Adelheid Sieveking

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Adelheid Sieveking (* around 1600 ; † late February 1654 in Rinteln ) was a victim of the witch persecution in Rinteln.

Life

Adelheid Sieveking, nee Vögeler, came from an old family of clothiers and was the wife of the wool merchant and cloth maker Hans Sieveking, one of the wealthiest citizens of Rinteln. He had a leading position in his guild and enjoyed excellent trade relations along the Weser . He was a dealer and a producer. At the same time he was a councilor and held several honorary offices. During his numerous trade trips, his wife Adelheid Sieveking not only ran the household but also represented her husband. Her son Jürgen (born 1622) helped in the father's business. When the plague raged in Rinteln in 1625/26 , Adelheid Sieveking had at least one of her children to complain about. On January 21, 1654, the citizen's wife Adelheid Sieveking was summoned to the city court on charges of witchcraft . Her mother, the Sievekingsche, was accused of witchcraft in 1635.

Witch hunts in Rinteln

Interrogation in a witch trial

Rinteln was the scene of intense witch hunts. The witch trials were largely driven by the professors of the law faculty at the University of Rinteln . The lawyers of the Akademia Ernestina reinforced the witch trials by advising city ​​and local courts throughout the northwest. Between 1621 and 1675 around 400 reports have been handed down that consistently ordered the ruthless persecution of alleged witches and sorcerers.

The legal offense of witchcraft was anchored in the nationwide Constitutio Criminalis Carolina . It was also found in the Polizey Ordinance , which Count Ernst zu Holstein-Schaumburg , the founder of the Rinteln University, had issued in 1610. Witchcraft was considered a death-worthy crime punished by burning at the stake. The city council in Rinteln held the high jurisdiction with the right to convict and burn people for witchcraft.

In the area of ​​today's city of Rinteln, at least 88 people were charged in witch trials between 1560 and 1669, many of which ended with execution. The high points were the years 1634 to 1655. In the years 1634–1635 13 people were executed. Another wave of witch trials began after Rinteln was given its own government with a higher court in 1651 because of its remote location from the royal seat of Kassel. In 1654 at least eleven people were accused of witchcraft and in 1655 another three people, including Johann Ernsting , known as Kronenschäfer.

The city of Rinteln, whose university contributed significantly to the spread of the witch trials, holds a sad record in Lower Saxony.

Witch trial against Adelheid Sieveking

Since the autumn of 1653, mass trials on charges of witchcraft have taken place at the nearby Arensburg Castle in neighboring Schaumburg-Lippe at the instigation of Count Philipp, in which the accused repeatedly accused new women and men of participating in the witch's sabbath under torture . The tortured named the cliff of the Luhden mountain between Eilsen and Rinteln as the witches' dance place .

On October 10, 1653, the defendant Catharina Tieking from Luhden accused the Rinteln citizen Adelheid Sieveking of having attended the witches' Sabbath. She would have danced there with Andreas Einsam's wife from Rinteln. When Professor David Pestel , senior of the law school at Rinteln University, learned of the testimony against the Rinteln woman, an investigation began.

In the first interrogation, Adelheid Sieveking was confronted with Andreas Einsam's wife, who had already been arrested. She said to her face: she, Sievekingsche, had been there at the witch's dance up on the Luhdener Berg at the old, dilapidated pilgrimage chapel of St. Katharinen. Therefore, she owes the witchcraft as much as she herself.

The protocol of the witch trial noted: Adelheid Sieveking doesn't know where to turn for fear. Balt had she sat down, soon she went from one place to another. Helpless and desperate, she clasped her hands over her head. In the weeks that followed, she tried in vain to save her honor as a respected citizen. She denied all the allegations made against her. The city council deputies arrested her, and the trial began. Between January 21 and 26, 1654, her husband and 32-year-old son Jürgen were allowed to visit the accused in prison in the presence of two councilors, who recorded the conversation. To her husband's question, she replied that she wanted to stick to the truth and deny the allegations: Yes, they may torment me as they please, and when you hear that they torment me, get down on your knees together and say that ] God created me and do not worry too much for me, whom I would like to die. Just ask the gentlemen not to let me sit too long. Adelheid Sieveking knew that this was one last opportunity to sort out the most important things before their end. She asked her husband to donate a substantial sum to the church for the city school, to quit his trade and to get rid of the employees. He was to take his son Jürgen into his house. Her son complained about the contempt that he felt in town as the son of a supposed witch: Oh dear, I won't come to the Lude (people)! I know that , answered my mother sadly, because of my mellow Dodes.

There are indications that it was the competing wall-maker family Wiebbach who kept fueling the suspicions. Many witnesses were heard making numerous allegations.

  • The defendant had carried out magic spells and poisoned the son of the large farmer, who attended the city school with her son Jürgen several years ago, with a roasting pear.
  • Ratskellerwirt Johann Ovenstede reported on a barrel of beer that he had once received from Sievekingschen for sale in the summer and dug in the sand of the cellar floor to cool. When he tried to open it after 14 days, it was suddenly empty.
  • A neighbor swore that Adelheid Sieveking had tried to teach her witchcraft when she was talking to her in the back of the room and she had talked so strangely inexplicably.
  • City judge Johann Deventer also appeared as a witness and stated that he had been afraid of Sieveking as a witch since his youth.

A number of similar incidents were reported by witnesses under oath and recognized as evidence by the council jury.

According to the witnesses, Adelheid Sieveking was interrogated. With more than 90 questions, she denied all allegations: The Wiebbach family would have taken half the hertz from her back then . The other allegations are also not true. So it was with the trial against her innocent mother, who was charged with false witnesses. Why the councilors had them temporarily imprisoned at the time, they could not say: the gentlemen would like to know. When the councilors asked: do they mean when they were innocent that the Raht would still have them executed? She was supposed to have replied that she couldn't andworded that. Adelheid Sieveking was taken back to her cell.

The Inquisit, as she was now called, was brought up again the next day. At the insistence of Pastor Adolph Wilhelm Rottmann and Parish Officer Daniel Wilhelmi , she admitted her guilt. In the interrogation before the councilors it turned out that she had only testified because the clergy had promised a pardon and a fine or expulsion from the city in the event of a confession. When Adelheid Sieveking recognized the fraud, she revoked everything and accused both pastors of deliberate deception. Because the Inquisit was once again obstinate and refused to admit voluntarily, the councilors turned to the Rinteln law faculty under Professor David Pestel. The Rinteln University always recognized arrest, torture and cremation in stereotypical formal texts in witch trials with unyielding severity. No other law faculty in the whole empire went to work with comparable brutality and blindness .

The report could be read to the inquisit the day after next. It recommended, after diligently reading out the trial files and carefully considering collegialiter , that the inquisitress should be covered with severe torture. In response to this threat, Adelheid Sieveking confessed amicably . She confessed to having fallen away from God , to have surrendered to the devil and also to have been to the witches dance. At the request of the city council, she even named alleged accomplices she had seen there. But Adelheid Sieveking refused to admit damaging magic to her fellow human beings, the fourth offense of witchcraft. Therefore, the councilors again requested a legal opinion. On the day after next, the answer from Professor David Pestel from the university was already there: threat of torture, in the presence of the executioner with his instruments spread out.

Meanwhile, Hans Sieveking made the city council, as agreed with his wife in the cell, a remarkable offer to donate 250 thalers for the city school if the council agreed to an act of mercy: an honorable execution in the marketplace by the sword. Then the corpse should be buried in a Christian way in the churchyard. Usually, most witch trials ended in death by burning, in agony and disgrace at the same time. Such executions were carried out on the Schindanger outside the city, where the skinner had to bury dead cattle.

The councilors demanded 500 Reichstaler plus the reimbursement of the legal costs, without, of course, wanting to make a binding promise. Hans Sieveking finally agreed, but then the negotiations failed, possibly due to the intervention of the law faculty.

On February 7, Adelheid Sieveking revoked her confession, which was already incomplete. The council deputies then decided to subject the inquisit to torture by the Rinteln knacker and executioner Henrich Schlix in the torture chamber in the attic of the council cellar on February 13th. The love Master Henrich , as it called the letter from the city council had been in prison for fornication and rape a few days recently. But he had recently done successful work at the Arensburg witch trials. It was part of his job that inquisitors repeatedly died while torturing him.

City councils gave the defendant one last chance to confess without torture. But Sieveking refused. Instead, she requested the water sample . Only when this was negative for her did she want to confess what they wanted to hear from her. Immediately after the hearing, Adelheid Sieveking was taken to the Weser and let there in the middle of the river from a boat into the icy water: twice with tied hands and feet, once free, only on a simple tether. But it did not sink, but floated on the surface. The so-called judgment of God was clear: guilty . Adelheid Sieveking could hardly believe it. Back in the council chamber she announced that the devil himself had had a hand in this. They did n't want to be advised to go on the water anymore . This was apparently also the view of the Hessian rulers, which expressly forbade water testing in the summer of 1654. For Adelheid Sieveking, the process had now been decided. A final interrogation followed in the torture chamber in the attic of the town hall. At the sight of the instruments she tried to confess what was asked of her.

The verdict in the Sieveking trial has not been received. What is certain, however, is that Adelheid Sieveking was actually burned at the end of February 1654. The case files from later proceedings against the women she mentioned referred to this several times. They also showed the devastating effect the statements Adelheid Sieveking had after her death. Of the ten women whose names were extracted from her, at least eight were convicted and executed. Nothing is known of the fate of the other two. Hans and Cord Sieveking, husband and son of Adelheid Sieveking, left Rinteln years later. They are mentioned in 1670 among the first settlers of the newly founded village of Hessendorf, 3 km southwest of Rinteln.

swell

  • Hessisches Staatsarchiv Marburg, inventory 260 Marburg, No. 554: Trial against the wife of Hans Sieveking, Adelheid, b. Vögeler.
  • City archive Rinteln, witch trial files, unrecorded inventory.

literature

  • Stefan Meyer: Adelheid Sieveking (1600–1654): a death at the stake. In: History of the Schaumburg women. 2000, pp. 222-232.
  • Gerhard Schormann : witch hunt. In: Niedersächsisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte 45 (1973), pp. 145–170.
  • Gerhard Schormann: witch trials in northern Germany . Hildesheim 1977.
  • Inge Mager : Women in and around the Schaumburg Church since the Reformation. In: Helge bei der Wieden: The Radiation of the Reformation: Contributions to the Church and Everyday Life in Northwest Germany. Göttingen 2011, pp. 61-72 (p. 68).
  • Jürgen Macha, German Chancellery Language in Witch Interrogation Protocols of the Early Modern Age , Volume 2, De Gruyter, 2005, p. 34
  • Association for Hessian History and Regional Studies, Association of the German Sugar Industry, Berlin, 1932, Volume 58, p. 54

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Eulenburg. University and City Museum Rinteln: witch hunt in Schaumburg .
  2. ↑ a b Names of the victims of the witch trials in Rinteln
  3. ↑ a b Stefan Meyer, Adelheid Sieveking (1600-1654): a death at the stake . In: Geschichte Schaumburger Women (2000), pp. 222–232.
personal data
SURNAME Sieveking, Adelheid
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German witch trial victim
DATE OF BIRTH around 1600
DATE OF DEATH February 1654
Place of death Rinteln