Witch trials of Groß Ullersdorf
The Witch Trials of Groß Ullersdorf refers to the persecution of witches in northern Moravia from 1678 to 1692 , which took place under the Inquisition Tribunal of Heinrich Franz Boblig during the re-Catholicization of the country. A total of 104 people fell victim to it. In Groß Ullersdorf alone 56 people died at the stake, the second focus was Mährisch Schönberg with 48 executions.
history
On Palm Sunday 1678, during the communion service in the St. Laurentius Church in Zöptau , the Wermsdorf beggar Marina Schuch was observed by an acolyte stealing hosts that she wanted to feed to a cow in order to increase its milk production. The pastor Eusebius Leandrus Schmidt, informed of the incident, was considered a fanatical preacher against sorcery and witch rituals. He immediately informed his colleagues in the area, the dean of Mährisch Schönberg, Christoph Alois Lautner , and the rule of Groß Ullersdorf about the incident.
The castle captain Adam Vinarský von Křížov and his wife, Angelika Anna Sibylla Countess von Galle, a daughter of Přemek II von Zierotin , who were both devout Catholics, appointed the Olomouc advocate Heinrich Franz Boblig von Edelstadt (around 1612–1698) as judge of the inquisition. Boblig had already worked as an inquisitor in the Principality of Neisse from 1638 to 1653 and put around 200 people there at the stake. Boblig was committed to the jurisdiction of the Prague Court of Appeal, which had to confirm the death sentences.
After the first trial, which was directed against the beggar Schuch, the owner of the cow, the midwife Dorothea Groer and Dorothea David, who recommended the feeding of hosts, a wave of denunciations against other people followed. The arrests now also spread to upper-class circles. Under the torture, statements were put into the mouths of the arrested so that the investigation could be extended to unpopular people. Boblig received support not only from the owners of the estate, Count Zierotin , but also from the Prague appellate judge Jacob Weingarten, with whom he had already worked during his work in Silesia , and from the secretary of the Bishop of Olomouc, Elias Isidor Schmidt Brother of the Zöptau pastor. On the basis of arbitrary and extorted accusations, the Inquisition Court arrested the Groß Ullersdorf pastor Thomas König, the pastor from Römerstadt , Johann Franz Pabst and the wife of the Groß Ullersdorf paper mill owner Göttlicher. During this time, Boblig also received the order to carry out the Inquisition from the city of Mährisch Schönberg, which belonged to the Princes of Liechtenstein . The wave of denunciations gave Boblig an uncontrollable status of power which he used to eliminate people who seemed dangerous to him. In particular, this concerned the Mährisch Schönberg dean Lautner, whom he had accused of being in league with the devil. Lautner was burned in public in Mohelnice in 1685 .
After Johann Joachim von Žerotín had reached the age of majority in 1689 and assumed rule in Groß Ullersdorf, he ordered the witch trials to be stopped. The autonomized Inqusitionstribunal worked until 1692 and was continued by order of Leopold I dissolved.