Agnes Schmitt
Agnes Schmitt (also Agnes Schmidt / Schmitten Peters wife) (* 1600 in Friesenhagen , † December 17, 1650 in Friesenhagen) was a victim of the witch hunts in Friesenhagen.
Life
Agnes Schmitt was the wife of the court tenant Peter Schmitt (also Peter Schmidt) from Friesenhagen. His father was a sexton, he was mentioned in 1614 as "Hannes the old sexton". His younger brother was the sexton Jakob Schmitt. Her mother was the widowed farmer's wife Lieschen, the cook. Her sister's name was Bilgen, Johann Jung's wife.
They lived in the lowest house in Friesenhagen and had six children. Her oldest daughters Stinchen, Lieschen and Trinchen were married. Magdalenchen was 15, Peter Jakob twelve and Gertrud seven years old.
Witch persecution in Friesenhagen / Wildenburger Land
From 1590 to 1652 over 200 people fell victim to the persecution of witches in Friesenhagen / Wildenburger Land. At the end of the Thirty Years' War , the burden of billeted soldiers weighed on the poor tenants. In 1648 they made a petition to their sovereigns "to exterminate the damnable vice of sorcery, fiends and witches in our area." The sovereigns Count Hermann von Hatzfeldt zu Crottorf and the barons Johann Adrian and Wilhelm Henrich von Hatzfeld zu Wildenburg appointed the bailiff of Wildenburg , Professor Dr. Hermann Heistermann, to her court commissioner. Heistermann received four Reichstaler from every accused he convicted of the magic truck.
Witch trial against Agnes Schmitt
On November 1, 1650, a witch trial began in Wildenburg , which killed 30 men and women. Among the 13 victims from the village of Friesenhagen were Peter Schmitt, messenger of Mr. Johann Adrian von Hatzfeld, and his wife Agnes.
Her two neighbors: the old Meuss Merg zu Friesenhagen / Oberhövels (her father had been executed for witchcraft) and Liesgen (Lieschen), Ernst's wife in Friesenhagen, had said almost all the men and women of the village were courtiers of the devil in a witch trial . Peter Schmidt was said to have been a warlock in seven trials . What was particularly stressful for him was that he supposedly came from a sex afflicted with the magic vice. His mother, née Solbach, had been suspected of sorcery but died before a conviction. Blood relatives of people charged with witchcraft were particularly at risk of ending up at the stake. Her younger brother Groß Johann von Niedersolbach was executed on November 22nd, 1650 in a witch trial in Friesenhagen. Peter Schmidt was executed on December 3, 1650.
Two days later, his 50-year-old wife Agnes was arrested and locked in an empty horse stable on the Wildenburg because the tower was full of prisoners. Under the torture , other defendants had accused her of digging up the bodies of unbaptized children in the cemetery, taking them to the witches' dance floor and burning them to ashes. This caused a sensation among the population. When the court opened the graves in the cemetery, however, the children's bodies were found intact. Even so, the process continued.
Agnes Schmitt managed to escape from the dungeon. When she was picked up by the guards, she said, "I just wanted to see my children one more time!"
After torture and confession, Agnes Schmitt was executed two weeks after her husband Peter with eight other convicts on December 17, 1650: first beheaded and then burned.
The Schmitt couple left behind six children. Before her death, Agnes appointed her cousin, the schoolmaster Bertram Schmitt, as guardian for her three underage children.
Commemoration
The place of execution was on the Blumenberg near today's Anna Chapel in Friesenhagen. A plaque next to the Red Chapel and the old linden tree commemorates the witch trials in the 17th century.
literature
- The files of the Friesenhagen trials are in the possession of the von Hatzfeldt family. The contact person is Count Nikolaus von Hatzfeldt, Fürstlich-Hatzfeldtsches Archiv zu Crottorf, Schönstein Castle, 57537 Wissen.
- Uwe Knepper: Friesenhagen, Der Hexenwahn im Wildenburger Land , Word Wizard self-published, 2nd edition 2007.
- Manfred Konrads: The witch trial of Wildenburg (1628) , In: Eifel-Jahrbuch. 2000, pp. 110-121.
- Joseph Rinscheid: Der Hexenwahn im Wildenburger Land , in: Festschrift for the fiftieth anniversary of the West German Society for Family Studies eV, Cologne headquarters (= communications of the West German Society for Family Studies, Volume 21, 1963), pp. 203-276.
- Josef Rinscheid: See my children again. A historical story from the time of the witch craze in Wildenburger Land (story story), Niederfischbach 1950 (self-published); Josef Rinscheid, see my children again . Full text
Web links
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Schmitt, Agnes |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Agnes Schmidt, Schmitten Peter's wife |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Victims of the witch hunts in Friesenhagen |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1600 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Friesenhagen |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 17, 1650 |
| Place of death | Friesenhagen |