Jena Christmas Eve tragedy

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Copper engraving from the pamphlet “True Opening of the Jena Christmas Tragedy”, published in 1716

In the Jena Christmas Eve tragedy on Christmas Eve 1715, two treasure diggers and two guardians of the dead died after a necromancy . The following year a dispute arose among scholars as to whether the deaths were due to the work of Satan or to smoke inhalation.

The tragedy

In the course of 1715 four men got together in Jena : Georg Heichler, a tailor and owner of a vineyard on the city's gallows , Hans Friederich Geßner, a shepherd from Döbritzschen , Hans Zenner, a farmer from Ammerbach , and the medical student Johann Gotthard Weber. Heichler believed that there was a treasure hidden in his vineyard . A sure indication of this is the white woman , a ghost that shows up there more often. He convinced the others that they only needed a spring root and a magic book, namely the Dr. Faustus' “ hell compulsion ” to summon the treasure-guarding spirits and raise them with their help.

On Christmas Eve at nine o'clock the shepherd, the farmer and the student went to the vineyard house. Heichler himself stayed at home. On site, Weber drew the Tetragrammaton as a magical seal with white lead over the door. Then the men entered. They prayed the Our Father and drew a magic circle on the ceiling with the student's sword . To warm themselves in the bitterly cold night, they lit some charcoal , which they found in the little house, in an open vessel. With this the preparations were completed and the summoning could begin. They uttered the words Tetragrammaton, Adonai Agla , Jehovah, and other names of God. They called Prince Och from the “Kingdom of the Suns” three times to send the spirit Nathanael to their aid. At the end Weber was supposed to recite the incantation from the “Höllenzwang” three times. He only made one pass. Then he felt as if he were falling into a deep sleep.

When Heichler went to his house the next day after the service, he found Weber passed out on the bench. The farmer and the shepherd were dead. The authorities had the student taken to an inn and ordered three guards to stay with the dead. These also kindled a coal fire. The following morning two of them died. The surviving guard claimed that a ghost in the form of a boy had appeared to them, rummaged in the house and slammed the door with a loud bang. Everyone present, both the dead and those who had escaped, had red marks and marks on their bodies. ( A light red skin color can often be observed with carbon monoxide poisoning .)

The consequences

The deceased Hans Friederich Geßner and Hans Zenner were buried on January 11, 1716 under the Jena gallows. His faculty issued a perpetual relegation to the student Weber , Schneider Heichler was expelled from the country for ten years by the authorities. Even after the judicial investigation was over, there was disagreement about the cause of the deaths. Even the doctors divided into two camps: One, led by the Halle dean Friedrich Hoffmann , discussed what they believed to be the toxic effects of the coal fumes. Others, according to the Jena physician Erdmann Friedrich Andreae, pointed to the devil's pernicious influence . In local tradition, the Jena Christmas Eve remained alive for so long that Ludwig Bechstein was able to include it in his German book of legends in the middle of the 19th century .

Contemporary reports and treatises (selection)

  • Friedrich Hoffmann: A famous Medici Thorough covering and physical remarks: From the deadly steam of the Holtz-coals at the instigation of the sad incident which occurred in Jena at the end of the 1715th year and now, for the common benefit, left to print. Halle in Magdeburgischen: found in the Regerische Buchhandlung, 1716 ( digitized copy of the University and State Library of Saxony-Anhalt , VD18 )
  • Sententia because of the weighting down of the spirits on the night of Christ in the past 1715th year, and subsequent sad deaths. - Report of the investigation commission ( 10094261 in VD 18. )
  • Georg Andreas Zeideler: Sinceri Philalethæ Thorough Send-Writing and Physicalisch Judicium From the poisonous incense powder and deadly steam, or gas sulphureo subtilissimo of the Holtz coals, and this resulted in the death of those in the hypocritical vineyards of Jena on the first holy Weynacht Feyertage 1715 after one on the salvation. Christian evenings made superstitious and shameful conjuration and citation des Teuffels, to reveal some buried treasures, found two farmers: To an honorable friend PSS 1716. ( Digitized copy of the Goettingen University Library , VD18 )
  • Erdmann Friedrich Andreae: Erdman. Friedr. Andreæ, Medicinæ Doctoris and Practici, Thorough Contrast to the Thorough Bedencken and physical comments of a famous Medici, already issued in Halle in Magdeburg, about the deadly steam of the Holtz coals: In which ... the death of those in the hypocritical vineyards at Jena on the 1st of Christ - Days 1715. found ... two men, only ascribed to natural causes, but in the latter the opposite has been sufficiently proven and also ... is explained. Werther, Jena 1716 ( 11132337 in VD 18. )

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Johann Daniel Metzger, Christian Gottfried Gruner, Wilhelm H. Remer: System of judicial medicine science . Unzer, 1820, p. 235.