Elsa from Kamen

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Merian engraving of the city of Hamm with fortifications and city wall from 1647, north view across the Lippe

Elsa from Kamen (* approx. 1545 in Kamen ; † approx. 1565 in Hamm ) was a victim of the witch hunts in Hamm. She worked as a cook in the Kentrop monastery in Hamm and was executed for alleged witchcraft , together with her mother, who apparently had also worked in the monastery kitchen. Both must therefore have been Catholic. Brothers are mentioned.

Source and dating

The Tecklenburg court doctor Johann Weyer (1515–1588) describes the fate of Elsa in his book Von Teufelsgespenst, Zauberern und Gifftbereytern ( De praestigiis daemonum , 1586). He does not give an exact time for the incidents in the Hammer Monastery. The Latin edition first appeared in 1563; the German edition was printed in 1586. In direct connection, the German edition contains time information on events from 1564 and on Weyer's personal research from May 25, 1565. It is therefore possible that the events of the cook Elsa occurred during this period. No documents on this witch trial have been preserved in the State Archives in Münster and Düsseldorf or in the Hamm City Archives.

Process flow

Kentrop House

In general, historiography assumes that the city of Kamen has not suffered any victims of the witch hunt. Therefore, the recordings of Johann Weyer about the cook Elsa from Kamen, who got caught up in a witch trial in Hamm 450 years ago in the early phase of the witch hunt together with her mother, are surprising .

Around 1460 there were 14 sisters, novices and lay sisters living in the Kentrop monastery there . Non-aristocratic women were able to work as lay sisters in the cloister area within the monastery, e.g. B. in the kitchen. Elsa could have been such a lay sister.

Unusual health problems occurred among the nuns. They were tormented by strange convulsions, fell to the ground and did not know afterwards what had happened to them. No one could explain these attacks, but they were attributed to the action of demonic magic powers. At the beginning of the early modern period , people saw satanic forces at work when people or animals were sick. An “old, sensible nun” named Anna Lemgo was first and foremost “attacked hard by the plague.” Since other nuns suffered the same fate, the nuns were sent to see a fortune teller. He persuaded them that they had been bewitched by the cook from Kamen, called Elsa.

Anna Lemgo said as a witness: Elsa, the cook who came to us, had put this epilepsy disease on her. So the cook was finally thrown into prison as a "monster" and tied up in hard gangs. Probably under the torture, the confession was extorted from her that she had tormented nuns in the monastery for a long time. During the interrogation she confessed that she had triggered everything with a strange ["welschen"] Süpplein. In her herb dish ("Krautköcht") a poisonous snake, a toad and menstrual blood were secretly mixed up. This “cabbage cook” was identified by the court as the cause of the cramps.

When the cook was sentenced to death, however, she defended her professional honor and withdrew before the execution that she had harmed people with her cooking skills. She said it couldn't have been her cooking skills that led to the seizures in the monastery. At most it could have been curses or curses. Everything that was evil in the monastery with the virgins was brought about by cursing alone. Ultimately, the Kamen cook Elsa and her mother were burned as "magicians".

The doctor Johann Weyer emphasized: This proves "that evil wishes and curses devils are driven into a person dislike". Although the two women, the daughter and the mother, were “sacrificed” at the stake, the gruesome spectacle of epilepsy among the nuns would not have lessened a bit.

Commemoration

In Hamm-Heessen there is a memorial stone from the Heimatverein Heessen from 1991 for the victims of the Hammer witch trials. The cook Elsa and her mother are not mentioned there. Inscription on the witch memorial in Hamm Heessen: Until 1960 the “witch pond” was located here. Citizens of Heessen were persecuted and burned as witches around 1600. Heimatverein Heessen eV 1991. The four names of the Heessen victims are engraved on the stone monument: Else Lindemann, Heinr. Hesselmann, indicted in 1595 and released; Widow Anna Brinkmann, burned on December 14, 1594; Wendele Heinemann, sentenced to death by burning on March 21, 1612.

swell

  • Johann Weyer, De praestigiis daemonum, Von Teufelsgespenst, magicians and Gifftbereytern, black artists, witches and fiends, on top of that irer Straff, also by the bewitched and how you can help them, Frankfurt am Mayn, Basseum, 1586. Unchanged reprint, Darmstadt, Bläschke, 1969 , Pp. 258-260

literature

  • Hartmut Hegeler: Tatters of the devil, cook at Kamen bewitched monastery maidens, burned as a witch at Hamm , Spenner Verlag 2010
  • Hartmut Hegeler: Fatzwerke des Teufels, Kochin zu Kamen bewitched monastery virgins , in: Jahrbuch Kreis Unna 2008, pp. 9-15, ISBN 978-3-9810-961-3-2
  • Ralf-Peter Fuchs: witch hunt on the Ruhr and Lippe. The use of justice by masters and subjects . Westphalian Institute for Regional History. Regional Association of Westphalia-Lippe. Muenster. Forum Regionalgeschichte 8. Ed. By Bernd Walter. Ardey Verlag Münster 2004, p. 35 f.
  • Manfred Wolf: Kentrop Monastery , in: Herbert Zink, (ed.): 750 Years Hamm , Hamm 1976

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Witch monument in Hamm Heessen
personal data
SURNAME Elsa from Kamen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Victims of the witch trials in Hamm
DATE OF BIRTH around 1545
PLACE OF BIRTH Came
DATE OF DEATH around 1565
Place of death Hamm