate by her in 1653. She was accused of being a magician and of passing this art on. She confessed under torture and was executed by executioner David Clauss on August 10, 1653 with the sword and then burned at the stake .
  • Catharina Cothmann was the mother of the later mayor of witches, Hermann Cothmann, who was executed in 1654. Her husband Diederich Cothmann was in financial difficulties and could not raise the 100 thalers required to kill with the sword . The council reduced the sum to 40 thalers, but demanded that Cothmann land and gardens as compensation.
  • The trial against the school teacher Hermann Beschoren caused a sensation. He was accused of having seduced numerous students into the Devil's League and, under the torture, confessed to having taught 17 boys and girls magic. Count Hermann Adolph stood up for him, but could not prevent Beschorens from being executed with the sword in 1654. It was not until 1664 that the Lippe sovereign was granted the full right to pardon. Hermann Beschoren's wife was also charged and executed.
  • Anna Veltmans, also known as Widow Böndel, was a successful business woman. She came under suspicion of witchcraft because of multiple statements, but was able to deposit a bail and was released. After the death of her second husband, she was again suspected, charged, and confessed to being tortured . After paying the required amount, she was pardoned to the sword and executed on December 23, 1665.
  • The pastor of the Marienkirche Hermann Müller was accused of sorcery in 1655. In some cases, the Council sought advice from universities. The legal scholars at the universities in Marburg and Gießen advised the Lemgoers not to use torture on a man from the church, and the pastor got away with his life, but lost his office, which he had held for 35 years.
  • Johann Abschlag had made it to Lieutenant Colonel under Tilly and Wallenstein in the Thirty Years' War and lived in a house near the market square. He had previously quarreled with the council about the high cattle tax. He was denounced and named in 1654 as the wizard and commandant of witches. He, too, was acquitted by a university report , unless a new suspicion arises . In 1665 there was another witch trial against a discount, in the course of which he was led to a water test. On January 19, 1666, he was executed with the sword; his family had previously paid a pardon of 200 thalers.
  • In 1665 the cantor Bernhard Grabbe was accused of magic because he had contact with other convicts. Grabbe was able to escape, but was caught and extradited to Lemgo. He confessed under torture and was executed with the sword on March 26, 1667.
St. Nicolai in Lemgo
  • Andreas Koch was a pastor in St. Nicolai in Lemgo and was related by marriage to Grabbe. In his capacity as a clergyman, he had to accompany the condemned to the execution . In his sermons he called for more care and caution in the witch trials. In 1665 he was dismissed as a pastor after an opinion from the University of Rinteln and charged with witchcraft a year later. He was tortured three times and sentenced to death after the confession. His wife Anna Elisabeth Pöppelmann obtained the pardon from Count Hermann Adolph to be beheaded with the sword and then cremated. The execution took place on June 2, 1666 in the morning between four and five o'clock under the rain gate. The time and place for an execution were unusual, apparently a measure to almost exclude the public from the execution of a pastor. Andreas Koch was the only pastor executed in Lemgo.
  • Maria Rampendahl was the last defendant in a witch trial. She resisted the torture and did not make a confession . According to the university report, she was expelled from the city and the country and then sued those responsible in Lemgo before the Reich Chamber of Commerce . The proceedings ended on October 30, 1682 in a defeat for Maria Rampendahl and devoured a large part of her savings. In 1994 a memorial was erected for them at the St. Nicolai Church in Lemgo. She is also the only trial victim after whom a street in Lemgo (Rampendal) was named.

The mayors

Audience at the Imperial Court of Justice, copperplate engraving, 1750

In the late Middle Ages, Lemgo had the right of blood jurisdiction, which was exercised by the two councils that changed every year. The witch deputies elected from among their members carried out the preliminary investigations. The Embarrassing Court was always chaired by one of four mayors. In Lemgo at that time there were four mayors who changed every year in pairs, i.e. they were only in office every two years. Only one of them was responsible for the witch trials.

  • Johan Stute was mayor from 1625 to 1635 during the third phase of the witch hunt in Lemgo and was instrumental in at least 23 witch trials. In total, at least 110 people were accused of witchcraft during this period, and 84 of them were definitely executed. The prosecutor was Johannes Berner, who as city secretary played an important role in many witch trials for more than 50 years while the mayors changed.
  • Heinrich Kerkmann was mayor from 1626 to 1666 and during his term of office Andreas Koch, Anna Veltmans and Johann Abschlag were indicted, convicted and executed. Kerkmann tried to perfect the city's witch justice system and to reduce execution costs by dispensing with the costly cremation penalty and largely beheading the convicts. Together with his long-time student friend Johannes Berner, he played a key role in the intense wave of trials from 1653 to 1656. At times there was fierce resistance from the citizenry against his authoritarian leadership, but he was able to hold his own until his death.
  • Kerkmann's successor was Hermann Cothmann , who was nicknamed the witch mayor while he was still alive . Cothmann was mayor from 1667 to 1683 and during his tenure there were nearly 100 death sentences and executions. Cothmann was appointed director of the Embarrassing Court in 1666 and quickly earned Kerkmann's trust. Mayor Cothmann used the population's witchcraft madness to assert his personal interests in power and to eliminate his opponents. He himself was apparently free from superstitions and used the fears of others to enrich himself with the property of the city and its citizens. Like his predecessor Kerkmann, Cothmann also had the confidence of the sovereign Simon Heinrich and complaints from Lemgo citizens to the sovereign were unsuccessful. The last witch trial against Maria Rampendahl, who got away with her life, took place during Cothmann's tenure. In his home in Lemgo, the witch mayor's house, there is now a museum.

The executioner

Like his ancestors, David Clauss the Elder was an executioner from Lippe. During his long service of almost fifty years, not only did the last wave of lawsuits fall from 1653, but also a large part of the court proceedings in the county of Lippe. He enjoyed a high reputation in the city and hardly anyone accused him of his work as a criminal executioner, not even the relatives of the executed. Only his assistants, the executioners who worked as skinners , experienced social exclusion . His family, his wife Agnesa Böcker and eight children, were integrated into the neighborhood, which meant mutual help during birth, baptism, marriage, illness and death. Most of the slander and gossip about witchcraft and sorcery that did not stop at the door of the executioner also arose from neighborly relations. His family members were accused of magic damage and his wife was accused of being a witch, but this was without consequences. After 1665 there was increasing criticism from the Lemgo ruling class of the autocratic justice of the mayor and his witch deputies. David Clauss was apparently also one of the critics and fell out of favor with the Lemgo authorities in 1673 at the latest. However, no charges were brought against him and he died of natural causes in 1696. His house at Papenstrasse 48 still exists today. His descendants lived there for 300 years.

Local history culture

Monument to Maria Rampendahl at the Church of St. Nicolai

The epithet Hexennest for Lemgo comes from the 19th century , with which the folklore of the witch theme began at the same time . In the second half of this century details from some Lemgo witch trials were published by the high school teachers Heinrich Clemen and August Schacht from Lemgo, as well as Otto Weerth from Detmold. At the beginning of the 20th century, memories of the time of the witch hunt became an integral part of local history research and thus became a local historical culture . First and foremost, the grammar school teacher and local researcher Karl Meier (1882–1969) should be mentioned, from whom numerous publications on this topic originate. Karl Meier was the author of plays about the witch hunt in the style of a historical drama. In addition, he wrote several books, essays and drawings that shaped the image of the Lemgo witch trials for many years. He was also the founder and chairman of the association "Alt Lemgo", which set itself the goal of preserving the historical building fabric of Lemgo.

During the Nazi era , the witch issue was met with particular interest and Himmler's employees came to Lemgo and Detmold to sift through the old trial files. The Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler had developed a "National Socialist religion" with the worship of Germanic gods combined with a belief in witches. He claimed that the witch hunts were initiated by the church in order to destroy the secret knowledge of the "wise women", all of whom were "purebred German women". This view led to the Nazis were very interested in the study of early modern witchcraft and witch-hunting and for this purpose in 1935 Hexenkartothek einrichteten. The cultural policy of the Nazis also included the re-establishment of the local history museum in the witch mayor's house with the installation of a torture cellar.

In connection with the more recent witch research, historical science came across the Lemgo witch trials. Biographical case studies were drawn up on individual trial victims and also on the mayor Hermann Cothmann.

The folkloric approach to the subject has continued to this day. One restaurant was called Hexenklause , an automobile club held a witch slalom every year , the TBV Lemgo fan club was called Lemgoer Hexen and the mayor's house and the torture cellar were used to advertise tourism. In 1990 the Maria Rampendahl working group was set up to erect a memorial for the victims of the witch hunt. The memorial, erected in 1994, is called the Stone of Contention and bears the name Maria Rampendahl , representative of all the innocently persecuted in the history of Lemgo . A street in Lemgo is also called Rampendahl . In 1999, in memory of the executed pastor Andreas Koch, the Evangelical Lutheran parish had a black granite sculpture installed in the church of St. Nicolai. It bears the inscription: God will finally raise my head and honor me again.

literature

  • Ursula Bender-Wittmann: Damaging magic and devil's pact. Control of witchcraft in an urban environment (Lemgo 1628–1637) . Bielefeld 1991 (Master's thesis).
  • Ursula Bender-Wittmann: witch trials in Lemgo. A socio-historical analysis . In: The Weser area between 1500 and 1650. Society, economy and culture in the early modern period . Marburg 1993, p. 235-266 .
  • Heinrich Clemen: Contributions to the Lippe church history . Issue 1. Lemgo 1860, Die Hexenprocesse von Lemgo, p. 276-337 ( LLB Detmold ).
  • Günter Kleinwegener: The witch trials of Lemgo . Bonn 1954 (legal dissertation).
  • Karl Meier-Lemgo : Maria Rampendahl and the witch mayor . 1935 (short stories).
  • Karl Meier-Lemgo: witches, executioners and tyrants. The last bloodiest witch hunt in Lemgo 1665–1681 . Lemgo 1949.
  • Karl Meier-Lemgo: History of the city of Lemgo . FL Wagener, Lemgo 1952.
  • Hanne Pohlmann, Klaus Pohlmann: Continuity and Break. National Socialism and the small town of Lemgo . In: Forum Lemgo . tape 5 . Publishing house for regional history, Bielefeld 1990, ISBN 3-927085-17-0 .
  • Jürgen Scheffler: Lemgo, the witch's nest , folklore, Nazi marketing and local history . In: Yearbook for Folklore . tape 12 , 1989, pp. 113-132 .
  • Gisela Wilbertz : ... there was no Savior ... Pastor Andreas Koch, executed as a sorcerer on June 2, 1666 . Lemgo 1999.
  • Gisela Wilbertz: witch hunt and biography. Person and family of the Lemgo native Maria Rampendahl (1645–1705) . In: witch hunt and regional history. The County of Lippe in comparison . Bielefeld 1994.
  • Gisela Wilbertz, Gerd Schwerthoff, Jürgen Scheffler (eds.): Witch persecution and regional history. The County of Lippe in comparison . Bielefeld 1994.
  • Gisela Wilbertz, Jürgen Scheffler (Ed.): Biography research and city history. Lemgo in the late phase of the witch hunt . Bielefeld 2000.
  • Bettina Szrama : The executioner of Lemgo , historical novel, ISBN 978-3-89705-864-4 , emons publishing house.

Web links

Commons : Witch trials in Lemgo  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c witch hunts in Lemgo
  2. ↑ Women in witch research
  3. ↑ Hartmut Hegeler : Against witch trials and torture. In: Heimatland Lippe, March 2008. Editor: Lippischer Heimatbund e. V.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Karl Meier-Lemgo: Geschichte der Stadt Lemgo, pages 112 ff. Verlag FL Wagener, Lemgo 1952.
  5. ↑ a b c d witch hunt in Lippe
  6. ↑ Lemgo City Archives
  7. ^ Karl Wehrhan : The costs of an execution in 1654 . In: Unter der Grotenburg, 1921, No. 2
  8. ↑ Bernhard Grabbe
  9. ↑ Andreas Koch
  10. ↑ Maria Rampendahl (defendant in the witch trial)
  11. ^ Christian Kuhnke: Lippe Lexikon. Keyword: Cothmann, Hermann. Boken Verlag, Detmold 2000. ISBN 3-935454-00-7 .
  12. ↑ Heinrich Kerkmann
  13. ^ Hermann Cothmann
  14. ↑ David Clauss the Elder Ä.
  15. ↑ a b Local history culture
  16. ↑ Himmler's Hexenkartothek: The Interest of National Socialism in the persecution of witches , ed. v. Sönke Lorenz, Dieter R. Bauer, Wolfgang Behringer, Jürgen Michael Schmidt in collaboration with the Institute for Historical Regional Studies and Historical Auxiliary Sciences at the University of Tübingen, 2nd edition, Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, Bielefeld 2000

Coordinates: 52 ° 1 ′ 40.8 ″  N , 8 ° 54 ′ 4.4 ″  E