Margarethe Seybold

Margarethe Seybold , also Margaretha († December 14, 1590 in Weißenburg im Nordgau in Franconia ), known as Bößmüllerin , was a miller's wife who worked as a midwife , who was arrested in July 1590 after a denunciation extorted under torture and executed as a witch. In 1573 Margarethe had married Linhardt Seybold, the miller at the Bößmühle near Weißenburg. She gave birth to eleven children, the youngest in June 1589. Arrested as an alleged witch in July 1590 , the Protestant council of Weißenburg , which was put under pressure to act by the Catholic city of Ellingen , was forced to arrest, torture and arrest the Boessmüller woman after a theological report from Nuremberg to be executed on December 14, 1590. Besides a maid who was executed with her, she was the only alleged witch who was executed in Weißenburg. A small notice board at her place of residence reminds of the victim of the early modern witch hunt .

Classification and procedure of the council

Anna Zahn and Barbara Bauner, who came under suspicion in the Catholic town of Ellingen, named women other than witches under the torture, including Bößmüllerin. As is usually the case in such proceedings, sexual debauchery with demons or the devil, intrusions into houses, in this case wine cellars, damaging magic, poisoning and two child murders were attached to her. Then Ellingen threatened the Protestant imperial city of Weißenburg, which had been Protestant since 1524, with the general publication of the names of witches in order to force the neighboring city to take action against the suspected Weißenburg woman. In Ellingen, at least 70 women had been executed as witches in the preceding months by the Teutonic Lords , whose Land Commander of Franconia resided in Ellingen.

The Weißenburg councilors, for their part, turned to the Protestant city of Nuremberg on March 16, 1590 with a request for a theological and legal opinion . Their reports reached Weissenburg in the next few weeks. In the expert opinion of the legal scholars, which arrived on April 22nd, advised to proceed carefully and prudently, in contrast to the expert opinion of the theologians, which arrived on May 26th, and which advised "to be strict against the witchcraft". The worldly authority should also be reminded that "wherever it may be, it should bring the edge of the sword". The eschatological mood in those years also flowed into the report: “Satan is now much less idle than before, because he is well aware that the world is hurrying to the end and his righteous judgment is hurrying to it, that is why he judges everywhere The world was a horrible bloodbath, including among Christians, and his fellow companions also genuinely stoke the fires which he brought from the Christian community into his guild and not only plunged into temporal destruction but also into eternal ruin. ”The authors of the report were the preachers "Moritz Heling, Johann Schelhamer, preacher to St. Lorenz, Lorentz Turmhöfer, preacher to St. Egidien, Johann Kaufmann, preacher in the hospital, Heneus Schmidel, preacher to St. Sebald, Martinus Schallinger, to Our Lady". The lawyers, on the other hand, had demanded that past life and reputation must be taken into account, then who had accused the women, and “So one could in no way rely on such judiciary [accusation] alone without other adminicula [evidence], much less the named persons in Arrest or attack with the ordeal and embarrassing questioning, especially when the same arrested persons apologized to the necessity and ask to hold on ”.

Arrest, torture, execution

Although both reports were available at the end of May, it took more than another month for the councilors to come to a decision. The Boessmüller woman was not arrested until the beginning of July 1590 . An executioner from Biberbach, who received 4 guilders for his services , looked for witch marks on the suspects' bodies , a procedure that another, this time a Protestant executioner from Lauingen, repeated on July 22nd. He received 20 guilders. On September 19, 1590, the victim still did not make a confession under the pain of multiple embarrassing questioning of an executioner from Nördlingen. It is not known whether Anna Frank, a young maid who was tortured at the same time and probably still a girl, confessed. She is said to have set fire to a stable, killing a three-year-old girl. Thereupon both "witches", as they were considered convicted, were sentenced on October 14, 1590 to death by strangulation and to subsequent burning for "devilish witchcraft". The judgment was carried out two months later, on December 14, 1590 in Weißenburg. With the method of execution, the two were spared the burning of consciousness.

Another trial took place in this area, because in August 1590 the so-called Weingärtnerin , a sixty-year-old widow from Weißenburg, was also arrested for witchcraft. She died as a result of torture on May 10, 1591, and her body was buried.

The bereaved miller later married a second time. This woman gave birth to eight more children. He himself died in 1614.

Attempts to work up

In a guided tour with the local "night watchman" and historian Ute Jäger and in the form of a performance under the title The Bösmüllerin or the hunt for the Weißenburg witch through the Weißenburg stage, the process at the historical locations was traced. The SPD - Ortsverein White Castle asked to name the road to Bösmühle by Margaret Seybold, what the majority of residents Jahnstraße affected in 2015 but declined in order to avoid related costs. After all, in 2016 on the way to the former Bösmühle a sign, albeit a hidden one, was put up, denouncing the text “Stubway to Bösmühle, home of miller's wife Margarethe Seybold, mother of 11 children, and accused of witchcraft, imprisoned and tortured in the only Weissenburg witch trial Sentenced to death and executed on December 14, 1590 ”. City archivist Reiner Kammerl said four other women were persecuted as witches in Weißenburg.

swell

• The sources for the trial against Margarethe Seybold can be found in the Weißenburg City Archives A1056 and A1057.

literature

• Birch semolina hammer: accused - martyred - burned. The victims of the witch hunt in Franconia , Sutton, Erfurt 2013, pp. 82–89.

Web links

• Weißenburg , hexen-franken.de

Remarks

1. ↑ Quoted from: Weißenburg , hexen-franken.de.
2. ↑ Birch Grießhammer: Accused - martyred - burned. The victims of the witch hunt in Franconia , Sutton, Erfurt 2013, p. 87.
3. ↑ Maurer: The appreciation of Weißenburger Bösmüllerin , in: Weißenburger Tagblatt , July 5, 2016.
4. ^ Robert Renner: "Weißenburger Hexe" gets no road , in: Weißenburger Tagblatt, December 7th, 2015.