White woman

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Appearance of the white woman on her deathbed

The White Woman is a ghost that is said to have haunted several castles of European noble families .

The oldest reports of the apparition date from the 15th century, the belief in the spirit was most widespread in the 17th century. Although there are similarities to other female spirits of European folk beliefs - for example the Irish and Celtic banshee - the white woman is a phenomenon that only arose and was typical of the high-class culture of the early modern period. The belief in miracles in the age of the Counter-Reformation made the ghost a kind of class attribute that, like coats of arms and legends of ancestry, could underline the importance of gender. The Hohenzollern White Woman is particularly well known .

The white woman is often considered to be the spirit of a female ancestor of the gender in question. In general, unless challenged, it is not considered malicious or dangerous. However, their appearance often causes horror as it heralds family disasters, particularly the deaths of members of the family. In such cases she sometimes appears dressed in black.

The legends about the white woman are still spread today as folklore and processed in modern media.

"White woman" of the Hohenzollern family

Plassenburg

Tombstone of Kunigunde von Orlamünde in the St. Laurentius Church in Großgründlach

The most famous legend about the white woman has its origin in the Plassenburg ob Kulmbach and is linked to the Hohenzollern family . Castle mistress Kunigunde , widow of Count Otto von Orlamünde , had fallen in love with Albrecht the Beautiful , son of Nuremberg Burgrave Friedrich IV . He let it be known that he would marry her if four eyes weren't in the way. This meant his parents who refused such a connection. Kunigunde, however, misunderstood the message and applied it to her two children, a girl of two and a boy of three. She stabbed the children in the head with a needle and killed them.

In the rhyming monastery chronicle of the Melkendorfer pastor Johann Löer from 1559 it sounds like this:

And thought that the little children that I had
will certainly be the eyes that
rob me of wooing mine!
And if the woman was so utterly offended,
That she murdered her own children,
And deplorably robbed of her life,
That she pierced her brainwave with needles in her head
,
The tender and soft everywhere.

Thereupon Albrecht broke away from her. Kunigunde went on a pilgrimage to Rome and obtained the forgiveness of her sins from the Pope, with the condition that he found a monastery and enter there. In penance, she slipped on her knees from the Plassenburg into the valley of Berneck and founded the Himmelkron monastery , where she died as abbess . In a local version of the saga from Himmelkron , the monastery already existed at the time of the murder and the two children were buried in it. Kunigunde, sliding on his knees, saw the monastery on a hill between Trebgast and Himmelkron and died there of exhaustion.

Julius von Minutoli finds this story in the chroniclers Kaspar Brusch , Enoch Widmann , Martin Hofmann, Lazarus Carl von Wölkern and Gotthilf Friedemann Löber told essentially in agreement. Nevertheless, the legend, at least as far as Countess Kunigunde is concerned, cannot have any historical basis, as it can be proven that she died childless.

The court nobility also had the white woman appear at the Plassenburg in 1486 in order to persuade “Odela” (possibly Margrave Albrecht Achilles ) to move to Neustadt an der Aisch .

In any case, the white woman appeared for the first time on the Plassenburg in order to notify the Hohenzollern of upcoming deaths and other impending misfortunes - a worrying, but usually not violent phenomenon. According to the legend, however, it is said to have behaved differently when Margrave Georg Friedrich I , also a Hohenzoller, wanted to take possession of the Plassenburg after its destruction in 1544 in the Second Margrave War and subsequent reconstruction. Then the white woman let herself go as far as rattling chains, romping about, frightening court maids and finally strangling the margrave's cook and Fourier , which caused the latter to leave the Plassenburg.

Margrave Christian Ernst carried out investigations in the Himmelkron monastery in 1701. The grave of Abbess Ottilia Schenk von Siemau was opened as the alleged burial place of the two killed children, only later was the inscription on the tomb correctly deciphered. The grave tumba of Count Otto from Orlamünd was also suspected of containing the count as well as the two children.

Historical criticism has tried since the 17th century to find the real person who served as a model for the legendary phenomenon. In addition to the Kunigunde of Orlamünde, two main personalities were discussed: the unhappy widow Bertha von Rosenberg from Bohemia , whose historical person was overlaid by pagan traditions from the Perchta , and the Hungarian princess Kunigunde , who first joined King Ottokar II of Bohemia and afterwards was married to a gentleman von Rosenberg.

Berlin City Palace

The White Woman appears to Friedrich I in 1713.

In the Berlin City Palace it was first seen on January 1, 1598th There she is said to have appeared to Johann Georg , the Hohenzollern Elector of the Mark Brandenburg , eight days before his death. In this case, the ghost was seen as the ghost of Anna Sydow , who died in 1575 in the Juliusturm of the Spandau Citadel , the mistress of Joachim , the elector's father, whom Johann Georg had expropriated and imprisoned against his notarized promise.

The White Woman continued to appear frequently in the Berlin City Palace: in 1619 she is said to have appeared there before the death of Johann Sigismund . In 1651 the Frankfurt relations reported :

During the time in Berlin, the white woman (who is a spectrum or ghost, so that someone from the Kurhaus Brandenburg can be seen at all times before dying and every time certainly announces a dead person from the intended house) quite often, even in broad daylight the electoral burial, on the altar and in other places of the castle, which is why one is very shocked there and all the more because the elector's only heir, Prince Wilhelm Heinrich, died a year ago at the age of 1½ and the electoral wife has not yet was pregnant again. "

It went on: in 1660, before the death of Elisabeth Charlotte , the mother of the Great Elector , she is said to have been seen. She is also said to have appeared to Luise Henriette of Orange and, before the death of the Great Elector in 1688, to the court preacher Anton Brusenius. According to a report by the historian Karl Eduard Vehse, it is said that under this same great elector the white woman was once very heartily approached. Konrad von Burgsdorff , a confidante of the Elector and a cold-blooded man, suddenly saw the White Woman on the steps in front of him one evening after he had put his master to bed and wanted to go down a small flight of stairs to the garden. When he had overcome the first shock, he called the figure: "You old sacramental whore, haven't you drank enough royal blood, do you want more?" Apparently annoyed by this disrespectful address, the white woman grabbed him by the collar and threw him down the stairs, cracking his bones. Access to the white woman was not always unsuccessful: According to Vehse, she was arrested twice under Friedrich Wilhelm I. One time it was a kitchen boy who was whipped in the dress of the white woman, the other time a soldier.

Further phenomena occurred before the death of Friedrich I. in 1713 and that of Friedrich Wilhelm II. In 1797. When in the winter of 1839/40 the state of health of Friedrich Wilhelm III. The lady-in-waiting Caroline von der Marwitz reported :

This winter too, people began to speak of the apparition of the 'White Woman'. It was just a rumor, and no one wanted to admit they knew anything about it. But I remember very well that Countess Haacke, lady-in-waiting to the Crown Princess, one evening when she was returning from supper to her room and going down a staircase, at the end of the stairs she found a sentry apparently asleep with the rifle lying next to her. As we approached, we found that the young, stout soldier had passed out. The lackey stood by him; When he awoke, he looked around shyly and assured him that he had seen something terrible: a woman in white veils and terrible. It did not become common knowledge; they spoke softly, but a lot of it. Fäulein von Block also claimed to have seen something sinister, and every rumor of the kind, every change in the monarch's habits, increased the general tension. "

Finally she appeared - perhaps a little prematurely - before the completely unsuccessful assassination attempt by Heinrich Ludwig Chech on Friedrich Wilhelm IV . It also appeared in 1888 before the death of Friedrich III. Even when the National Socialists were the hosts of the Berlin Palace instead of the Hohenzollerns, she is said to have reappeared on the night of May 26, 1940.

Heidecksburg

In the Heidecksburg near Rudolstadt (Thuringia) the white woman is said to have appeared to Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia , also a Hohenzoller, in the Green Salon, as his adjutant Karl von Nostitz-Jänkendorf reports. The next day, October 10, 1806, the prince fell in the battle near Saalfeld .

Bayreuth

Portrait of the White Woman (In: Die Gartenlaube , 1856)

It also appeared in other castles of the Prussian royal house of Hohenzollern and its subsidiary lines, such as Ansbach and Bayreuth . While she was always an ominous, but not directly threatening, appearance to the members of the various Hohenzollern lines, it apparently behaved differently with foreign invaders: She is said to have appeared in the spring of 1809 to the French general Jean Louis Brigitte Espagne in the Bayreuth New Palace and threatened to strangle him. A few days later the general fell in the battle of Aspern . Napoleon Bonaparte , too, is said to have had an uncomfortable night when he stayed there on May 14, 1812. In Fontane's Effi Briest a portrait is mentioned:

This is a strongly darkened female portrait, small head, with bitter, somewhat eerie facial features and a ruff that seems to be supporting the head. Some think it was an old margravine from the end of the fifteenth century, others think it was the Countess of Orlamünde; but both agree that it is the portrait of the lady who since then has achieved a certain fame in the history of the Hohenzollerns under the name of the 'White Woman'. "

The incident with Napoleon is then presented as follows:

It is said that when Napoleon stayed overnight, the 'White Woman' stepped out of the frame [of the portrait] and walked towards his bed. The emperor, starting up in horror, called for his adjutant and spoke indignantly of this ' maudit château'  ('damned castle') until the end of his life  . "

In view of the numerous secret and wallpaper doors in this castle, a more patriotic than spiritist motivated cause can of course be assumed behind the appearance. Fontane also mentions that the portrait in question was hanging on a wallpaper door, behind which there was a staircase leading up from the basement .

The white woman “living” at Lauenstein Castle was imported from Plassenburg by the owner at the beginning of the 20th century, as she was once owned by the same families Orlamünde and Hohenzollern - an early example of the marketing of a well-known ghost.

Another white woman is reported from Hohenzollern Castle . When the castle was besieged, it is said to have passed through the camp of the besiegers unmolested at night. She is not identical to the aforementioned White Woman from Plassenburg.

More apparitions

In addition to the "white woman" of the Hohenzollern family, who appeared in the various seats and castles of the family over the centuries, there are legends about a ghostly white woman in numerous other palaces and castles in Europe:

Germany

White woman from Kuckuckstein Castle in Liebstadt

Every time the ducal house was faced with an accident or death, the spirit of the deceased Duchess Dorothea Maria von Anhalt (mother of the locksmith builder Ernst I of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg ) is said to have risen from the crypt under the castle church at the Schloss Friedenstein in Gotha wailing through the rooms of the residence at night . However, it could only be seen by those who were directly concerned with the coming disaster.

The apparition of the maiden Sidonia von Borcke from the Fräuleinstift Marienfließ , who was executed as a witch in 1620, is believed to have been seen in Stettin Castle .

The memory of Jakobe von Baden , who was found murdered there on September 3, 1597 , is hidden behind the white woman who is said to haunt the Düsseldorf castle , of which only the castle tower still stands today .

Around the Starkenburg in Heppenheim a white woman is said to be haunted, who still wails and wails through the surroundings of the castle in mourning for her husband who was killed in defense of the castle. It is said that it usually appears shortly after sunrise as a white, misty shape.

There is also a modern legend of the White Woman, which is said to go around in Wolfsegg Castle in the Upper Palatinate. There are suspicions that this is the wife of the lord of the castle Ulrich von Laaber , Klara von Helfenstein, who had the latter killed after she had entered into a love affair with another man. However, this assumption lacks any basis, since the historical Klara outlived her husband by several years.

In addition, it should be in Neuhaus in Böhmen, Bentheim Castle as "de witte Jüffer", in Rötteln Castle , Cleve , Coburg , Halle (Saale) , Darmstadt , Tonndorf (Thuringia), Altenburg , Füchtorf in Harkotten Castle , Leuchtenberg , Neuchâtel Castle ( Freyburg) , Ludwigsburg , Eberstadt Castle (Buchen) , Krems Castle , Trier , Böddeken near Paderborn , on the Duburg area of Flensburg , at Hackhausen Castle and elsewhere.

Estonia

The legend of the White Lady of Haapsalu surrounds the cathedral of Haapsalu. After that, on the full moon nights in August, the picture of a white woman should be seen on the inner walls of a certain chapel . The story is based on the following folk legend:

During the reign of the Bishop of Ösel-Wiek, every canon was obliged to live a chaste and virtuous life. Women were prohibited from entering the bishop's castle on the penalty of death. According to legend, a clergyman from the episcopal see was in love with an Estonian girl whom he secretly smuggled into the bishop's castle. There she disguised herself as a choirboy and lived with her lover for a long time. During a visit by the bishop, however, the true gender of the “boy” came to light. The canon starved to death in prison as a punishment. The girl was walled alive in the walls of the chapel. The masons gave her a piece of bread and a jug of water. The girl's cries for help could be heard for a while before they fell silent. But her soul finds no rest and so she has appeared annually for centuries at the middle window of the church chapel to mourn her beloved - as a symbol of the immortality of love.

The music festival “Time of the White Lady” (Valge Daami Aeg) is held in the castle every year in August when the moon is full.

Austria

In Austria the most famous legend is the White Lady of Amber , a castle near the Hungarian border. At the time of the Turkish wars , the burgrave who had returned from the fighting had his unfaithful wife walled in and stabbed the lover. Her dead spirit appeared to him on a stormy autumn night just before his death and since then has often waved over the stairs to the chapel to pray there. The last time the figure was veiled in white appeared in 1912 at the torchlight procession of the fire brigade festival and at the outbreak of war in 1914.

Slovakia

The White Woman of Levoča : Julianna Géczy opens access to the city for the enemy, painting in the town hall of Levoča

Julianna Korponay-Géczy (1680–1714) is said to haunt the city walls and the town hall of Levoča to this day as a white woman . According to legend, the married Hungarian noblewoman was in love with the commander of the imperial troops, which had besieged the city , which was allied with the rebellious Kurucs , since 1709. Out of love for him, Julianna opened a passage in the city wall on February 13, 1710 and allowed the enemies to enter. However, her lover did not thank her for the betrayal of her hometown: On September 25, 1714, Julianna was beheaded in Győr on the imperial orders . The White Woman of Levoča is by far the best-known tradition about white women in the Slovak saga.

Legends about white women have also come down to us for the old town of Bratislava and Bojnice Castle .

Switzerland

Hardly any such phenomena have survived from castles in Switzerland, however

Great Britain

In Great Britain, the equivalent of the White Woman is the White Lady . It often appears in an aristocratic environment, but quite often also in a bourgeois context, especially in the border area between saga and urban legend . Some examples of these white ladies are:

  • White Lady of Castle Huntly, near Dundee , Scotland, the spirit of a victim of improper love
  • White Lady of Samlesbury Hall near Preston : Lady Dorothy Southworth, also a victim of unhappy love, was murdered by his brother, along with her lover.
  • There is a tomb called the White Lady in the Darwen Cemetery in Lancashire , which apparently became the condensation point of an urban legend infused with rape and infant death. In fact, it is the tomb of Martha Jane Bury (1850–1913), a fighter for the rights of working-class women, which has since been restored and which has made his name again .

France

In France, too, there are numerous castles and palaces with ominous, white-robed women's apparitions, which are known in France under the name Dame blanche :

Literary design

The local reports of the appearances of white, black and gray women and young ladies, compiled by collectors of legends in the 19th century, are almost unmanageable and such a legend can be found for almost every castle worth mentioning. In the 19th century, the legend was also often shaped literarily, initially in the works of entertainment literature:

In the drama Die Ahnfrau by Franz Grillparzer , which is related to the theme, the eponymous figure shows references to the White Woman and in the Staufer drama Emperor Heinrich the Sixth by Christian Dietrich Grabbe , the White Woman appears at Heinrich the Lion's Castle in Braunschweig .

The lyrical compositions are also numerous, to be mentioned are:

Gero von Wilpert pointed out that the white woman is never the focus in Theodor Fontane's work , but is otherwise often present. In Before the Storm , Fontane tells the story of Wangeline von Burgsdorff, who is said to have been a maid of honor to Dorothea , the second wife of the Great Elector . Dorothea had the reputation of an evil stepmother who, for the sake of her own children, did not shrink from poison attacks on the princes from her first marriage. But then, after all: afflicted with remorse, she ordered her maid of honor to remove a poisoned fruit that had already been deposited from the bed of the Hereditary Prince. But the young lady allowed herself to be held up by a gentleman as she hurried through the corridors in light white robes, just long enough to deliver the Hereditary Prince to death. Therefore, as a warning from the hereafter, she has to make up for what she missed in this world. Why the poisoner Dorothea was not condemned to the otherworldly criminal service is hidden from the legend.

And in a fragmentary poem "Wangeline von Burgsdorf, or The White Woman", Fontane sums up the legend of the Hohenzollern White Woman once again in a lyrical shortening:

This is the legend: and wants danger to
ensnare the Hohenzollern,
An old curse comes to life,
The white woman in the veil
shows herself to warn.

She comes three times, goes three times,
hesitant always and dreary,
the guard no longer calls her Halt-Werda,
she knows that no gun will scare the guest; -
The shadow passes by.

Apparition on the battlements of a castle (illustration for The Carpathian Castle by Jules Verne )

In the 1860 novel, The Woman in White ( The Woman in White ) by Wilkie Collins , the titular mysterious figure ultimately proves ghost. The appearance of a white-clad figure of the dead opera singer La Stilla on the bastion of the eponymous Carpathian Castle by Jules Verne does not turn out to be a real ghost, but rather an application of (then) futuristic technology: a combination of playing a sound recording with the simultaneous projection of an image awakens the impression of a ghostly appearance.

E. Marlitt took up the subject in her novel The Woman with the Karfunkelsteinen published in 1885 .

Modern reception

literature

music

Apparition of the White Woman in the opera La dame blanche

The White Woman appearing in the title of the Opéra-comique La dame blanche by François-Adrien Boieldieu (premiered in 1825) is based on motifs by Walter Scott . At the end of the opera, the supposed ghost turns out to be a being of flesh and blood.

The original by Wilkie Collins was premiered in 2004 as the musical The Woman in White with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber .

In 2010 the band Silverlane set the story of the White Woman on the Plassenburg on their album Above The Others in the form of four connected pieces of music, The White Lady Part I to IV .

The black metal band Carach Angren released the concept album Lammendam in 2008 , which is about the white woman.

Movie

  • In the horror film The Terror from 1963, the legend described is a main motif.
  • In the children's and youth series Frankenstein's Aunt from 1987, Mercedes Sampietro can be seen in the role of the white woman.
  • In 1988 Daryl Hannah played a white woman in the movie High Spirits .
  • In episode 1 of the series Supernatural , the plot revolves around a so-called Woman in White. However, this is classified there as malicious and only shares a similar name with the white woman.

From the white woman to the phantom hitchhiker

In urban legend and modern saga , white women experienced a transformation, especially with regard to their appearance, insofar as they no longer appear in white clothes in urban legends. Some reports of the mysterious appearance and disappearance of a female - but not immediately threatening - figure are associated with the term "white woman". If a background is known or suspected, it is the area of ​​civil tragedy (child murder, rape, other crimes or traffic accidents ).

In this context, today's legends of the “phantom hitchhiker ” are typical : A hitchhiker who initially appears quite normal is taken along, behaves conspicuously or inconspicuously and disappears without a trace while driving. The best-known example is the White Woman from the Belchentunnel (in the southern Basel area ) from the 1980s.

There are sometimes dubious ghost reports about white women in the tabloids and on the Internet. Post-processing by computer cannot be ruled out for corresponding films on YouTube . One example of this are rumors and videos about the urban legend of the White Woman in the Ebersberger Forest near Munich, who allegedly hitchhiks near the Hubertus Chapel.

swell

literature

  • Wilhelm Avenarius: All about the white woman. A ghost handbook. Supernatural appearances in popular life, in castles and palaces. 2nd Edition. Glock & Lutz, Sigmaringendorf 1987.
  • Johann Georg Theodor Grasse : Book of legends of the Prussian state . Vol. 1, Glogau 1868/71, pp. 14-19, online
  • Gisela Griepentrog (ed.): Berlin sagas. vbb, Berlin 2010, pp. 44-48
  • Lorenz Kraußold: The white woman and the orlamündische child murder. A revision of the impacting documents . Deichert, Erlangen 1869 MDZ .
  • Julius von Minutoli : The White Woman. Historical examination of the legend and observation of this phenomenon from 1486 to the most recent times . Duncker, Berlin 1850 ZLB
  • Andreas Reichold: The honor of the Kunigunde of Orlamünde. In: Legends from Bavaria's northeast areas. Hoermann Verlag, Hof, 1956/57
  • Martin voter: The white woman. On the belief of the people in the living corpse . Kurt Stenger Publishing House, Erfurt, 1931
  • Gero von Wilpert : Fontane and the white woman. In: (ders.): The German ghost story. Motif, form, development (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 406). Kröner, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-520-40601-2 , pp. 335-345.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Quoted from Minutoli: Die Weiße Frau 1850, p. 2
  2. Grasse: Book of Legends of the Prussian State Vol. 1, 1868/71, p. 15
  3. See the Sources section for the exact bibliographic information.
  4. Minutoli: The White Woman 1850, pp. 2ff
  5. ^ Max Döllner : History of the development of the city of Neustadt an der Aisch until 1933. Ph. CW Schmidt, Neustadt ad Aisch 1950. (New edition 1978 on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Ph. CW Schmidt Neustadt an der Aisch publishing house 1828-1978. ) P. 196.
  6. ^ Grasse: Book of Legends of the Prussian State Vol. 1, 1868/71, p. 16
  7. Theodor Zinck: Himmelkron - Description of his past and present . Bayreuth 1925.
  8. ^ Martin voter: The white woman. P. 7–8 and 23 ff. For the saga from Himmelkron see www.himmelkron.de ( Memento from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  9. Friedrich Wilhelm , the "Great Elector"
  10. Luise Henriette of Orange
  11. Quoted in: Dieter Hildebrandt : Das Berliner Schloss. Germany's empty center. Hanser, Munich 2011, p. 56
  12. Quoted in: Martin Hürlimann: Berlin. Reports and pictures. Berlin 1934, p. 44
  13. ^ Caroline von Rochow: From the life at the Prussian court 1815-1852. Berlin 1908, p. 291
  14. Griepentrog: Berlin sagas. 2010, p. 45f
  15. Eberhard Cyran: The castle on the Spree. 6th edition. Berlin 1995, p. 363
  16. Wilhelm Rauh, Erich Rappl: Stage Bayreuth . Druckhaus Bayreuth, Bayreuth 1987, ISBN 3-922808-21-2 , p. 37 .
  17. Grasse: Book of Legends of the Prussian State Vol. 1, 1868/71, p. 17.
  18. The portrait in question has been on the Plassenburg since 1933.
  19. ^ Theodor Fontane: Effi Briest. 9th chapter. In: Novels and Stories. 2nd Edition. Structure, Berlin & Weimar 1973, vol. 7, p. 74.
  20. The "White Woman" behind the wallpaper door (accessed on January 7, 2012)
  21. ^ Andreas M. Cramer, Die Gothaer Sagen , Gotha 2005, p. 52
  22. (anon.): The white woman in Neuhaus. Ghost story from the 15th century. Vienna & Prague 1797
  23. Otto Schell : Bergische Sagen , Baedecker, 1897
  24. http://www.haapsalulinnus.ee/?id=1324
  25. Legends from Uri
  26. Samlesbury Hall
  27. Martha Jane Bury - Website of the Friends of Darwen Cemetery
  28. Grabbe: Emperor Heinrich the Sixth 3rd act, 2nd scene, digitizedhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3D3NQ-AAAAIAAJ~IA%3D~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3DPA159~ double-sided%3D~LT%3D~PUR%3D
  29. ^ The white woman of Ferdinand Freiligrath in the Northeimer database German poem
  30. In the Grafenschloss Emanuel Geibel on zeno.org
  31. ^ Theodor Fontane: Before the storm. Chapter 12: The White Woman. In: Novels and Stories. 2nd Edition. Structure, Berlin & Weimar 1973, Vol. 2, pp. 304-309
  32. ^ Wangeline von Burgsdorf von Fontane on Wikisource
  33. www.preussler.de
  34. Ghost spook in the cell phone shop? - Bild-Online from October 4, 2011