Katharina Güschen

Katharina Güschen (also: Scheuer Tring ; Scheuer Treine ) (* in Schildgen ; † January 10, 1613 in Lustheide ) was a victim of the witch hunt .

Life

The day laborer Katharina Güschen from Nittum (oldest settlement center in the Schildgen area) was also called "Scheuer Trine" after her first husband, Johann Scheuer. When he died in 1601, he left her a small courtyard. With additional work as a day laborer, she was able to support herself and her underage daughter. In her second marriage she married Dietrich Schlehbusch. After he died, she married Jacob Hostertz. This man took advantage of Katharina. After she noticed that he was only interested in her property, she reported him to the court in Odenthal in autumn 1611. That soon became her undoing.

Witch trial against Katharina Güschen

In Odenthal, the noble Degenhard von Hall from the nearby Strauweiler Castle headed the “ Patrimonial Court ”. The power of the neck judiciary was around 1600/1612 in Bensberg. There a castle tower served as a prison, now called the "Hexenturm". In 1602 eight women were burned as witches in Bensberg , including five from Odenthal and one woman from the "Bloemengut" in Nittum. Agnes Polwirth and Christina Kirschbaum were sentenced to death in 1612 and Katharina Güschen in 1613, all from Nittum.

A small part of the surviving minutes reports on the trial of Katharina Güschen. At the same time, two of Katharina Güschen's neighbors were imprisoned in Bensberg for magic: Agnes Polwirth, who was burned as a witch in the "Hagdorn" (now Cologne-Dellbrück ) on January 9, 1612 , and Christina Kirschbaum, who evaded further agony of torture, by hanging herself in the dungeon with her own hairline. Both women “said” Katharina Güschen during the ordeal as a co-sorceress. Thereupon Schultheiss Gottfried Borken initiated proceedings against Katharina Güschen.

Old sayings from 1602 burdened them. Five of the eight women burned had said she was a witch nine years ago, to which the court had not reacted at the time. In addition, according to the witch doctrine, the court lords assumed that Katharina Güschen would have had witch blood in her from birth because her grandmother and two aunts had been executed as witches before 1600 (files are missing).

Because of this evidence, the bailiff had Katharina locked in the Bensberg Hexenturm towards the end of 1611. During the embarrassing interrogation, some neighbors used Katharina as a scapegoat: she was blamed for several accidents and illnesses: It was said that she had conjured up a calf for the baker Johann and made a suitor madly in love. At Rothbroich in Siegbarth's house, she gave Frau Gotthart a drink of wine, after which she got fat and feared she would burst. She was sick for a long time until Wilhelm von Cologne disenchanted her. The court duly sent the survey protocols to the Düsseldorf Higher Court for advice. The state government then recommended that the mayor read out the witness statements to Katharina and have them confirmed under threat of torture. She denied all 18 allegations.

Then the Bensberg lay judges decided to force a confession. The detainee collapsed at the sight of the instruments of torture in the torture chamber, but still refused the desired answers. Then the lay judges applied all degrees of torture to her in the strictest possible way. Finally, after repeated cruel torture, she confessed to the alleged offenses: the devil was her lover, she had participated in the witch's dance several times on the Nittumer Heide and conjured up her own children to death.

Back in the dungeon, she tried to kill herself with her scarf for fear of further torture and the impending burn in the dungeon. This failed. To prevent suicide, three men were kept under constant surveillance. On September 15, 1612, the jury's verdict was "that it should be kept with imaginary Scheuer Treine as with the recently convicted Polwirt that she should be brought from life to Thodt by the Fewer [fire]". After more than a year imprisonment in the Bensberg Witches Tower and almost four months after the verdict, she was executed on January 10, 1613 “at the Steinenbrückchen” not far from Bensberg-Lustheide: at her special request, she was first strangled “graciously” and her body then cremated.

Odenthal. Blackboard at the witch's fountain

Bensberg Town Hall. Plaque for victims of the witch trials

Commemoration

In Bensberg and Odenthal there are memorial plaques for the eleven women sentenced to death.

• In the Bensberg district of Bergisch Gladbach there is a plaque on the town hall on Wilhelm-Wagener-Platz to commemorate the witch trials.
• In Odenthal, behind the town hall with the weather witch and the parish church of St. Pankratius, there is a fountain and a plaque commemorating the witch trials. The witch's fountain was created in 1988 by the sculptor Walter Jansen. The artist referred to the fate of Katharina Güschen.
• Street naming Katharina-Güschen-Weg, 51429 Bergisch Gladbach.

Web links

• The interrogation of Katharina Güschen. Performance of the Cassiopeia Theater ( Memento from August 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
• Witches Route Odenthal Klosters Altenberg
• Katharina Güschen Hike Odenthal
• Research on witch persecution Example: "Scheuer Trein", Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger November 14, 1987

literature

• Hetty Kemmerich: Says what I should confess , Dortmund 2004, pp. 179, 291, 320.
• Arno Paffrath: Odenthal was the court for witch trials , in: Rheinisch-Bergischer Calendar , 37th year, 1967, p. 93f.
• Anton Jux: A witch burn on the Hagdorn in 1612 , in: Bergischer Calendar 1959, p. 90f.
• Gerd Müller: The witch trial of 1613 , in: Odenthal, Geschichte einer Bergische Gemeinde , 1976, page 123-129.
• Hartmut Hegeler and Hetty Kemmerich: Hexengedenkstätten im Rheinland , Unna 2013, pp. 17–18, 65–70, ISBN 978-3-940266-08-8 .