Buchela

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Madame Buchela (born October 12, 1899 in Honzrath ; † November 8, 1986 in Bonn ) was considered a "fortune teller of Bonn" and " Pythia from the Rhine". Her real name was Margarethe Goussanthier, geb. Merstein.

According to her, she was born in a field under a beech tree , which explains her stage name. In an early television interview from 1953, however, she gave the less mystical explanation that she often ate beechnuts in school and that is why her teacher gave her the nickname Buchela. Because her father was a peddler , she wandered the country as a "gypsy child" . She claims to have discovered the gift of fortune telling when she foresaw the death of her brother Anton. After continuing her childhood in the orphanage , she married Adam Goussanthier. Many of their family members were imprisoned and murdered as "gypsies" in concentration camps by the National Socialists . She herself escaped persecution probably because of the French-sounding family name of her husband, who died as a soldier in the Wehrmacht at the end of World War II.

After the war she lived first in Stotzheim , later on the Ahr and since 1961 in Remagen , where Konrad Adenauer was one of her visitors, to whom she is said to have predicted the election victory of 1953. However, there is no evidence for this. She soon gained local celebrity status in and around Remagen. The expensive cars that those seeking advice drove to their homes, the legacy of a grateful customer, fueled speculation about the names of domestic and foreign politicians who were supposed to be their customers. Rumors alleged that she was thereby exerting a significant influence on politics, which u. a. was also taken up by a documentary film made by the GDR documentary filmmakers Walter Heynowski and Gerhard Scheumann under the title Geisterstunde . She should always have received "ordinary people" and predicted the future for them, possibly even without a fee. In the Remagen population she was also known for her numerous pets, including a monkey.

She owed considerable fame to her involvement in the investigation of the Lebach murders , even if she did not use her skills as a fortune teller: the two main perpetrators had visited Margarethe Goussanthier several times and planned to kidnap her under a pretext - presumably to make her betrayal Forcing details from the private life of their customers and then blackmailing them. According to other sources, she was suspected of having large amounts of cash and gold, because as a gypsy she would not entrust her money to a bank. When they contacted each other as Dr. Sardo and secretary and claims to have come on behalf of the former Empress Soraya , who wants to use Buchela's services. However, Madame Buchela was supposed to go with them, which was unusual because Margarethe Goussantier usually received her customers at home. Since she was suspicious of the men, she wrote down the license plate number. When, during the search for the murderers in the television program Aktenzeichen XY, an unsolved extortion telegram was reported that was connected with the crime and that was sent to Dr. Sardo was signed, she informed the police, who, thanks to the number plate, were able to identify the perpetrators.

In her later years she had a nephew with whom she was particularly close. After his death in 1976, which had deeply affected her (he had been murdered in her house), the often ill Margarethe Goussanthier largely withdrew from the public eye. In 1983 her autobiography “I tell you. The Legacy of the Great Seer ”, which was supposedly written by a ghostwriter . She spent the last months of her life in a friend's house in Oberwinter. This led to a conflict with her family, who claimed that Madame Buchela was being held there against her will.

In 2002, a fountain named after Madame Buchela was built in her birthplace. In 2012, the biography novel “From seeing and saying. The Buchela ”by Monika Littau .

literature

  • Buchela (actually Margarethe Goussanthier, née Merstein). In: Ursula Koehler-Lutterbeck, Monika Siedentopf: Women in the Rhineland. Extraordinary biographies from central Europe. Cologne 2004, pp. 215-218.
  • Hildegard Ginzler: The seer Madame Buchela (1899–1986). A life between beech and birch. In: Homeland yearbook for the Ahrweiler district. Born in 2000, Ahrweiler 1999, p. 153.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Crime No. 28
  2. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKTID0LzJOw&pbjreload=10 The big criminal cases S02 E05 The murder of soldiers The shots in Lebach from 32:30 to 32:45
  3. ^ Eduard Zimmermann : The invisible network. Munich 1969, pp. 227-234.
  4. ↑ So the statements in a documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7AMi77T_xg
personal data
SURNAME Buchela
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Goussanthier, Margarethe (real name); Meerstein, Margarethe (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German fortune teller
DATE OF BIRTH October 12, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Honzrath
DATE OF DEATH November 8, 1986
Place of death Bonn