Anna cousin

Anna Vetter (born in January 1630 in Katte Hochstatt , Principality of Ansbach , died in May 1703 ) occurred in Nuremberg as a preacher and mystic visionary and wrote an autobiographical writing, which later by Gottfried Arnold in his Unparteyischen church and heretics history was published edits .

Life

Anna Hitsch was born in 1630 as the third daughter and fourth child of the blacksmith Adam Hitsch and his wife Margarete in Kattenhochstatt, a current district of Weißenburg in Bavaria in the Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen district. The following year Tilly invaded the Principality of Ansbach. Her father was killed in the chaos of the Thirty Years' War ; the mother only barely kept the family afloat. Vetter described that she had transported the disposed deathbeds of plague deaths to other cities and sold them there. Anna herself scalded herself as a child, with burn marks and a shortened left arm.

Around 1651 the seamstress Anna married the Ansbach mason and later castle guard Johann Michael Vetter (1616–1698). Between 1652 and 1663 she bore him seven children, including daughters Anna Maria in 1661 and Anna Barbara in 1663. Four children survived his youth. Vetter described her marital experiences drastically: Her husband was a godless drinker who beat and raped her; in her last pregnancy she was seriously ill.

During one of the last pregnancies, probably 1660/1661, she had her first divine vision (in the language of her time, a face ). After she was born, she received divine commands to preach in her pulpit. She was prevented from doing this by the authorities, asked about her vision and subsequently officially chained in her house, this is said to have happened around 1662. She claims to have freed herself from the chain after six months and subsequently moved around 1663 outside Ansbach to preach against the "black dragon of the papacy" in Eichstätt , Ellingen and Dinkelsbühl . According to her own statement, her visions should have ceased in 1663.

Afterwards, she continued to feel called to spread her teachings. Despite her commitment to leading a quiet life since then, she continued to go against authorities and, among other things, demanded her right to public preaching. Her writings, which must have been written around 1690 (a grandchild is mentioned), were handed over to Pastor Heuber in Ansbach (officiating 1683–1695).

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Vetters 'work, which is clearly intended for publication, is initially divided into a defense of the religious rights of women (essential points are that women are allowed to speak in the community and also be teachers and prophets), followed by apostles' letters to the cities of Ansbach and Nuremberg, and finally her own self-confidently formulated résumé, which she wrote down with her own hand upon request and otherwise orally often . The curriculum vitae closes with an apocalyptic vision. In terms of content, a recurring vision is that of the birth pangs of the whole city of Nuremberg, which she herself assists as a midwife and thereby saves mother and child from ruin. The city is socially criticized as a sinner: wet nurses and even children used witchcraft with impunity , Jews drove their mischief, and nobility and bureaucracy caused horror and misery. Further visions allow her to witness events in the Bible, she sees the devil in various forms and sees herself as Eve , Lamb of God and ancestral mother of her people.

Vetter wrote - she claims to have learned to write in a vision - coarse and in the vernacular, but took over common terms from the Bible and catechism as well as from the vocabulary of mysticism and the burgeoning pietism of her time, such as rapture , the bride of God or later Man . She redefined other terms based on her view of the world: While the “chicken” and “breasts” in Pietism are mostly metaphors for God or Mary, the Mother of God, she saw herself in the role of giver of bliss for her community. She adopted other visions and parables, also with her own interpretations, from the Revelation of John and finally from her everyday life: The Ansbach princely family stands for the aspects of God, the depraved guests of an “inn” stand for Christianity that has fallen away from God.

Source criticism and interpretations

Gottfried Arnold probably truthfully stated that he had received the Anna Vetter manuscript, which is no longer the original, from a "conscientious preacher" who had received it from Vetter himself. Arnold arranged, commented and edited the manuscript; In the first four editions of the Unparteyischen Historie between 1700 and 1742 the text was reworked orthographically. The central document about Vetter's life has thus been alienated by Arnold's editing.

Friedrich Wilhelm Kantzenbach verified in 1976 with the help of church book entries that Anna Vetter was actually alive; Various details of her autobiography on birth, marriage and children therefore essentially correspond to the researched entries.

Anna Vetter's visions and actions have been interpreted differently over time. Arnold himself presented himself as a neutral mediator in his comment; the Lutheran Johann Heinrich Feustking named them as unchristian madmen with absurd revelations. Jeannine Blackwell diagnosed her with, among other things, a well-rounded psychological medical history, recognized parallels to literary similarly structured witch confessions and trials of the 17th century, and, like Gerda Lerner, suspected early feminist attempts at liberation of female subjectivity. Eva Kormann, who saw Vetter as an author centered on her personal circumstances, who used her religion for her own expression, firmly contradicted the latter interpretation. In order to give credibility to her demand for a pure life, Vetter had both sought rape by the man for her pregnancies and wrote about an immaculate conception. Her accusations of numerous women other than witches and her unbridled hatred of Jews did not show that she was a fair champion for minorities.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Eva Kormann: Anna Vetter or religion as argumentation and legitimation model. In: Magdalene Heuser: Autobiographies of women: Contributions to their history. Tübingen 1996 Digitized ISBN 3484320850 . Pages 71-92
2. ↑ ^{a b} Eva Kormann: Ich, Welt und Gott. Autobiography in the 17th century. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne, Weimar, Vienna 2004. ISBN 341216903X . Digitized pages 158–173
3. ↑ Jeannine Blackwell: Heart Conversations with God. Confessions of German Pietists in the 17th and 18th Centuries. In: Gisela Brinker-Gabler (ed.): German literature by women. Volume 1, Darmstadt / Munich 1988. ISBN 3406331181 , pp. 276-279
4. ↑ Gerda Lerner: The Creation of Feminist Consciousness. From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-seventy. New York, Oxford 1993. ISBN 0195066049 . Digitized pages 94–97.