Anna Maria Schwegelin

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Anna Maria Schwegelin (also: Schwägele, Schwegele, Schwägelin ; * 1729 in Lachen ; † 1781 in captivity in Kempten ) was a maid who was sentenced to death in 1775 as the last " witch " in what is now Germany . In 1995, a historian discovered that the sentence had not been carried out and that the accused died in 1781 in the prison of the Princely Monastery of Kempten.

Life

Life story until 1775

Maria Anna Schwegelin grew up in poor conditions in Lachen, which at that time belonged as an enclave to the territory of the prince abbots of Kempten, and earned her living as a maid. Their offices were mainly farms and inns in the area around the imperial city of Memmingen . Around 1751 the Catholic met a Protestant coachman from Memmingerberg while doing a temporary job at the Künersberg country estate . According to her own statements, on his marriage promise , which was not kept, she changed to the Lutheran creed in St. Martin's Church in Memmingen. She later tried to reverse this conversion . Because of their caused by a leg suffering disability it was in the 1769 Leprosenhaus Oberguenzburg taken up in the 1770 or 1771 stiftkemptische work house Langenegg transferred to Martin cell.

By this time Schwegelin had already solidified the idea that she had entered into an alliance with the devil . As she later stated in the interrogation, the latter abused her soon after her change of faith and forced her to submit to him and to renounce God. Her hints and strange incidents finally led to a fellow inmate reporting Schwegelin to the local authorities in February 1775 , whereupon she was taken to the Stockhaus, the prison in the monastery town of Kempten.

Trial and verdict

The investigations were conducted by the district judge Johann Franz Wilhelm Treuchtlinger before the “Free Imperial District Court” of the Princely Monastery of Kempten. Without being tortured, the Schwegelin confessed to the devil's pact , but denied ever having used a damaging spell . Based on the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina , the penal legislation enacted for the empire in 1532, and on legal authorities of the 16th and 17th centuries, the district judge pleaded in his report for execution with the sword because of proven liability to the devil . The judgment was signed by three other court councilors of the prince monastery of Kempten and by the sovereign, prince abbot Honorius Roth von Schreckenstein . April 11, 1775 was scheduled as the day of execution. Probably due to the influence of his confessor, the Franciscan Father Anton Kramer, the prince abbot ordered the postponement of the execution and the resumption of the investigation before this date. After July 1775 the case does not seem to have been pursued any further. Schwegelin remained in prison and died there in 1781, provided with the sacraments of death, as noted in St. Lorenz's death register .

The judgment passed against them must be seen in connection with the intellectual-historical debates of the Enlightenment , especially the question of the possibility of heavenly and hellish forces acting on the material world. These controversies gained particular topicality in 1774 and 1775 through the spectacular "miraculous healings" of the exorcist Johann Joseph Gaßner , whose writings were also printed in Kempten.

Research and afterlife

The fountain named after Anna Maria Schwegelin on the southeast side of the residence.

The case of the “last witch” was considered to be the last execution of an alleged witch on the territory of the Holy Roman Empire for a long time due to the difficult tradition - the original files were considered lost and are in private ownership . It was only in 1995 that it was found out that the death sentence was not carried out. Nevertheless, Anna Maria Schwegelin can still be described as the last victim of the witch hunt on German soil.

In the older literature it was assumed that the death sentence was carried out. However, the Kempten historian Wolfgang Petz was able to clarify in 1995 that the convict died several years after the trial in 1781 in the Abiftkemptischen Stockhaus. He had discovered the entry on Schwegelin's death in the death register of the parish of St. Lorenz while researching his dissertation published in 1998.

However, the lexicon series published by the weekly newspaper Die Zeit in 2005 still perpetuates the outdated state of research and states that Schwegelin was executed in 1775. The current state of research was presented by Wolfgang Petz in 2007, who was meanwhile able to view the entire process files, in his book “The Last Hexe. The fate of Anna Maria Schwägelin ”.

In Kempten, a fountain named after her with a memorial plaque on a plinth was inaugurated on the southeast side of the residential building of the former Benedictine abbey in Kempten as a memorial for Anna Maria Schwegelin . The construction of the fountain was financially supported by the Kempten women's list . The originally planned design of the fountain with a stylized wing (design by the artists Waltraud Funk and Andrea Ziereis) above the fountain bowl was not implemented. The fountain bowl itself is older. On December 18, 2018, Mayor Thomas Kiechle unveiled a double-sided information stele next to the Schwegelin fountain, on which details about the life of Schwegelin and the process can be found.

The novel adaptation of the Schwegelin Trial by Uwe Gardein 2008 ignores the current state of research and allows the execution to take place for dramaturgical reasons. The historically misrepresentation of her execution at the stake can also be found on the historicizing mural that the Allgäu artist Josef Löflath (1915–2003) painted on the north wall in the foyer of the Kempten residence on behalf of the judicial authorities.

See also

literature

Current literature in terms of content

Outdated literature

  • von Wachter (Hrsg.): The last witch trial of the Kempten monastery. In: Allgäuer Geschichtsfreund , Volume 5, 1892, pp. 8-14, 21-25, 37-41, 60-63.
  • Carl Haas: The witch trials: a cultural-historical attempt together with documents. Laupp & Siebeck, Tübingen 1865 (as Google books online).
  • Wolfgang Behringer : witch hunt in Bavaria. Folk magic, zeal for faith and reasons of state in the early modern period . 3rd, improved edition with an afterword added. Oldenbourg, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-486-53903-5 (also dissertation at the University of Munich 1985).
  • Hansjörg Straßer: Anna Schwegelin. The last witch trial on German soil - 1775 in Kempten (= Allgäuer Heimatbücher, 84). Verlag für Heimatpflege Kempten in the Heimatbund Allgäu eV, Kempten 1985.

Literary processing

  • Uwe Gardein: The last witch - Maria Anna Schwegelin: Historical novel (= crime thriller in Gmeiner-Verlag). Gmeiner, Meßkirch, 2008, ISBN 978-3-8392-3069-5 .
  • Benedikt Hummel: Sanctuaries and 's letscht' Fuir. Two plays in the Allgäu dialect. Allgäuer Zeitungsverlag, Kempten (Allgäu), 1991, ISBN 3-88006-159-9 .

Web links

Commons : Anna Maria Schwegelin  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wolfgang Petz: Anna Maria Schwägelin. In: Lexicon on the history of the witch hunt. Edited by Gudrun Gersmann, Katrin Moeller, Jürgen-Michael Schmidt, December 11, 2007, archived from the original on May 31, 2008 ; Retrieved April 11, 2020 (reproduced on historicum.net).
  2. ↑ Hartmut Hegeler: Witch monuments in Bavaria. (PDF; 4.6 MB) 2011, p. 11 , accessed on April 11, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Birgit Kata: The jubilees to the history of the Prince Abbey of Kempten between 1777 and 2002 in their historical contexts. In: Birgit Kata u. a. (Ed.): More than 1000 years: The Kempten Abbey between founding and relinquishment 752–1802 (= Allgäu research on archeology and history , 1). LIKIAS, Kempten / Friedberg 2006, ISBN 3-980-76286-6 , p. 84, note 18.
  4. ↑ Inauguration of the Anna-Maria Schwegelin fountain. In: Frauenliste-kempten.de. Archived from the original on October 13, 2013 ; accessed on April 11, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Schwegelin, Anna Maria
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schwegelin, Maria Anna; Schwegelin, Anna Maria; Schwägelin, Anna
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Maid and last "witch" who was sentenced to death in what is now Germany, the sentence was not carried out
DATE OF BIRTH 1729
PLACE OF BIRTH Laugh
DATE OF DEATH 1781
Place of death Kempten (Allgäu)