Magic boy trials in Salzburg
.png)
The Salzburg magic boy trials were a wave of witch persecution in Salzburg in the early modern period . The cruelty and magnitude of the wave of persecution was unusual for the late 17th century. The peak of the witch hunts in Europe was in the late 16th and early 17th centuries and was therefore already over.
In the years between 1675 and 1690, Archbishop Max Gandolf von Kuenburg had over 150 people executed in the Archdiocese of Salzburg for alleged sorcery and witchcraft . The majority of them were children and young people. With this approach he wanted to fight in his own way the "begging nuisance" (ie the begging of the poorest of the poor). The focus was on the trial against Barbara Koller, called Schinderbärbel , and her son Jakob Koller , who was called Schinderjackl .
Felix Mitterer deals with the court process in his drama The Devil's Children .
Barbara and Jakob Koller
The wave of persecution began with Barbara Koller. She was a skinner in the Werfen area and thus a member of a socially ostracized group. After the contemporary name "Schinder" for "skinner", she was also called the "Schinder-Bärbel" and her son Jakob Koller accordingly the "Schinder-Jackl". In 1675 she was caught under suspicion of witchcraft after an offering theft in Golling an der Salzach . She confessed to being a witch using torture and was executed in August of the same year at the execution site in Salzburg-Gneis .
In order to escape the fate of his mother, Schinderjackl Jakob Koller, who had gathered a large group of begging children in a "blood community", went into hiding. Although he was given an ever-increasing bounty , he was never arrested. For his capture, the Bavarian Elector offered a reward of 100 (dead) or 500 (alive) Reichstalers. According to legend, he should have had the ability to transform into a wolf (see werewolf legend).
Salzburg magic boy trials
In the wake of these events beggar children from the environment of Schinderjackl, largely destitute people were almost always from the tramp - and beggars milieu accused of Salzburg, of witchcraft. In order to save her head and avoid torture, she accused other acquaintances. Under this pyramid scheme, a total of 232 people were indicted between 1675 and 1690, the youngest about three to five years old, and 167 executed after the use of torture, the youngest about ten years old. In the city of Salzburg , the accused beggar boys were also held in the Hexenturm because of the overcrowding of the prisons from 1678 to 1679 . Most of the executions themselves took place at the execution site in Salzburg-Gneis.
The vast majority of the executions took place between 1675 and 1681, only in Salzburg's Lungau there were several executions after that. More than two thirds of those executed were male. More than half of the victims were children and adolescents between 10 and 21 years of age.
In contrast to the mass persecution in the Principality of Liechtenstein , which took place in the same period and ended with the arrest of the responsible Count Ferdinand Carl Franz von Hohenems , the contemporary jurists regarded the Salzburg magic boy trials as legally harmless. B. the criminal law commentator Frölich von Frölichsburg from Tyrol .
Effects
The Salzburg magic boy trials were the prelude to numerous smaller waves of persecution against young vagabonds in southeast Germany, including as early as 1678 in Styria , 1679/80 in South and East Tyrol , 1680–1690 again in the Prince Archbishopric of Salzburg (Lungau), 1685, 1690 and 1698 in Burghausen , 1700 in Eastern Styria, in Dingolfing , Landau and Haidau, 1705/06 in Carinthia , Dießenstein, Vilshofen and Kelheim .
This development reached its climax with the child witch trials of 1715–1717 and 1719–1721 with a focus on the Hochstift Freising .
reception
- Henrike Leonhardt : It happened in the Rupertiwinkel ...: The story of the Schinderjackl and the magician boys in times of the witch madness. Bavarian Radio, 2003.
- Felix Mitterer : The children of the devil , play.
literature
- Heinz Nagl: The magician-Jackl trial - witch trials in the archbishopric Salzburg 1676-1690. In: Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Salzburger Landeskunde 1972/73, p. 385 ff. And 1974 p. 241 ff.
- Wolfgang Fürweger : Burnt childhood. The forgotten children of the witch trials around the magician Jackl. Ueberreuter, Vienna 2015. ISBN 978-3-8000-7606-2
- Gerald Mülleder: Between justice and the devil. The Salzburg Magician-Jackl Trials (1675-1679) and their victims (= Austrian witch research. Publications of the Austrian working group for interdisciplinary research on witches and magicians. Vol. 2), LIT, Vienna 2009. ISBN 978-3-7000-0939- 9
Web links
- Henrike Leonhardt: Persecution of beggars during the Magician Jackl Trials in the 17th century. In: Apropos - the street newspaper in Salzburg. June 3, 2003, archived from the original on September 27, 2007 ; Retrieved June 17, 2013 .
- The "Zauberer Jackl" trials in Salzburg , accessed on May 10, 2016.
Individual evidence
- ↑ See Wolfgang Behringer : witch hunt in Bavaria. Folk magic, zeal for faith and reasons of state in the early modern period . 3rd, improved edition with an afterword added. Oldenbourg, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-486-53903-5 , p. 368 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
- ↑ a b Behringer: witch hunt . 1997, ISBN 3-486-53903-5 , pp. 346 ff . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
- ^ Behringer: witch hunt . 1997, ISBN 3-486-53903-5 , pp. 353 ff . ( limited preview in Google Book search).