Katharina Henot

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Statues of Friedrich Spee and Katharina Henot on the tower of Cologne City Hall

Katharina Henot (also Henoth * 1570 / 1580 in Cologne , † 19th May 1627 in Cologne Melaten ) was a Cologne patrician , postmistress and the most famous victim of Cologne witch hunts . As an alleged witch, she was first strangled and then burned.

The Henot case

background

The patrician widow Katharina Henot, who was married to Heinrich Neuden, was a well-known and influential woman in the city. After the death of her father Jacob Henot , she and her brother, the Cologne canon Hartger Henot , continued to run the post office they had inherited in Cologne . Problems soon arose with the postmaster general, Count Leonhard II von Taxis , who was trying to establish a centralized postal system. However, the postmaster Henot insisted on maintaining family rights and, together with her brother Hartger, initiated a process before the Reich Chamber of Commerce .

Indictment and witch trial

An allegedly possessed nun got the ball rolling by accusing the postmaster of witchcraft. The rumor spread quickly, and Katharina was unable to counteract the various allegations by writing defenses to the archbishop's commission. She was accused of being responsible for the caterpillar plague of the Clara monastery as well as for the illness and death of several people. Surprisingly, even the city council intervened under Mayor Johann Bolandt and had the postmaster arrested. Her bail request was denied and she was denied an adequate defense. The elector Ferdinand of Bavaria , who had referred her to the High Secular Court, refused a petition for the admission of defense counsel two days after her arrest and stayed with this attitude. Even after the handover to the archbishop's high court , the defense efforts of the Cologne woman and her family failed.

Although Henot, crippled and seriously ill after multiple tortures , refused to confess, she was strangled by the executioner at the Melaten cemetery in Cologne, which was also used as a place of execution at the time, and her body was then burned at the stake. The execution of the businesswoman had no legal basis. Under the then applicable law, suspects had to be released if torture made it impossible to extort a confession.

Interpretation of the process

Various interpretations of the process were presented. Thomas Becker sums up: “The answer should not lie in the widely spread conspiracy theories of a conspiracy between the council, archbishop and the princes of Taxis, but rather - less mysteriously, if not less tragically - in the known events themselves. [...] In the overall view of the Cologne witchcraft persecution of the years 1626–1630, the trial of Katharina Henot appears to be embedded in a chain of trials in the Poor Clare monastery, which in turn have their correspondence in the emerging wave of witch trials in the surrounding offices of the electorate, where the pyre burned since the spring of 1626. "

New studies by Albrecht Burkardt on the case of the Cologne Clarisse Sophia Agnes von Langenberg , who accused Katharina Henot of witchcraft under torture and was strangled as a witch in Lechenich in January 1627 , and by Franz Josef Burghardt , her father Nikolaus von Langenberg, support this Becker's view that the Henot case is to be seen in the context of the regional contemporary history, which is heated up by denominational and class-political factors. For Gerd Schwerhoff, "the often-voiced suspicion of an intrigue against the postmaster on the part of the competition from those of Thurn and Taxis [...] remains speculation."

Reception and honors

The case found a number of literary designs, for example by Wolfgang Lohmeyer ( Die Hexe , first Munich 1976 ISBN 3-570-02615-9 , several editions). Cologne students staged the case as a radio play ( ISBN 3-938217-00-6 ). In 1988 the Cologne Women's History Association applied for the renaming of Henot-Strasse to Katharina-Henot-Strasse. Henot has been represented at Cologne City Hall since the same year by a work by the sculptor Marianne Lüdicke , a descendant of Katharina Henot. In addition, on March 9, 1992, the comprehensive school in Cologne-Kalk / Höhenberg was renamed the Städtische Katharina-Henoth-Gesamtschule.

The Cologne group Bläck Fööss wrote the song of their story with the title Katharina Henot in the Cologne dialect.

The television film Die Hexe von Köln from 1989 (directed by Hagen Mueller-Stahl ) deals with the lives of Katharina Henot and her brother Hartger.

Rehabilitation for victims of the Cologne witch trials

In November 2011, descendants of Katharina Henot and other people submitted an application to the Cologne City Council for the socio-ethical rehabilitation of the victims of the Cologne witch trials. This motion was unanimously approved by the Committee for Suggestions and Complaints on February 13, 2012 and passed on to the City Council with a recommendation for a resolution, with great sympathy from the media. On June 28, 2012, the Cologne city council decided to rehabilitate Henot and 37 other women who, like Henot, had been sentenced to death.

literature

  • Engelbert Goller, Jakob Henot , inaugural dissertation, Bonn 1910
  • Friedrich Wilhelm Siebel, The persecution of witches in Cologne , legal dissertation, Bonn 1959
  • Irene Franken, Ina Hoener: Witches. The persecution of women in Cologne. Kölner-Volksblatt-Verlag, Cologne 1987, ISBN 3-923243-32-4
    • New edition under the title Witches. Persecution in Cologne. Ermons, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-89705-173-7
  • Gerhard Schormann : The war against the witches. The extermination program of the Elector of Cologne. Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1991, ISBN 3-525-01345-0 (also online [2] )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gerhard Schormann: The war against witches: the extermination program of the Elector of Cologne , Vandenhoeck Collection, 1991, ISBN 3-525-01345-0 p. 55
  2. ↑ Information according to IMDb
  3. ↑ Burned as a witch: descendants demand rehabilitation for Cologne woman [1]  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.report-k.de  
  4. ↑ Katharina Henot is to be rehabilitated ( Memento from February 17, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Application for rehabilitation for victims of the Cologne witch trials ( PDF )
  6. ↑ Cologne City Council Witch Trials Press coverage ( PDF )
  7. ↑ Cologne rehabilitates victims of the witch trials ( Memento from July 4, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Henot, Catherine
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Henoth, Katharina (alternative spelling)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Cologne patrician
DATE OF BIRTH 1570 or 1580
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH May 19, 1627
Place of death Cologne Melaten