Christina Rauscher

Christina Rauscher b. Gerber (* around 1570 in Horb am Neckar ( County of Hohenberg , Upper Austria ); † 1618 in Innsbruck ) was a woman who was persecuted as a witch and later became government commissioner against criminal offenses. In contrast to most of the "witches", she belonged to a wealthy family.

Life

Christina Rauscher was the daughter of a wealthy cloth merchant and brewer from Horb, Martin Gerber, and his wife Anna geb. Kurner. She married the Horber innkeeper Johann Rauscher, the owner of the inn Zum Goldenen Schaf .

Her father was a ruthless businessman and therefore had frequent arguments with the Horber Council. However, he was able to win this successfully by complaining about the advice to the Austrian government in Innsbruck. The council members therefore regarded him as a traitor. Christina Rauscher actively supported her father in this conflict and she managed to discover a conspiracy of the council against her family. As a result, rumors were spread in Horb in 1598 that she and her mother were witches. After Christina Rauscher had accused the mayor, who fully complied with the wishes of the council relatives, of defamation, she and her husband were arrested. The aim was to intimidate them with the temporary imprisonment and the subsequent harassment, which were supposed to put the innkeeper under economic pressure. However, she complained to the government in Innsbruck. After she had threatened to investigate the council, Christina Rauscher - just pregnant - was arrested in 1604 in a raid-like operation on suspicion of being a witch. In detention, she was tortured so severely and so severely on several occasions that the executioner ultimately refused to follow the instructions of her relatives. She lost her child because of the torture. Although her husband fought for her release from the beginning, Christina was only released from prison after almost a year without having a confession pressed from her.

Upon release, Christina sued the council for abuse of law and became a tireless accuser of the injustice done to her and other alleged witches. In Horb alone around 40 "witches" had been executed by then. In 1607 it achieved that the Archduke Maximilian Ernst had the entire council of Horb and the mayor exchanged. A new law forbade making witch denunciations public. In 1609 Christina Rauscher was finally received in an audience by the Archduke, who gave her an official assignment to investigate criminal offenses. So she has become a "government commissioner on her own behalf" that is unique in the German history of the witch trials. As a result of their activities, the witch trials in the Grafschaft Hohenberg largely collapsed, while other parts of Germany were hit by a severe wave of trials in the 1620s.

Appreciation

In Horb a street was named after her, Christina-Rauscher-Straße . It is a side street of the Südring , which is located in the new residential area on the Höhe, north of the old town.

Notes and individual references

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Johannes Dillinger: … Christina Rauscher
2. ↑ Straßenweb.de

literature

• Johannes Dillinger : The woman who ended the witch trials. Christina Rauscher . In: “Moments. Contributions to the regional history of Baden-Württemberg ”2, 2017, ISSN 1619-1609, p. 13
• Johannes Dillinger: "Bad people". Witch persecutions in Swabian Austria and Kurtrier in comparison , Spee, Trier 1999, ISBN 3-87760-127-8 (dissertation, University of Trier, 1998; = Trier witch trials. Sources and representations , vol. 5).
• Johannes Dillinger: witch trials in Horb , ed. by Joachim Lipp. Kultur- und Museumsverein, Horb 1994 (= publications of the Kultur- und Museumsverein Horb , vol. 11).