Anna Maria Wagemann

The center of Fürfeld around 1820, drawing by Christoph Ludwig Yelin

Anna Maria Wagemann (* around 1650 in Neipperg ; † February 5, 1717 in Fürfeld ) was the victim of a witch trial and was publicly burned in 1717. The process was led by Johann Dietrich von Gemmingen as Fürfeld landlord and court lord. In addition to Anna Maria Wagemann, her daughter-in-law Anna Margarethe Wagemann and two underage granddaughters were also indicted. The Law Faculty of the University of Tübingen checked the trial protocols and approved the death sentence for the main defendant. The judgment was carried out on February 5, 1717 on the Fürfeld execution site by the executioner Georg Adam Ostertag . It was the last known witch burning in the Kraichgau .

Life

Anna Maria Wagemann was born in Neipperg. Her exact date of birth is unknown, as even during the 1716 trial she was only able to give her age imprecisely at 66 or 67 years. Around 1670 she worked at the Gasthof Lamm in Stetten am Heuchelberg , and gave birth to an illegitimate child from the tenant's servant. She later came to Fürfeld through her marriage to Fürfeld Hans Michael Wagemann, where she gave birth to two more children. In the place she was also called the Wilmerin . Her life was ruled by poverty and she knew about medicinal herbs .

The witch trial against them was based on defamation from the family. Above all, her daughter-in-law Anna Margaretha Wagemann, whose connection with the son her mother had not welcomed, never missed an opportunity to agitate against the alleged witch . She said z. B. to recognize the mother-in-law in a brake on her working in the fields and attributed the death of a goat to her witchcraft. She also insinuated that the mother-in-law had once fed her son a wolf heart to make him angry.

After countless allegations, a witch trial finally took place on May 18, 1716. In addition to Johann Dietrich von Gemmingen as landlord and court lord, the court also included the counsel for the knightly canton of Kraichgau , Johann Balthasar Müller, the Gemmingen bailiff in Bonfeld , Johann Peter Heydrich, the Fürfeld mayor Johannes Bullinger and three court officials. Negotiations took place on a total of 33 days up to November 1716.

The first days of the court were primarily determined by the interrogation of witnesses. At first, the 38-year-old daughter-in-law Anna Margaretha repeated the allegations made, but was suspected of witchcraft herself. After the second day of the trial, the court had both defendants' homes searched. Among other things, a lizard's head and a sack of peas hung by the fireplace were found.

On May 22, 1716, the 9-year-old Regina Barbara, granddaughter of Anna Maria Wagemann, was interviewed. She claimed to have been instigated and instructed in witchcraft by her grandmother. The next day, 12-year-old granddaughter Eva Catharina was interviewed, but she suffered a convulsive attack during the questioning. After a few hours of rest, the child was brought to the Fürfeld rectory , where at first they did not provide any information about witchcraft, but after further questioning they also admitted that they had also been trained in witchcraft by their grandmother. The girl later had another attack in the rectory. The next day, the girl reported abuse by a minstrel during a festive visit with her grandmother. The girl's entire body was examined by the village rifle's wife, but no wounds could be found. The girl then suffered another attack. Later she reiterated the mistreatment allegation, but now stated that it was not a minstrel , but the devil who whore with her . A few days later the pastor in Fürfeld said he felt a prank on the left cheek in the otherwise empty bedroom. Anna Margaretha Wagemann also stated that her daughter Eva Catharina had new, inexplicable wounds. Both effects were attributed to supernatural powers. The seizure girl was interrogated again and stated that her grandfather had already accused the grandmother of witchcraft. On May 30, 1716, Christian Zeister, son of the accused, confirmed that his mother was a quarrelsome woman and that her grandfather had accused her of witchcraft.

In the meantime, the accused and the daughter-in-law had already been arrested. There is no reliable information about the conditions in the Fürfeld prison. Daughter-in-law Anna Margarethe later stated that she was kept hand and foot cuff under the open sky, that her clothes had rotted from moisture and that vermin had nested in the rags, so that she was often naked in the straw. The meals were very salty and inedible. Relatives of the accused often acted as prison guards. Since they had even attempted the process in the first place, it cannot be ruled out that they took advantage of the opportunity and mistreated the women accused of witchcraft.

On June 4, 1716, the defendant was interrogated for the first time. In addition to general allegations such as talking to people, lack of faith, etc., she was mainly charged with the fact that one day she had left the house of her son-in-law Christian Zeister with remarkable speed after she had given bread there. This incident was blamed for the illness of one of her grandchildren, the mother's lack of breast milk in childbed, the death of a calf and other harmful consequences. Her desperate statements on her defense also echo the allegation of mistreatment against the prison guards. She asked to be interrogated in prison the next day. There she gave an interview with the devil in the prison cell as well as witch dances at the execution places in Treschklingen and Wimpfen . On June 15, she initially revoked her previous statements to bailiff Heydrich, but had Heydrich called again and then reported again about witchcraft.

In the following days, the defendants' condition deteriorated. Her face was blotched and scratched, and her robe was covered in blood and pus. She claimed that she was hit in the face and back by the devil in prison. An expert found that the wounds were not new, but one to two weeks old. The defendant confessed and in the meantime quickly revoked the allegations made against her. She also had repeated wounds and again stated that she had been mistreated by the devil in prison. Among other things, he carved a mark on her pubic area with a hot knife. The messenger called Georg Adam Ostertag and his wife confirmed that they had found the said sign.

On October 8, the daughter-in-law Anna Margaretha Wagemann was interviewed again, who exonerated herself and incriminated her mother-in-law. The granddaughter Eva Catharina also stressed the grandmother again before she was brought home because of severe abdominal pain. The next day she had a hard bloated stomach and said she had fornicated twice with the devil .

On October 17, 1716, the court heard a total of twelve witnesses, all of whom stated that they had been harmed in various ways by Anna Maria Wagemann without being able to raise concrete allegations. The blacksmith Mattes Schrottner accused her of damaging an ox and a chicken, the tailor Hans Georg Oberkogler accused her of sucking on his breasts from a distance in his youth, the widow Mayer associated a dried-up tree with the defendant, the widow Radon saw in the Wilmerin a cause for the death of a cow with a calf. Other witnesses brought the Wilmerin into connection with vague feelings of oppression.

On November 18, the final, 879-page record of the interrogation was read out and signed. The barons of Gemmingen had had high jurisdiction in Fürfeld since 1593, but always turned to the legal scholars of a university in serious litigation. Therefore, the protocol went to the Tübingen jurists college, which sentenced the defendant to death at the stake for the misdeeds of witchcraft and sorcery she had committed under Article 109 of the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina . The judgment stipulated in detail that one should make an attempt to save the souls of the accused before the execution and that the executioner was free to include the suffering of the accused when the sentence was being carried out by strangling or by hanging a bag around the neck Shorten explosives. The daughter-in-law Anna Margaretha Wagemann could not be convicted of witchcraft, which is why she was acquitted and advised to pay diligent attention to her in the future . The two underage granddaughters, who were considered to have been seduced by their grandmother into witchcraft, were sentenced to attend the execution of the sentence, to receive a (in the case of the elderly sensitive) punishment with the rod and to publicly confess their sins in a special service.

The death sentence was carried out on February 5, 1717 at the place of execution at Fürfelder Eichwäldle by Georg Adam Ostertag. The daughter-in-law Anna Margarethe also had to attend the execution and was expelled from Fürfeld and all other places in the possession of the barons of Gemmingen after the original feud .

In 1750 Anna Margarethe Wagemann, now living in Wetzlar , sued the barons of Gemmingen at the Imperial Court of Justice because of the witch trial that had taken place 33 years ago. She demanded compensation for the unworthy 40 weeks imprisonment as well as the resumption in Fürfeld. Nothing is known about the outcome of the lawsuit.

literature

• Fürfeld - from the past and present of the former imperial knighthood town . City of Bad Rappenau, Bad Rappenau 2001, ISBN 3-929295-77-6 , pp. 311–323