The Last Witch of Langenburg: Murder in a German Village

by Thomas Robisheaux

Overview

A young mother dies in agony. Was it a natural death, murder—or witchcraft?

On the night of the festive holiday of Shrove Tuesday in 1672 Anna Fessler died after eating one of her neighbor's buttery cakes. Could it have been poisoned? Drawing on vivid court documents, eyewitness accounts, and an early autopsy report, historian Thomas Robisheaux brings the story to life. Exploring one of Europe's last witch panics, he unravels why neighbors and the court magistrates became convinced that Fessler's neighbor Anna Schmieg was a witch—one of several in the area—ensnared by the devil. Once arrested, Schmieg, the wife of the local miller, and her daughter were caught up in a high-stakes drama that led to charges of sorcery and witchcraft against the entire family. Robisheaux shows how ordinary events became diabolical ones, leading magistrates to torture and turn a daughter against her mother. In so doing he portrays an entire world caught between superstition and modernity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393349689
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	02/16/2009
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	430
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Thomas Robisheaux, a professor of history at Duke University, is the author of Rural Society and the Search for Order in Early Modern Germany. He lives in Durham, North Carolina.

Editorial Reviews

Duke historian Robisheaux turns the obscure story of a smalltown German woman convicted of witchcraft into a marvelous window onto a society in crisis. On Shrove Tuesday, 1672, Eva Küstner delivered Shrovetide cakes baked by her mother to her neighbor, Anna Fessler, who was still recuperating from the birth of her child a few weeks earlier. A few days after eating some of the cakes, Anna died a painful death. Almost immediately, the community accused Eva and her mother, Anna Schmeig, of witchcraft. In this fast-paced account, Robisheaux chronicles the roles that various ministers, lawyers and physicians play in the indictment of Anna Schmeig and her immediate family. Robisheaux shows that Schmeig's trial and execution as a witch grew out of a small village's superstitions and its belief in the power of God to transform an evil event into an exemplary one. Drawing on rich records of the trials of Schmeig and her family, Robisheaux finely crafts a vivid glimpse of a time, place and state of mind that, though remote, is all too familiar. 22 illus., 3 maps. (Feb.)

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Publishers Weekly

In 1672, Anna Schmieg sent her daughter to her neighbors with a basket of Shrove Tuesday cakes. When one of the recipients died unexpectedly, dark rumors of poisoning and witchcraft followed Anna until the authorities arrested her. Robisheaux (history, Duke Univ.; Rural Society and the Search for Order in Early Modern Germany) has created a nuanced, in-depth examination of a witch trial based on extensive archival research but written with a general audience in mind. Through the prosecution of Anna, the reader is introduced to the history, government, law, theology, medicine, and folk beliefs of 17th-century Germany. The presentation of the social dynamics underlying witch crazes is illuminating, as are the ways in which Anna's legend were later appropriated in subsequent centuries, e.g., her portrayal evolved from "poor sinner" to heroine or martyr. The reader might wish for a modern medical opinion on why Anna's supposed victim died, but this is only a minor omission from a superb work. Suitable for all public and academic libraries.
—Daniel Harms

Library Journal

Scrupulously scholarly but accessible study of how witchcraft was experienced in a 17th-century German village. Robisheaux (History/Duke Univ.; Rural Society and the Search for Order in Early Modern Germany, 1989) employs the techniques of microhistory, delineating the multiple layers in everyday lives as he recreates the chilling "social drama" of a small community's response to crisis. When new mother Anna Fessler suddenly took ill and died after eating her neighbor's Shrove cake on February 20, 1672, the general outcry in the southwestern town of Hurden was that the miller's wife, Anna Schmieg, had poisoned Fessler through witchcraft. Offering butter cakes to neighbors was a routine courtesy before Lent, yet the gruesome death of a seemingly healthy woman, coupled with Schmieg's troublesome reputation among the villagers, created suspicions that prompted the involvement of the district of Langenburg's court adviser, the local executioner and various university scholars, enlisted for their opinions on how to proceed. Schmieg was an outsider; she had moved into the district when she married the miller, and records show her frequently at odds with the neighbors. Known to be a drinker, she lost two of her many children in suspicious mill accidents and had a difficult relationship with her daughter Eva, who had delivered the cakes to Fessler. Indeed, the court adviser would exploit animus between mother and daughter to implicate Schmieg and generally wear her down over eight months of incarceration, interrogation and torture. She eventually confessed to 15 crimes. Although contemporary legal consultants argued that the case had been based on "conjecture and presumptions," the Langenburgcourt saw Schmieg's execution as necessary to restore the breach in public order. On November 8 she was torn with hot irons, then strangled with a rope; her body was "burned to ashes." Robisheaux's work offers a fascinating way of understanding witchcraft "at the level where real life was lived."Compelling social and legal history.

Kirkus Reviews