Andreas Koch (pastor)

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Ev.-luth. Parish Church of St. Nicolai

Andreas Koch (* around 1619 in Lemgo ; † June 2, 1666 ibid) was a Protestant pastor at the Church of St. Nicolai in Lemgo and was sentenced to death in 1666 because of the Devil's League and executed with the sword. Andreas Koch was the only pastor who fell victim to the witch craze in Lemgo .

biography

Andreas Koch was the fifth child of the pastor couple Hermann Koch and Anna Heinekamps and was probably born in Lemgo in 1619. His parents belonged to the bourgeois upper class and were related to most of Lemgo's mayors, councilors and witch deputies. The father was a lecturer at the grammar school for two years before receiving the office of pastor at the Church of St. Nicolai in the old town in 1611. Andreas studied Protestant theology at the University of Rostock from 1641 and in 1647 took over the office of his father, who died in the same year. His wife Anna Elisabeth came from the famous Herford Pöppelmann family .

In 1653, as before from 1628 to 1637, there was another flood of witch trials in Lemgo. The role of the pastors was to have the accused swear to the Bible the confessions they had forced through torture and to prevent them from later revoking them. Finally, they had to exhort the delinquents to repentance and penance and lead them to execution. Andreas Koch repeatedly noticed contradictions in the confessions of the tortured witches, which made him doubt the truthfulness of the statements. He by no means denied the existence of witches and harmful spells , but recognized the danger that after the torture it would result in extorted false statements and the execution of innocent people. He was apparently influenced by the attitude of many members of the Lemgo upper class, who no longer accepted accusations against their family members without contradiction and defended themselves against them in court.

Koch initially only expressed and discussed his doubts privately with friends. It did not go public until 1665 after Elisabeth Tillen, convicted as a witch, had asserted her innocence as a confessor on the way to the place of execution. Both in his sermons and on other occasions, he warned against rash suspicions and suggested that some innocent people had already been executed. However, he fell on deaf ears with the majority of the Lemgo population and put his opponents in a position to investigate against him.

The pastor of St. Nicolai had few friends among the members of the Lemgo leadership class because he had preached against drunkenness, adultery, covetousness and slander before the new wave of witch persecution began and left no doubt that he was particularly interested in the lifestyle of councilors and Mayors aimed. In his opinion, witch trials could only be conducted by godly, virtuous and prudent scholars. Ultimately, the Lemgo authorities saw their power threatened and let the rumor spread that the pastor was an enemy of God and an ally of the devil. In the summer of 1665 the council denied the pastor access to the prisoners, which led to further suspicions. Soon the first slander was heard that he had been seen at the witch's dance. The mayor Heinrich Kerkmann , who was responsible for numerous witch trials, lost no time and asked the council to obtain an expert opinion from the University of Rinteln . The immediate suspension of the pastor recommended therein took place on October 24, 1665.

Andreas Koch recognized the danger that threatened him, but did not leave the city, but turned to the appellate court in Detmold to prove his innocence. At that time the sovereign was Count Hermann Adolph zur Lippe , a proponent of the witch trials, during whose term of office from 1652 to 1666 more than half of all executions for witchcraft took place in Lippe. At the end of 1665 a diatribe or pasquill was circulating in which Lemgo witch deputies and close confidants of the sovereign were attacked. Koch was suspected of being a co-author of this leaflet, which further worsened his chances of success in the appellation. On April 6, 1666, the court of appeal pronounced the judgment in which the complaint was dismissed and a witch trial was expressly permitted.

This enabled the proceedings against the pastor, who had previously been under house arrest, to be opened. Based on an expert opinion from the University of Giessen , the use of the ordeal was permitted. In the meantime, the future mayor Hermann Cothmann had been appointed director of the Embarrassing Court . Andreas Koch was tortured on May 16, 19 and 28, 1666 and sentenced to death by burning after being forced to confess. Count Hermann Adolf "pardoned" him after the petition of his wife Anna Elisabeth Pöppelmann and the usual payment of a considerable sum for beheading with the sword and subsequent burning. 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.

Memorial stone for Andreas Koch in St. Nicolai, Lemgo

Commemoration

Along with Maria Rampendahl, Andreas Koch is one of the most famous victims of the witch hunt in Lemgo. In his memory, a memorial stone was inaugurated in the Church of St. Nicolai on August 2, 1999, bearing the following inscription:

“God will finally straighten my head and honor me again. Andreas Koch, 1647–1666 pastor at St. Nicolai.
During the time of the witch trials he raised his voice against the delusion of the rulers and urged them to be moderate and careful. The search for truth and justice, the warning of false charges and the rescue of innocent people, which for him were among the most important duties of a pastor, brought persecution for him. Suspected of being a 'member of the devil', he was removed from office, charged with witchcraft and executed on June 2, 1666, the Saturday before Pentecost, at the age of 47. "

On June 18, 2012, the city council of Lemgo confirmed that the victims of the witch trials in Lemgo had been rehabilitated by the council resolution on the erection of the “Stein des Steins” (monument to Maria Rampendahl) of January 20, 1992 in Lemgo.

literature

  • Karl Meier-Lemgo: History of the city of Lemgo. Verlag FL Wagener, Lemgo 1952, DNB 453287891
  • Karl Meier-Lemgo: witches, executioners and tyrants. The last bloodiest witch hunt in Lemgo 1665–1681. Wagener, Lippe, 1949, DNB 453287913 .
  • Gisela Wilbertz : There was no Savior ...: Pastor Andreas Koch, executed as a sorcerer on June 2, 1666. Ed. Ev.-luth. Kirchengemeinde St. Nicolai, Lemgo 1999. 2nd edition: Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, Bielefeld, 2008, ISBN 978-3-89534-667-5

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Entry in the Rostock matriculation portal
  2. ↑ a b c Gisela Wilbertz : Andreas Koch, trial victim and pastor . From: Lexicon for the history of witch persecution , ed. by Gudrun Gersmann , Katrin Moeller u. Jürgen-Michael Schmidt, in: historicum.net , February 15 / June 9, 2006, accessed on June 2, 2016.
  3. ^ A b Karl Meier-Lemgo: History of the City of Lemgo , page 122.
  4. ^ Letter from the Lemgo City Council on the decision of June 18, 2012, accessed on June 2, 2016 (pdf; 865 kB).
personal data
SURNAME Koch, Andreas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pastor who was executed for witchcraft in Lemgo
DATE OF BIRTH around 1619
PLACE OF BIRTH Lemgo in Germany
DATE OF DEATH June 2, 1666
Place of death Lemgo