A Demon-Haunted Land: Witches, Wonder Doctors, and the Ghosts of the Past in Post-WWII Germany

by Monica Black

Overview

“Evocative. . . . Epic. . . . Chock-full of colorful anecdotes and charismatic figures, A Demon-Haunted Land not only offers a brilliant rethinking of postwar German history, but also asks us to see the irrational as an integral part of modernity.” —Boston Review

In the aftermath of World War II, a succession of mass supernatural events swept through war-torn Germany. A messianic faith healer rose to extraordinary fame, prayer groups performed exorcisms, and enormous crowds traveled to witness apparitions of the Virgin Mary. Most strikingly, scores of people accused their neighbors of witchcraft, and found themselves in turn hauled into court on charges of defamation, assault, and even murder. What linked these events, in the wake of an annihilationist war and the Holocaust, was a widespread preoccupation with evil.

While many histories emphasize Germany’s rapid transition from genocidal dictatorship to liberal democracy, A Demon-Haunted Land places in full view the toxic mistrust, profound bitterness, and spiritual malaise that unfolded alongside the economic miracle. Drawing on previously unpublished archival materials, the acclaimed historian Monica Black argues that the surge of supernatural obsessions stemmed from the unspoken guilt and shame of a nation remarkably silent about what was euphemistically called “the most recent past.” This shadow history irrevocably changes our view of postwar Germany, revealing the country’s fraught emotional life, deep moral disquiet, and the cost of trying to bury a horrific legacy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250813855
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	03/22/2022
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	297,112
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Monica Black is a professor of history at the University of Tennessee and the author of Death in Berlin: From Weimar to Divided Germany, which won the prestigious Fraenkel Prize, among other awards. She lives in Knoxville.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Reading Signs 19

2 A Stranger in Town 43

3 The Miracle of Herford 55

4 Soul Medicine 75

5 Messiah in Munich 93

6 If Evil Is the Illness, What Is the Cure? 121

7 Sickness That Comes from Sin 145

8 Are There Witches Among Us? 167

9 Kruse's Crusade 197

10 Dawn of the New Age 227

Conclusion 253

Notes 259

Acknowledgments 315

Index 319

Editorial Reviews

08/31/2020

University of Tennessee history professor Black (Death in Berlin) delivers a fascinating, richly detailed look at the origins of “mass supernatural events” that occurred in West Germany after WWII. Black focuses primarily on the rise of faith healer Bruno Gröning, and on the scores of “witchcraft trials” that took place across the country from 1947 to 1965. Gröning, who believed that “evil people... stopped good people from being well,” lectured to large crowds before authorities cracked down on him for violating a law against treating the sick without a license. He was eventually convicted of negligent homicide in the case of a young girl who stopped her tuberculosis treatments while under his care. Gröning’s “obsession with evil,” Black writes, links him to the country’s simultaneous “witchcraft scare,” in which neighbors took each other to court for spreading rumors of spell casting and evildoing. Black suggests numerous sources for these phenomena, including guilt and shame over the Holocaust, trauma caused by the large numbers of Germans killed or displaced in the final months of the war, and the residual influence of anti-Semitism. Vivid character sketches and keen psychological insights enrich her impressive historical research. The result is an arresting portrait of an unexplored chapter in German history. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"Evocative . . . epic . . . How do societies that commit monstrous atrocities recover from them?. . . Chock-full of colorful anecdotes and charismatic figures, A Demon-Haunted Land not only offers a brilliant rethinking of postwar German history, but also asks us to see the irrational as an integral part of modernity."
—Boston Review

"Convincing . . . Black effectively and evocatively contrasts the story that this new democracy was telling about itself, a narrative of rebuilding and recovery, with what lay below its increasingly shiny surface."
—The New Criterion

"A fascinating, richly detailed look at the origins of mass supernatural events in West Germany after WWII. Vivid character sketches and keen psychological insights enrich impressive historical research. An arresting portrait of an unexplored chapter in German history."
—Publishers Weekly

"Readers interested in German and Cold War history and cultural studies of religious and supernatural beliefs will find much to enjoy in this rich study . . . Monica Black mines rarely used files in local and regional archives to paint a unique portrait."
—Library Journal

"Both an excellent study of a weakened and fickle humanity and an engrossing story from beginning to end."
—Booklist

"Timely and urgent . . . Black draws on a rich base of sources [and] is adept at reading historical silences, on precisely what is being elided or glossed over in traditional archives . . . In beautiful prose, Black crafts a vivid portrait of a ruined Germany grappling for some sort of redemption."
—Kathryn Julian, George L. Mosse Program in History

“By attending carefully to the voices of the sick in soul and body and to the stories told by ghosts, demons, and witches, Monica Black makes her way through the elisions, silences, and bad faith of post–World War II Germany into the anguished inner life of this time and place. A Demon-Haunted Land is a stunning, revelatory work of social and cultural history, of profound resonance for our own times. In it Black has enlarged the possibilities of historical knowledge itself.”
—Robert Orsi, author of History and Presence

“A bold and original account of the ways in which postwar West Germans used mythic forms of evil like witches and demons to deflect attention from the very real forms of evil their nation had just committed. Black’s fascinating book is full of insight not only about postwar West Germany, but about the strange and complex ways people reinterpret evil and guilt.”
—Susan Neiman, author of Evil in Modern Thought

“Monica Black has given us a fascinating alternative history of postwar Germany, one that feels more psychologically true than the usual upbeat stories of social capitalism and reconstruction. She tells instead of individual responses to trauma—of witches, demons, Marian apparitions, and faith healing—and the Germans’ desperate attempts to come to grips with the emotions produced by moral and physical collapse. A fine book that deserves a wide audience.”
—Ruth Harris, author of Lourdes

“Miraculous healings, heavenly apparitions, ghostly traces... Thanks to the magnificent work of Monica Black, post-Nazi Germany presents itself to the reader in a completely new light.”
—Sergio Luzzatto, author of The Body of Il Duce

From the Publisher

11/20/2020

Behind the "economic miracle" of West German prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s lay a populace deeply distrustful of each other, unable and unwilling to confront the monstrous crimes of the Third Reich and the trauma of defeat. Fueled by mounting Cold War tensions, many Germans encountered apocalyptic signs, religious apparitions, faith healers, and witches. The best-known faith healer, an ex-Nazi named Bruno Gröning, traveled around West Germany where thousands of people waited hours and sometimes days to hear him speak in hopes of being cured of their ailments. Followers collected balls of aluminum foil containing pieces of Gröning's hair and fingernails in hopes of further healing. Around the country, hundreds of people in rural villages and large cities accused their neighbors of witchcraft or attempting to cause harm. Others turned to exorcisms to cast out demonic spirits afflicting friends and neighbors. Author Black (history, Univ. of Tennessee; Death in Berlin) mines rarely used files in local and regional archives to paint this unique portrait of West Germany. VERDICT Readers interested in German and Cold War history and cultural studies of religious and supernatural beliefs will find much to enjoy in this rich study.—Chad E. Statler, Westlake Porter P.L., Westlake, OH

Library Journal

2020-08-18
Of witch trials, quack medicine, and millenarian terrors in the ashes of the Third Reich.

Given the fiery end of Hitler’s regime and the firebombing of Dresden and other cities, it’s understandable that ordinary Germans might have been apocalypse-minded in 1945. That was still true in 1949, writes history professor Black in this sometimes circuitous but well-paced account, four years after the Allied occupation and the division of the country into East and West Germany. In the wave of denazification that immediately followed surrender, old grudges surfaced in accusations of witchcraft and conspiracy theories. At the time, writes the author, German newspapers and kaffeeklatsches alike were also rife with rumors of the end of the world—not so far-fetched given the nuclear proliferation of the Cold War—and with revisitations of the old Norse stories of Ragnarok. Against this backdrop came one of Black’s principal subjects, a Danziger who changed his name from a Polish antecedent to the German Gröning—and who signed up for the Nazi Party years before the annexation, suggesting that he was looking forward to a comfortable life under Hitler. Instead, he grifted his way across the postwar landscape, engaging in a form of faith healing that yielded a string of faux miracles—but also a negligent homicide or two. (One of Gröning's tools, not surprisingly, was tin foil.) The German courts eventually restrained “Gröning the Wunderdoktor” from practicing medicine without a license along about the time he died and he and his victims were forgotten. Other memorable figures Black examines include a crusader who “had a way of popping up almost anywhere that witchcraft accusations surfaced” in a country where pharmacies still sold magical potions with names such as “devil’s dung” until legally ordered to use “ordinary German names.”

Though of specialized interest, an eye-opening look into a corner of postwar history that seems more medieval than modern.

Kirkus Reviews