Witch persecution in Thuringia

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Many witch trials have been handed down for the witch hunt in Thuringia . The mostly village-like Thuringian-Franconian area was a core zone of the German witch hunts . From the period between 1526 and 1731, over 1500 cases of witch persecution can be established in Thuringia.

Between 1598 and 1631 Thuringia was shaken by a first wave of persecution with short interruptions and a good ten years later until around 1700 by a second major wave of persecution. In order to prevent the state from degenerating these waves of persecution , the Cautio Criminalis , published anonymously by the Jesuit Friedrich Spee in 1631, was used as a guide for investigating and assessing the respective offenses. The varying intensity of the persecution was, among other things, a consequence of the individually different severity of the duties of the entrusted judges and inquisitors on the basis of the treatise by the Dominican Heinrich Kramer, known as Hexenhammer . The Henneberger and Coburg Lands in the south and southwest, along with the lower Werra Valley, were centers of these persecutions.