The Past and Present Society

'Evil Imaginings and Fantasies': Child-Witches and the End of the Witch Craze
Author(s): Lyndal Roper
Source: Past and Present, No. 167 (May, 2000), pp. 107-139
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society
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 'EVILIMAGININGS
AND FANTASIES':
CHILD-WITCHES
AND THE END OF THE
WITCHCRAZE*
In 1723 the Augsburgtown council found itself dealing with the
accusationthat a groupof childrenhad been seducedby the Devil
and were committingacts of maleficein the city. An old woman,
a seamstress,had led them astray. They had put glass splinters,
teeth and diabolicpowder in their parents'beds, they fought one
another, they committed indecencies with each other and they
frequenteddiabolicsabbaths.
The allegations spread. One after another, worried parents
appeared before the council, begging it to imprison their own
evil children, to 'take them into its judgementaljustice',l as one
Franz Ludwig put it, asking the council to remove his thirteen-
year-old son into custody. Otherwise, so he feared, the child's
brother and sister would be 'infected'. In all, around twenty
children aged between six and sixteen were taken into custody,
most aged aroundten or under, well below the age of puberty.2
The first children, held in tiny dark cells, were assigned com-
forters to pray with and visit them, but they were often kept in
solitaryconfinement.Four of the children, one aged as young as
seven, formally begged the council to be allowed to die.3 It was
not until a full year had elapsed that they were transferredfrom
what all agreed was manifestlyunsuitableaccommodationinto a

* I am grateful to the many friends and colleagues who helped me write this paper
and, in particular, to Nick Stargardt, Philip Broadhead, Karl Figlio, Ruth Harris,
Lorna Hutson, LudmillaJordanova,Alison Light, Adam Philips, Jorg Rasche, Norbert
Schindler and BarbaraTaylor.
l 'unter die Obrigkeitliche Justiz zunehmen': Staats- und StadtbibliothekAugsburg
(hereafter cited as SSBAugs.), Cod. Aug. 289, p. 52; and see also, for example, 'gegen
die Kinder die Justiz furzukehren, dass Sie nicht auch um die Seele kommen': p. 69;
'disen seinen Sohn in die Richterliche Justiz zunehmen, mithin ihm fur grosserm
Ungluck zu seyn': p. 43.
2 And, importantly for the course of the case, most were aged under fourteen, the
age of full legal responsibility. Gottfried Betz claimed to be nineteen years old when
first questioned, but records showed he was only seventeen in 1724: even so, he had
been seduced four years before, and so had been under the age of fourteen at the time.
3 SSBAugs., Cod. Aug. 289, p. 127. The children were aged respectively about ten,
seven, ten and eight, and the request was made on 6-7 Apr. 1724.
108 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER167
hospital,which, as was pointedout, had more warmth,cleanliness
and light.4At the height of the panic about twenty childrenwere
held there, and four guards and three attendants had to be
employed in supervisingthem. And it was not until 1729, a full
six years later, that the last of these childrenwere finally freed,
having cost the city a full 6,675 gulden, 4 kreuzer and 4 heller
in accommodationand attendanceexpenses alone.5
What makes a society turn on its own young people and see in
them the source of evil that threatens the whole community?6
How could a case of this bizarresort have arisen so late, on the
cusp of the Enlightenment,and a good quarter-centuryafter the
witch executionsin the region had ceased?And how could it take
place in an imperialcity like Augsburg,home of Pietism, centre
of publishingand a town which, though its golden age was over
by the eighteenth century, was still one of the major centres of
the Holy RomanEmpire,as famedfor its goldsmiths,instrument-
makersand clocksmithsas for its libraries,historiansand natural
scientists?7

4 Ibid., pp. 139, 144, 152;andsee discussions

in council(unpaginated) appendedto
Cod.Aug. 289.
5 Ibid., p. 239. A furthertwo boysweredenounced by theirmothersfor witchcraft
in 1728, transferredto the Catholicworkhouseand subjectedto beatingsfor their
godlessness.They were finallyfreed in 1730. Accordingto the councilminutes,
GottfriedBetzwasstill confinedin the hospitalas lateas 1729:Stadtarchiv Augsburg,
Reichsstadt,Ratsbuch1729,30 Apr. 1729,p. 322.
6 On childwitches,see Wolfgang Behringer,'Kinderhexenprozesse. ZurRollevon
Kindernin der Geschichteder Hexenverfolgung', Zeitschriftfur historischeForschung,
xvi (1989);RobertWalinski-Kiel,'TheDevil'sChildren:ChildWitch-Trialsin Early
Modern Germany',Continuity and Change, xi (1996); Rainer Walz, 'Kinder in
Hexenprozessen.Die GrafschaftLippe 1654-1663', in Jurgen Scheffler,Gerd
Schwerhoffand GiselaWilbertz(eds.), Hexenuerfolgungund Regionalgeschichte.Die
GragschaftLippe im Vergleich(Studienzur Regionalgeschichte, iv, Bielefeld,1994);
HartwigWeber,Kinderhexenprozesse (Frankfurt,1991);andHartwigWeber,'Vonder
verfuhrten Kinder Zauberei'. Hexenprozesse gegen Kinder im alten Wurttemberg
(Sigmaringen,1996).
7 See, on the townin the eighteenth
century,LeonhardLenk,AugsburgerBurgertunl
im Spathumanismusund FruAbarock01580-1700) (Abhandlungen zur Geschichteder
StadtAugsburg,xvii, Augsburg,1968);IngridBatori,Die ReichsstadtAugsburgim
18. ffahrhundert.Verfassung,Finanzen und Reformversuche(Veroffentlichungen des
Max-Planck-Instituts fur Geschichte,xxii, Gottingen, 1969); Franz Herre, Das
AugsburgerBurgertumim Zeitalter der Aufklarung(Abhandlungen zur Geschichteder
Stadt Augsburg,vi, Augsburg,1951); Etienne Francois,Die unsichtbareGrenze.
Protestantenund Katholiken in Augsburg,1648-1806 (Abhandlungen zur Geschichte
der StadtAugsburg,xxxiii, Sigmaringen,1991);and, on the earlierperiod,Bernd
Roeck,Eine Stadt in Krieg undFrieden. Studienzur Geschichteder ReichsstadtAugsburg
zwischenKalenderstreitund Paritat (Schriftenreiheder historischenKommissionbei
der bayerischenAkademieder Wissenschaften, xxxvii, 2 vols., Gottingen,1989).
 CHILD-WITCHES AND THE END OF THE WITCH CRAZE 109

As is well known, the phenomenon of child witches tends to

appeartowardsthe later stages of the witch-hunt. Augsburgwas
no exception. Like most imperial cities, Augsburghad not wit-
nessed a major witch panic on the scale of the rural regions
aroundWurzburgor Bamberg.But it had seen a seriesof dramatic
trials of individualaccused witches, especiallyin the second half
of the seventeenth century. Child witches were not unknown in
Augsburg. Twenty years earlier a girl had been questioned by
the evangelical church authorities about her involvement with
the Devil, and she had then become caught up in the rigours of
a full criminaltrial which lasted three years before she had finally
been releasedto the care of a guardian.Other childrenhad been
chargedas witches, often as a result of accusationsmade during
the course of a trial directedchiefly againsta relative, most often
the child's mother or grandmother.8The Augsburg Pietist
Gottlieb Spizel was particularlyfascinatedby the possibilitythat
children might be seduced by their parents into witchcraft, and
he devoted two chapters of his searing The Broken Pozverof
Darkness(1687) to the theme.9In 1669 in Sweden a large witch-
hunt began which included a high number of children (interest-
ingly, Spizel summarizedtheir confessions in minute and lurid
detail). In Wurzburg children became the focus of a dramatic
series of cases in the final stages of the vast witch panic there,
while the cases against the adolescent girls of Salem also date
from the late seventeenth century as the witch-hunt came to
its end.
In this article I want to link the history of witchcraftwith the
history of childhood, arguing that these late child-witch accusa-
tions exemplify a move from one symbolic organization,from
one way of understandingthe nature of evil, to another. The
eighteenth century is widely taken as having seen the beginnings
of the cult of childhood. It brought the end of swaddling, the
rise of the belief in the child's freedom of movement, the decline
of beating, the cult of breastfeeding;in short, the perception of
childhoodas a separatestate and childrenas needing protection.
All this is cliched and disputed in equal measure. We know that
8 See, for instance, the case of 1625 against Dorothea Braun, whose daughter Maria,
aged eleven, was also interrogated and kept in prison and whose evidence against her
mother that she had seduced her into witchcraft was crucial: Roeck, Eine Stadt in
Krieg und Frieden, ii, 539-45.
9 Gottlieb Spizel, Die GebrochneMacht der Finsternuss(Augsburg, 1687), 171 ff.,
191 ff.
 110 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 167
attitudes to discipline depend on context, class and attitudes to
the body; we have learnedto be less condescendingabout medi-
eval and early modern methods of child upbringing.But it does
seem to me undeniablethat the eighteenthcenturydid see a new
sensitivityand awarenesstowardschildhood.I shallsuggest, how-
ever, that the new attitudestowardschildrenwere not just posi-
tive, but punitive, part of a much darker history of childhood.
Their roots lay at least in part in the decline of the belief in
witchcraft,as there was a move away from an obsessionwith the
maternalrelation and with older women witches as a source of
evil. Instead,childrenand their fantasiesbeganto be seen as evil.
Witchcraft,as we meet it in the early modernmaterial,gener-
ally manifests itself in the body both of the witch and of her
victim. The accusationsof victims are consequentlyoften charac-
terized by the use of bodily imageryto give expressionto mental
and emotional distress; while the witch's mark, usually found
near the genitals,was bodily proof that the individualwas a witch
and had been sexuallybranded,as it were, by the Devil several
of the children were alleged to have had such a mark. Finding
the witch involved searching her body. We might also be
remindedof the importanceof nourishment,digestionand bodily
fluids in the ways witches were believed to cause harm, while in
this particularset of witchcraftcases, we might note the impor-
tance of excremental themes. These bodily substances can be
invested with symbolic meaning. What they mean is in part
culturallydetermined:we no longer attach the same significance
to lumps and bumps around the genital area. But there are
some featuresof the symbolic use of the oral and anal functions
of the body which clearly play a central role in witchcraft.
Psychoanalysis,too, is concernedwith the interrelationof bodily
phenomenawith bodily and psychic imagery;I shall make some
use of its ideas here, because it is therefore well placed to help
usthink throughthe issues which the historyof witchcraftraises.
As historiansoften complain,we know little of child behaviour
inthe past. Child-witchcases, like those of their opposites, child-
saints,can offer us a rarewindow onto the childhoodimagination
becausethey document play and fantasy-a window which is
therebecause the adults noticed and reported what, in the case
ofwitchcraft,they felt to be pathological.The children'sdiabolic
gamesexpressedtheir understandingsof religiousmysteries,their
conceptionof adult sexuality and their attitudes to punishment;
 CHILD-WITCHES AND THE END OF THE WITCH CRAZE 1l l

in short, they reflected the world of the child. And in the

responses of their parents, guardians, teachers and masters to
their behaviour,we can glimpse some of the flashpointsin rela-
tions between adults and childrenin the pre-Enlightenmentera.

I
The record which we have of the Augsburg case is a lengthy
precis of all the documents, drawn up by one of the Protestant
jurists in the case, ChristianFriedrich Weng.l? His attitude to
witchcraft might be described as a sort of dogged scepticism,
mixed with a gloomy convictionabout the evil of human nature.
He summarizedthe nearly400 documentsproducedby the case,
including his own memorialsof advice. Apparently,he did not
waver in his convictionthat the children'shouldnot be punished
according to the law, but might only be disciplined as godless
children'.ll Until the finalstages of the panic all the witches were
apparently Catholicgl2but this was an accident which can be
explainedby the fact that the childrenwere friends and attended
the same schools rather than by any feature peculiar to
Catholicism.Regina Groninger,the last child-witch in Augsburg,
had been a Protestant.13BiconfessionalAugsburghad developed
a kind of apparentlypeaceful denominationalapartheid,charac-
terized by confessional endogamy. Few converted. Even from

10I have been able to uncover little about Weng. In 1730 he ordered the legal
system of the city, going through the archives, a task suggesting he was held in regard
and that he was skilled in ordering and dealing with documents: StadtarchivAugsburg,
Reichsstadt, Ratsbucher 34, 26 Oct. 1730, pp. 168-9. This work, 'Augsburger
Statuarrecht',is a systematic description of the local legal system in Augsburg and is
the most important compilation of law for the town to that point, highly praised for
its learning and accuracy by Eugen Liedl in his Gerichtsverfassung und Zivilprozessder
frvien ReichsstadtAugsburg(Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Stadt Augsburg, xii,
Augsburg, 1958), 110 (Liedl terms it a private work, but it was evidently ordered by
the council and at least four copies of the manuscript exist). Weng wrote other works
too, such as the 'Extractusder Stadt AugspurgischenRaths Erkantnussen, 1392-1734',
SSBAugs., Cod. S. 114, and 'Annales Augustani Ecclesiastici Evangelici Inprimis',
testifying to his historical interests. The Urgichten of the children are missing
from the Augsburg archive. I have drawn on the council minutes from the period for
confirmation of Weng's summaries.
ll 'nicht nach den Rechten gestrafft, sondern allein als Gottlose Kinder gezuchtigt
werden': SSBAugs., Cod. Aug. 289, p. 4.
12 There was reference to a 'Lutheran boy' in 1728: ibid., p. 237.
13 For this case, see StadtarchivAugsburg, Urgichtensammlung, Regina Groninger,
1703; and SSBAugs., Cod. Aug. 289.
112 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 167

their names one could guess whether a child was Catholic or

Protestant.14
Yet this superficiallack of conflictand segregationof lifestyles
concealed a more complex reality: the two communities were
mutually interdependent,not hermeticallysealed. The seeming
denominationaltranquillitywas regularlypunctuatedby bursts
of hell-fire attacks on the rival confession from the pulpit, not
always with such dramaticresults as in 1696, when a Protestant
preacherwho had 'blasphemed'againstthe scapulaand the Virgin
Mary was (so Catholicsalleged)carriedoff in mid-sermonby the
Devil in the form of a bear.15 Religious differencecould still lead
to bloodshed, as it did in 1718, when several people died in the
course of a riot during a Catholic Corpus Christi procession.l6
Protestants,who had long made up the bulk of the population,
knew their numberswere on the decline, and aboutthe beginning
of the eighteenth century they ceased to be the majorityfor the
first time, never regainingnumericalsuperiority,even after the
influxof Protestantrefugeesfrom Salzburgin 1731.17Periodically
the city was gripped by a kind of exorcismmania,with Catholics
trying to display the superiorityof their confession through the
effectiveness of the exorcizing priest, or Protestants (usually
vainly) attemptingto free their own sufferersfrom the snaresof
the Devil.l8 Catholic children learned in their catechisms that
'Lutheran doctrine is a pestilence and death to true believers'

14 Francois,Die unsichrbare
Grenze, 167-78, 275-8; the differencebetweenthe two
confessions'namingstrategieswasbecomingincreasinglymarkedthroughthe eight-
eenthcentury.
15GrundmassigerBericht I Von dem Hergang und Verlauff I einer ffn Dess Heil.
Reichs.Stadt Augspurgin der EvangelischenKirche zu den Parfussern. . . Enstandener
Unordnung(Augsburg,1697):anaccusation strenuouslydeniedby theLutherans,who
publishedall the testimoniesof thosepresent,denyingthe incident.
16 Helmut Baier, 'Die evangelische KirchezwischenPietismus,Orthodoxieund
Aufklarung',in GuntherGottliebet al. (eds.),Geschichteder StadtAugsburg(Stuttgart,
1984),521.
17 Ibid., passim;andthis wouldhavebeenevidentto Protestants andCatholicseven
more clearlyas the numbersof Catholicbaptismsand weddingsbeganregularlyto
outstripthose of the Protestantsby quite a long way. See Francois,Die unsichtbare
Grenze,246-52. Thesefigureswerecollectedandpublishedat thetime,so confessional
demographywas a subjectvery much presentin eighteenth-century Augsburgers'
consciousness. On the Salzburgrefugees,see MackWalker,The Salzburg Transaction:
Expulsionand Redemptionin Eighteenth-CenturyAugsburg(Ithaca,NY, 1992);andfor
theirimpactin Augsburg,see in particularFrancoisand Baieras above.
18 LyndalRoper,Oedipusand the Devil: Witchcraft,Sexuality and Religionin Early
Modern Europe (London, 1994), 171-98; Francois,Die unsichtbareGrenze; Roeck,
Eine Stadt in Krieg und Frieden.
 CHILD-WITCHES AND THE END OF THE WITCH CRAZE 1 13

and were told in this connection the story of the Catholicboys

of Alexandriawho hated the Arian heretics so much that when
the ball with which they were playingwas touchedby the donkey
of one of the heretics, they cast their playthingin the fire.l9
Lutherans and Catholics adopted different stances towards
these diabolic children. For Protestants, the whole affair might
be viewed as a plot by the Catholic clergy to stage yet another
dramatic set of exorcisms, and one contemporary Protestant
chroniclercertainly thought it possible that the Catholic clergy
had put the childrenup to it, threateningthem and forcing them
to make all kinds of false confessions.20Throughout the case,
Weng's memorialsof advice persistentlypointed out the contra-
dictions in the children'stestimony, and he could barely contain
his scorn for the 'nonsense' to which the children confessed.
Protestant and Catholic councillors could not agree on what to
do with the childrenor how to punishthem, Protestantsstressing
the expense the whole affair was costing the city and insisting
that advice be sought from a biconfessionallaw faculty while
Catholicswantedto get to the bottomof the matterby confronting
the witnesses,takingyet more childreninto custodyand interrog-
ating all the suspects.21Because the only agreementthey could
get was to continue questioning the children and witnesses, the
affair multiplied into a larger and larger tangle of stories and
counter-accusations, each interrogation generating yet more
loose ends.22
And yet this was no simple battle between rationalProtestants,
scepticalof the Devil's power on the one hand, and superstitious
Catholics on the other. Neither Weng nor the anonymous
Protestantchroniclercan be taken to representall Lutheranopin-
ion. Pietist Lutherans,members of a movement only beginning
to gatherstrengthin the town, might ferventlybelieve in witches:
19 R. P. Marco Eschenloher, KinderlehrenI OderLeichtbegreifflicheAuslegungenUber
den gantsen Romisch-KatholischenCatechismumI Vorldngstoffentlichbey Wochentlicher
Kinder-Versamblungen an denen Sonntagenvorgetragen. . . (Augsburg, 1706), with an
Approval from 1701, pp. 39, 36.
20 SSBAugs., Cod. Aug. 103, p. 525.
21 See, especially, memorial of Catholics, 3? Apr. 1724, text in Weng, SSBAugs.,
Cod. Aug. 289, pp. 162-4. The Catholics wanted to take a further sixteen children
into custody in addition to the number almost certainly seven who were there
already.
22 This was further complicated by the decision to refer the whole matter to the
emperor, and then to the law faculty at Heidelberg, because no final decisions could
be taken.
114 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER 167

Gottlieb Spizel, the foremost Pietist, had congratulated the

Augsburgcouncil on its godly deed of burning three witches in
1685 and thought that scepticism about the power of the Devil
led to atheism.23Occasionallythe town's jurist advisers united
across the confessionaldivide in the advice they offered in the
affairof the godless children;while the scepticalattitudeof Weng
would not have been shared,for example, by the Lutheranswho
denounced Regina Groningeras a child-witch just twenty years
before, and Weng sometimes found himself in a minority with
his colleagues.24Moreover,Weng himself was persuadedthat the
children were evil, and he thought the parents who reported
them were led by desperationand by what he termed'the instiga-
tion of the spirit of murder', a formulationwhich came close to
sayingthey were led by the Devil. The traditionwithin Protestant
demonologyof arguingthat the Devil might do his work through
illusionalso meantthat provingthe childrensufferedfrom fantas-
ies or delusions did not of itself show that the Devil was not
involved or that witchcraftwas not afoot.25

II
What were the themes of the children'sbehaviour,and why did
the parents find it so intolerablethat they denouncedtheir own
offspring, commendingtheir infants to what the Augsburg city
fathers called their 'official keeping', as if it were a place of
sanctuaryalthoughit meant their incarcerationin prison cells for
long periods of time?26That this parentalwillingness to turn to
the councilshockedcontemporariestoo is evident in the comment
of the Protestant chronicler who remarked on the gossip the
whole affair had caused in the town and on the extraordinary
spectacle of parents 'denounc[ing] their own bodily tender
23 Dietrich Blaufuss, Reichsstadl und Pietismus. Philipp ffacob Spener und Gottlieb
Spizel aus Augsburg(Einzelarbeiten aus der Kirchengeschichte Bayerns, liii, Neustadt
an der Aisch, 1977), 38, 281, 289; Spizel, Die GebrochneMacht.
24 Records of the votes of individual councillors which have survived together with
SSBAugs., Cod. Aug. 289, unpaginated, show that confessional allegiance was not
always straightforward,and that 'mixed majorities' were sometimes achieved.
25 See Stuart Clark, 'Protestant Demonology: Sin, Superstition, and Society
(c.1520-c.1630)', in Bengt Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen (eds.), Early Modern
EuropeanWitchcraft:Cewltresand Peripheries(Oxford, 1990); Stuart Clark, Thinking
with Demons (Oxford, 1997); H. C. Erik Midelfort, Witch BUnti1lgin Southzuestern
Germany,1562-1684 (Stanford, Calif., 1972), 30-67.
26'Obrigkeitliche verwahrung': SSBAugs., Cod. Aug. 289, p. 25.
 CHILD-WITCHES AND THE END OF THE WITCH CRAZE 1 15

childrento the government,and giving them over even to capital

punishment'.27And the childrenwere not vagabondsor paupers:
they came from establishedmiddling craft families, from cattle-
butchers,brandy-sellers,brewersand innkeepers;most were cit-
izens, some with substantialmeans.28IndeedWeng, the Protestant
jurist, thought the parents should be roundly punished for such
'barbarousgodlessness' and put in the cells for a few days just
like their children.29
Several key themes emerged in the course of the witchcraft
epidemic-and parents themselves explicitly used the medical
metaphor, fearing that the infants' siblings would be 'infected'.
Time and again the children were describedas having put 'dia-
bolic powder' and other strangeobjects, includingpowder 'which
looked like mouse dung or linseeds',30in their parents' beds to
cause their parentssicknessand pain. The use of powder to cause
physicalpain in others is part of the standardrepertoireof low-
grade maleficent magic. But it is less usual to find the attack
directed so unmistakablyat the parental bed, or to find it so
unequivocallyassociatedwith excrement. Teeth, too, are a less
mundanemagicalingredient.
The diabolic childrenalso engaged in group activities, cutting
each other's fingers in a kind of blood-brotherhoodritual which
drew on the traditionsof demonologicaltheory. The blood was
used (with the Devil's aid) to sign a pact and to enter the new
recruit'sname into a big Devil's book. The childrenfought with
one anotherand engaged in rough games, in particular,as many
agreed,on the stairsbehind the churchof St Jakob's,a Protestant
church. At the witches' sabbath,and sometimes in the town
on the haymaking floor of the father of one of the girls, on
balconies, and behind the church they engaged in what their

27 SSBAugs.,Cod. Aug. 103, p. 525: 'und ist so weit kommen,dass selbst Eltern
ihreleiblichezahrteKinder,derObrigkeitangezeigt,auchallenfallsszurlebensStraff
ubergebenhaben'.
28 The exceptionwas threevagabonds who got caughtup in the case;but interest-
ingly, theirnamessoondisappeared, andthey wereableconvincinglyto denywitch-
craft:SSBAugs.,Cod.Aug. 289, p. 80. Oneof the parentspaidtax on a houseworth
1,500gulden,anotherwas worth 1,800gulden,both very substantialsums;another
had goodsworth 100 gulden,and two orphansiblingswere worth800 gulden:ibid.,
p. 124.
29 'BarbarischenGottlosigkeit':ibid., p. 62. He also thoughtsuch attitudescame
fromdesperationand 'Eingebungdes Mordgeistes'.
30 As Gottfried
Betz,one of the accusedchildren,describedit: 'DasPulver. . . habe
wie ein MausskothoderLinsenkornlein ausgesehen':ibid., p. 87.
116 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER167
accusers termed 'indecency'. Trousers were dropped, shirts
raised, skirts lifted, and the children'kissed the shamefulparts'.
These episodes of sexual exhibitionism allegedly also involved
genital intercourse. One boy aged ten was accused of violating
his sister aged sixteen months, his parentsclaimingto have wit-
nessed palpable'signa pollutionis'on the young boy's shirt an
allegationwhich the Protestantjuristdismissedas a physiological
impossibility. Throughout the case, children, parents and com-
mentators alike referred to their initiation into the group as a
'seduction', naming who had first 'seduced' them and who they
had in turn 'seduced'. Whether this word was their own or
whether it was suggested to them we cannot now disentangle-
and perhapsit does not mattergreatly, since the witch fantasyin
its final form was of its very nature a heady composite of the
questionsasked, the witness statementsand those of the accused.
Anal themes were evidently central.The childrenwere able to
produce plagues of 'lice and mice', mobile dirt or excrement,
which polluted the household. Diabolic powder is a highly sym-
bolic substance,which synthesizesthe key elements of the myth
of witchcraft.It was believed to be the product of the flesh and
bone of unbaptized infants, exhumed from the ground by old
women in terrifyingceremonieswhere the Devil was in attend-
ance, often hovering outside the graveyardsince he was unable
to tread consecratedground. The infant flesh would be cooked
by the women to join the meat on offer at diabolicsabbathfeasts.
The powders or salves were manufacturedfrom the leftover
bones; the cooking water used to raise storms. In criminalinter-
rogationswitches referredto powder or salves only by colour, as
'black', 'grey' or 'red'; and the substanceexhibits only the uni-
form texture of salve or powder, betraying no visual or tactile
hint of its horrificorigins. Usually the witch received the powder
from the Devil himself and was commandedto cause harm with
it. But here symbolic processesseem to have gone into reverse,
and the diabolic powder emerges shorn of mystery, revealed as
glass splinters, teeth, bones, threads, nutshells, wholegrainsand
hair all kinds of 'filtht, as the council termed itg3lor looking
like 'mouse dung' or goat droppings.32This places it far closer,
in a symbolicallyunmediatedmanner, to the preoccupationsof
early childhood. The childrensaid almost nothing about how the
31 Ibid., p. 97.
32 Ibid., pp. 49, 71-2, 82, 83, 142.
 CHILD-WITCHES AND THE END OF THE WITCH CRAZE 117

Devil's salve was made and did not mention feasts of unbaptized
child flesh. It is as if the latent content of the witchcraftfantasy
had been stripped of its mythic overlay to reveal the crudest
primarystructureof infant psychologyunderneath.The children
seem to be using bodily products, excrement-like materialand
sharp cutting objects as harmfulsubstanceswith which to attack
God and injure their parents.
In particular,the object of attack often appeared to be the
parents' sexual relationship, sometimes the father's potency,
sometimesthe mother'sfertility. MariaSteingrubersufferedfrom
the attacksof witches while in childbed, and discoveredthis was
caused by her stepson.33Franz Joseph Ruttler bewitched his
parents'bed, and his mother stated that her husbandhad lost his
strength as a result.34Martin Steiner claimed his stepdaughter
knew how to make lice and beetles, and she confessed to putting
diabolic powder in his bed after he had kicked her.35Johann
Sebastian Fischer admitted putting black powder into brandy
casks and in the parental bed: his father begged for him to be
taken into custody.36Time and again parents, especiallyfathers,
reported the progress of their maladiesto the council as strange
objectsappearedin their beds. Weng conscientiouslyinvestigated
and confirmedthe presence of strangesubstancesin one of these
cases, finding 'straw, dirt and uncleanliness'. But he offered a
class-bound, naturalisticexplanation:these things 'occur in all
the bedclothes of poor people, who do not always keep their
bedding clean'.37In the Betz householdanal attacks,the parental
relationshipand the fertility of the marriagewere woven into a
tight symbolic nexus which ultimately led to the dissolution of
the household. Evil stuff was found in the bed. The children's
mother suffered during pregnancy'as if pure knives were inside
her'; the father endured terrible toothache and, as his wife
noticed, could no longer carry the armchair;the whole family
lived 'like cat and dog', and the childrenput powder in the beer
(which doubtless did not help matters). The powder looked like
mouse excrement. When it was removed from the bed, peace
returnedbetween the parents.But shortly after, when the father
33 Ibid, pp. 26-7
34 Ibid., p. 12.
Ibid., pp. 28-30.
36 Ibid., p. 48.

37 'welche in jedem schlechten bettzeug armer Leuthe, die ihre Sachen nicht allezeit
so gar reinlich halten, konnen gefunden werden': ibid., p. 108.
118 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER 167
found a further packet of material in the bed, he begged the
councilto take his other two 'incorrigible'childreninto custody.38
In many, but not all, of these cases, the parentalunion was a
step union.39 Step relationships were, of course, extremely
common in early modern Germany;but it seems likely that the
especial jealousyand rage against a parent's new sexual partner
may have lent a particulartimbre to these attacks; while the
parents'own feelings about remarriageand the loss of the previ-
ous spouse may have made them more unconsciouslylikely to
expect and thus to believe that they were experiencingretaliation
from their children, giving a particulartwist to the vicious cycle
of hostility and the expectation of revenge which characterizes
so much of the emotionaldynamicof the witch craze.
In addition to these themes, cutting and biting also seem to
play a prominentrole-the odd tooth, scatteredin the parental
bed, the cutting of fingers an interestingdetail, since normally
the Devil required only pricking to draw blood for signature.
They emerged, too, in one sacrilegiousversion of what we might
call a 'doctors and nurses' game. On Good Friday one child
playedJesus on the cross while his girl counterpartwas pierced
with Mary's seven daggersof sorrow.40Again, the same literalist
reduction of complex mythical structures to physical ones is
evident in the children's play. Mary's seven swords of sorrow
become real cutting implements, piercing the little girl's body;
Christ'swounded body becomes part of a sadistic cutting game.
Adultreligiousthemeshave been transposedinto children'ssexual
games, a blasphemous literalism which outraged their parents
38 Ibid., pp. 5, 72. The Betzses' cousins made the same
complaints: Magdalena
Neumayr suffered headaches while her husband was plagued with toothache; and
they, too, had lived in marital disunity for a year. When the Betz children advised
themto shake out their beds, they discovered glass splinters, bones, little black balls
asif from a goat, and a bit of a sausage, all of which they took to the Jesuits for
advice:ibid., p. 97.
39 Of the thirty children or so who became seriously
involved in the panic, we know
thatfive had step-parents. One other boy and three siblings from one family had lost
theirmother and were being brought up by a relative. The same patterns of hostility
tothe fecund relationshipsof adults in authority could be found amongst those children
without step-parents: so one of the siblings supposedly attacked the pregnant
Hausmeisterirl where he was lodged by means of a diabolic powder, 'dass das Kind in
MuterLeib abstehe' (ibid., p. 170). However, equally striking is the fact that in three
ofthe families where classic attacks on the parents' beds were carried out (accounting
forten of the 'diabolic children'), the parents were not, so far as we know, step-
parents.It is, however, difficult to be certain because step-parents were often consist-
entlydescribed as the 'father' and 'mother' of their stepchildren.
40 Ibid., p. 70.
 CHILD-WITCHES AND THE END OF THE WITCH CRAZE 119

because they were unable to disregardthis as child's play. They

reported that the game had truly left marks on the children's
bodies: a lump 'about the size of a pea' was seen on the boy's
hand, while 'seven yellow dimples' circled the region of the little
girl's heart.4lWhat is remarkablehere is that these physicalsigns
might, in other circumstances,have been taken as evidence of
the child's sanctity, stigmatawhich proved their election by God.
Here, however, they were treated as evidence of evil.
A similarsymbolicliteralismis evident in the children'sbehavi-
our at the witches' sabbath,where they allegedly torturedhosts.
This, too, was prettynormalactivityat a sabbath.But the children
prosaicallyput the hosts into a dyer's press.42In a literalistversion
of the metaphysicalimage of Christin the winepress, giving out
his blood for all Christians,a subject popularin woodcuts,43the
childrenimprovisedwith whatevermachinerylay to hand about
the house, pressingthe host until the blood ranout. Blood, cutting
and sadistic attacks had thus been made concrete, the symbolic
objectsbeing directlymanipulatedand harmed.Witchcraftby its
very nature involves attackson other Christians;but usually the
harmcausedis of an indirectkind and requiresthe agency of the
Devil. It rests on a set of beliefs about his power. A witch might
stroke or touch her victim, or sprinkle diabolic powder on the
food of the individual she wished to harm, but it is not her
physicalaction which directly causes the maladyof itself. Rather
the diabolicpowder or the force grantedher by the Devil magic-
ally brings about suffering, withering,illness or pain in her prey.
By contrast,here, the themes of blood, biting and cutting are so
direct as to be barely encoded.44
41 Ibid.
42 lbid., p. 72. Accordingto BartholomeStegmann,DavidKopf also took a sheep
andput it in the press,againsuggestinga half-understood concretesymbolization of
centralreligiousimageryin whichJesusis not the shepherdbut a sheep.
43 On Christin the winepressand the host mill, see Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi:
Tlle Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge,1991), 312-16; and for its
reworkingin Protestantwoodcuts,R. W. Scribner,For the Sake of Simple Folk:
Popular Propagandafor the German Reformation(Cambridge, 1981; rev. Oxford,
1994), 105-7.
44This makesthe processesof symbolization at workseemratherlike whatHanna
Segaldescribesin patientswho are unableto dreamproperly.See here the workof
HannaSegalon concretethinkingandthe absenceof symbolization: Dream, Phantasy
andArt (London,1991).Witchcraft canbe seenas comprisinga vividsymbolicsystem,
well suitedto expressingpsychicconflict;thoughwe wouldalso considerit to be a
delusionalsystem.Here,as witchcraftbeganto lose credibility,the symbolformation
is also impaired.
 120 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER 167
The sexual themes of the witch craze, too, had undergone a
transformation.Sexual themes, mixed with anal preoccupations,
emerged within the children'splay. So David Kopf, in one such
game, reputedly dropped his trousersand raised his shirt, while
his companionslet herself be beatenwith a little stick on her bare
behind'. One boy locatedthe witches' sabbathat the Sow Market,
thus linking it in early modern imaginativeterms to pigs, blood,
filth and possibly by implicationto Jews (udensau);and there
the children 'committed indecency, pulled down their trousers,
put their hands in each other's behinds and fronts and kissed
their shameful parts'. One girl said the Devil tickled her in her
lower body.45This emphasison analthemesand on sexualexhibi-
tionism took the themes of the witch-hunt into a different regis-
ter. In the fully formed fantasyof the witch craze, the witch is a
woman who copulateswith her diabolic lover, and who engages
in wanton promiscuityat the sabbath.Each witch had to furnish
an account of her individualseduction by the Devil, explaining
how it was that she had fallen under his sway. These confessions,
which follow the conventionsof love storiesandsuits for marriage
promise, and which evidently draw on women's experiences of
love, disappointmentand even of individual lovers, are nearly
alwaysheterosexualin natureand culminatein the confessionof
sexualintercoursewith the diaboliclover.46Here too we can hear
the echo of experience,but it is the sexual experienceof children,
and its images come from a polymorphoussexual imagination.
The children's anxious parents became convinced that the
Devil was attackingtheir childrenphysically. So one father who
denouncedhis little stepdaughterTheresia Fleiner as one of the
godless children described how she awoke in bed, screaming
'Father,father'. As he rushedto her bed, she cried that the Devil
was blowing into her mouth and ears-a kind of symbolic
inversionof the exorcism of baptism, where the Devil is blown
out through the mouth and ears. He groped for the candle, and
sawher covered in blood, 'blood shooting from her nose, mouth
andears'. The Devil kissed her at night, the father reported,and

45 SSBAugs.,Cod. Aug. 289, p. 92.

46 RobertRowland,' "FantasticalandDevilishePersons":EuropeanWitch-Beliefs
in ComparativePerspective',in Ankarlooand Henningsen(eds.), Early Modern
EuropeanWitchcraft.My argumenthere is drawnfromanalysisof witchconfessions
fromWurzburg,Eichsstatt,Obermarchtal andNordlingendevelopedin my Witchcraft
andFantasy in Early Modern Germany,currentlyin preparation.
 CHILD-WITCHES AND THE END OF THE WITCH CRAZE 121

touched her all over her body, except for her heart.47This little
girl died not long after. Her hair seemed to be being pulled out
by the Devil: as one witness noted, 'the child did not have as
much hair as previously:one did not know where it had got to'.48
The spectacleof the sufferinggirl was utterly terrifying;and yet
the council and perhaps the parents presumed that the
source of evil was the girl herself, who had an insatiableappetite.
The council advised that the mother should moderatethe child's
food intake. She did. As the childminderreported, the child was
'fed the leftover soup scrapsfor the dog'49and sometimesgiven
nothing at all. Convinced the child had been starved to death,
the childmindereventuallyaccusedthe mother. The mother, she
said, had said to her that 'she had not given her nothing to eat
for more than one day, yet she still didn't perish'.50In this case,
it seems very likely that the mother was so disturbed by her
daughter'sbehaviourthat she starvedher to death, a total misper-
ception of the child's need which implies the complete failure of
the parentalrelationship.5l
What were the responsibilitiesof parentsin all this? Weng and
the Protestant jurists saw the matter in straightforwardterms:
these childrenof artisanfamilieswere the parents'responsibility,
and if they insisted on handing them over to the council, then
they should be made to foot the bill for the costs of their attend-
ants. The parents,however, strenuouslyinsisted that they ought
not to pay, the poorerparentspleadingpoverty, the richerclaim-
ing that they had alreadyspent money on the children.Implicitly
they regarded the city as responsible for the godless children.
The same issues were raised throughoutEurope by the growing
importanceof workhousesand orphanages,whose inmatesmight
47 'dass das Magdlein ganz mit blut uberloffen, und das blut aus Nasen, Mund und
Ohren geschossen': SSBAugs., Cod. Aug. 289, p. 49; 'der Satanhabe sie bey der Nacht
gekusst, und in die Ohren geblasen, bringe ihr auf dem Tanz das essen, und esse mit
ihr, greiffe ihr uberal hin, als an das herz nicht': 49-50.
48'das Kind habe nicht mehr so vil haar, wie vorhin, man wisse nicht wo hin es
kommen': ibid., pp. 50, 134.
49 'Ihr Tod werde von der Muter aushungerung herkommen . . . der Vater geb ihr
doch noch bissweilen von der Suppen, so dem Hund aufgebrachtwerde': ibid., p. 136.
50'mehr als 1 Tag dem Kind nichts zuessen gegeben zuhaben und doch crepiere es
nicht': ibid.
51 Throughout, the father is regularly referred to as the 'stepfather' of the child. It
is possible that his wife was also the stepmother of the girl. She is only described as
the childts 'mother', but occasionally he is described as the girl's 'father', so this is
not conclusive. The girl was listed by the Lutherans amongst those to be punished,
and she would have been taken into custody in 1724 had she not died.
122 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER 167

include not only vagrantsand poor families but children whose

families could not afford to keep them or even, by the late
eighteenthcentury, childrenof middle-classor aristocraticfamil-
ies whose parentscould no longer control them.52In demanding
that the council deal with their incorrigibleoffspring,parentstoo
were taking metaphor literally. From the Reformation on, in
Augsburg(as elsewhere), the council had developedan elaborate
system of fatherlycontrolover its citizens, interveningin marital
disputes, punishingits citizens for sexual lapses, and instructing
them in their moral duties in endless proclamations.53 They were
insisting that the council, who in well-worn rhetoric described
itself as its citizens' father, should actuallytake over the paternal
role of punishingchildren.
And what were the limits of fatherlypunishment?Because all
relationshipsof authoritywere naturalizedthroughthe metaphor
of fatherhood-the prison governor was known as the 'iron
father', the head of the orphanagewas the 'orphanfather', and
the authority of the 'confessionalfather', the teacher and the
master was understoodas a parentalrelationship this vexed
questionwent to the heartof the relationsof obediencein general.
Whippingand beatingswere themes which recurredin the chil-
dren's descriptionof their activities, sometimes even apparently
sexualized, as in the case of the little girl who, in the games of
sexual exhibitionismwhich had occurredbehind the church, was
whipped on her bare bottom; while David Kopf said that as part
of the sexual games, each of the childrenhad to give the other a
hiding in turn.54Discipline and authoritywere troubledmatters
in earlyeighteenth-centuryAugsburg.In 1726, duringthe course
of the case, there was a dramaticdemonstrationof the hollowness
of natural authority when the Augsburg journeymen cobblers
staged a revolt againsttheir mastersand decampedto the neigh-
bouring small town of Friedberg while their masters looked on

52 ThomasSafley,Charity and Economyin the Orphanagesof Early ModernAugsburg

(AtlanticHighlands,NJ, 1997),235; BernhardStier,Fursorgeund Disziplinierungim
Zeitalter des Absolutismus.Das PforcheimerZucht- und Waisenhausund die badische
Sozialpolitik im 18. ffahrhundert(Quellen und Studien zur Geschichteder Stadt
Pforzheim,i, Sigmaringen,1988);and SandraCavallo,Charity and Power in Early
Modern Italy: Benefactorsand their Motives in Turin, 1541-1789 (Cambridge,1995).
53 See Lyndal Roper, The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation
Augsburg(Oxford,1989).
54 SSBAugs.,Cod.Aug. 289, p. 41.
 CHILD-WITCHES AND THE END OF THE WITCH CRAZE 123

powerless.55The Protestantjurist was convinced that the way to

deal with the godless childrenwas to give them a sound whipping,
and an elaborateschedule of beatings was drawn up, the worst
children to be beaten twice weekly with fifteen strokes for four
weeks in the workhouse, the youngest or least delinquent only
once a week with ten strokes.56Yet the affair of the godless
children also showed what happenedwhen parents were simply
left to exert power through corporal punishment. One parent
sliced off his son's finger in the course of punishing him; and a
teacherof the same boy burnedhim with a rag duringan attempt
to make him confess to his diabolic activities: this was certainly
not felt to be appropriatechastisement. At the same time the
very description of the children as 'incorrigible'expressed the
conviction of parents, teachers and masters that these children
could not be 'corrected'throughpunishment;indeed, the council
itself was eventuallyto agree, after havingtaken the childreninto
custody and subjectingthem to corporalpunishment, that some
of them were truly 'incorrigible'.And the benefits of corporal
punishmentbecame even less clear as the case began to reach its
end, and David Kopf, whose initial confessionshad sparkedthe
whole affair, claimed that he had only made his confessions
because he had endured such terrible beatings from priests and
then at the Catholicworkhouse.57

III
The witch-hunt as it operated in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centurieshad offered a clear way of dealingwith evil, by locating
the source of evil in an old woman. Old women were dispropor-
tionatelyrepresentedamongstthe victims of the witch craze;and
the old woman was the abiding stereotypicalwitch. Very often
women like these were involved with the care, nourishmentor
even spoiling of infants and young children, and it was out of a
situation where the young child or infant who was well known
to the accused witch sickened that an accusation might arise.
Witches were believed to kill through poison, sprinklingwitch's
55 See Specification, Deren In Augspurg auggestandenenI und nach Friedbergauss-
gestrettnenSchuh-Knechten,nach ihrem Tauff- und Zunahmen,zuieauch Geburts- and
Lehr-Stadt . . . (Augsburg, 1726); Wolfgang Zorn, Augsburg.Geschichteeinerdeutschen
Stadt (Augsburg, 1972), 228.
56 SSBAugs., Cod. Aug. 289, pp. 160-1.
57 Ibid., pp. 201-4.
124 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER 167

powder on an infant's dummy or mixing it into their pap, or

offeringa child a rissoleor an applewhich was smearedin diabolic
salve. They pervertedthe maternalfunction of nourishmentand
they impeded fertility in both the natural and human worlds,
rendering men impotent, injuring animals and blasting crops.
The older woman'senvy, no longer able to bear childrenherself,
seems to have been believed to be lethal, and even the praiseand
endearmentsshe uttered could be held to portendtheir opposite:
'My, what a beautiful child' could be later interpreted as the
malign wish that causedan infant to sicken and die. Such beliefs
could make it very hard for an older woman to refute the charge
of witchcraftshould a child she knew fall ill or become ensnared
with the Devil. Interestingly enough, there zvas such a figure
availablein this case. Nearly all the children blamed a woman
they called 'the seamstress'as their seductress.She was the classic
target of witchcraft accusation, an older woman who was not
the mother of the children concerned but who fulfilled a
maternalrole, who knew the childrenand played a part in their
imaginativeworlds.
As I have argued elsewhere, such women became lightning
conductors for a wider cultural ambivalence towards mother
figures, while protecting the actual mothers themselves.58But
what happenedto the needlewoman?She was incarceratedfor a
full twenty weeks, but she was not interrogateduntil she herself
demandedto be put throughthe rigoursof a criminalinterroga-
tion, convinced she had alreadybeen tacitly condemned by the
council.59During this time the web of children's accusations
againsther had grown, with more and more childrenbeing taken
into custody until there were no fewer than eleven children
willing to testify againsther. Just a generationbefore, the needle-
woman a non-citizen, non-native,poor, lame, old and depend-
ent for her work on the comfortablecraftspeoplewho denounced
her would almost certainly have been tried as a witch. She
was even reportedto have been seen with an 'oven fork', presum-
ably the vehicle on which she rode to the sabbath;while other
children said they had seen her wearing 'a Jewess's wimple'.60
Not all the parents accused her; and something of the crisis in
witch beliefs can be detected in the response of her neighbours.
58Roper, Oedipusarldthe Devil, 199-225.
59SSBAugs., Cod. Aug. 289, p. 115.
Ibid., pp. 45-6.
 CHILD-WITCHES
AND THE END OF THE WITCHCRAZE 125
They petitionedthe council, refusingto pay for her imprisonment
and askingfor her to be expelled from town, since she had neither
residence rights nor citizenship. But they studiously forbore to
accuseher of sorceryor witchcraft,arguinginsteadthat 'although
they did not suspect her of witchcraftand perhapshad no seduc-
tion to fear, neverthelessgeneralopinion was againsther'. Other
parentswere getting their children to avoid the neighbourhood,
and parents were removing their children from the school.6l
Similarly, only one adult, the maid of the Trichtler family,
claimed that she had suffered harm from the seamstress. The
maid was repeatedly questioned, but no other adults came for-
ward to allege that they, too, had been victims of the seamstresss
malefice. In earlier times, had the seamstressbeen interrogated
and failed to withstand torture or show clinical signs of melan-
choly, she would have been executed. But this did not happen.
Instead, despite the clamouringsof parents and children alike,
the jurists prevailed in their view that there was insufficient
evidenceto try the woman, and this, togetherwith the ambivalent
support of her neighboursand the unwillingnessof other adults
to accuse her of witchcraft,doubtless saved her.62
Exactly the same pattern is evident in the case I described
earlier of Theresia Fleiner, where the child's nurse eventually
broughtan accusationagainstthe child's motherof havingstarved
the girl to death. There is one additionaldetailwhich is important
in this connection. Early on in this case the girl herself had
accused a nameless woman from Friedberg of having seduced
her, bringingher under the Devil's power. There was, of course)
6l;Weil sie Zwarder Ruefinder Zaubereynicht verdachtighalten,und villeicht
von ihrkeineVerfuhrungzu besorgenhatten,dergemeineRuefaberwidersie gehe':
ibid., p. 126.
62 Ibid., p. 116: six juristswere engaged,three Catholic,three Protestant,one of
whom did want to persistwith evidenceof the prisonauthoritiesagainsther; four
others,includingone Catholic,did not. Wengheld that the initialinterrogation was
carriedout withoutthe approvalof the jurists.The seamstresswas releasedandwas
takenin by PaulSchrot'out of pity':he askedfor a subventionfromthe councilfor
this in Feb. 1726:p. 182. The Heidelbergfacultyadvisedthat Ruefinshouldnot be
interrogatedagain,but since the accusationsagainsther were seriousand well sup-
ported,a watchshouldbe kept on her. The seamstresswas consistentlyblamedby
manyof the childrenevenin the verylaststagesof the panic.In 1728,afterthe whole
casehaddieddown,for sserious'reasonswhicharenot apparent,it wasrecommended
that she be sent out of town: p. 218; StadtarchivAugsburg,Reichsstadt,Ratsbuch
1728,12 Oct. 1728,p. 764. Sheapparentlydid not go, andwasfinallytold thatif she
did not leaveof her own accord,she wouldbe publiclyled out of town,a formaland
dishonouringbanishment:Ratsbuch1729, 5 May 1729, p. 499; she left on 20 July
1729:p. 545.
 126 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER167
also a 'maternal'woman availablein the form of the childminder
who might have been chosen to be the 'witch' and take the blame
for what was in this case almost certainlyreal maternalfailure.
The childminderwas cited to corroboratethe testimony of the
father that strange matters were afoot, and she was questioned.
Whetheror not she felt herself to be in dangerof being accused,
it was at that point that she certainly responded with what
amountedto an effective counter-attack,accusingthe mother of
having causedthe child's death. Againthe councilshowed reluct-
ance to prosecute, and the childminder'saccusationprecipitated
a complete stalemate.When the mother counteredthat she was
only doing what the councilhad advisedin moderatingthe child's
food intake, the council determined that the two parents 'had
purged themselves by oath' that they had not broughtabout the
child's death, and closed the case againstthe two women without
further ado.63
But if there was no witch, at least as far as the council was
concerned, then the focus of attention necessarilyshifted: why
were the childrendevisingsuch storiesand such sevilimaginings'?
The answer to this question has to do with a far wider symbolic
shift, a transformationwhich came out of the crumblingof the
old coherent beliefs in witchcraftand the Devil. The seamstress
was not executed as the witch and neither was the childminder;
and this meant that the evil for which they provided the ready
explanationhad to be sought elsewhere. In this way the council
and some of the parentswere thrown back to the question:how
is an accusationagainst a witch formed?What makes children
imaginesuch things?
Under the old symbolic economy of the witch-hunt, locating
the witch enabled a kind of automatic identificationwith the
objectsof the witch's harm to take place, and these objects were
aboveall children, especiallybabies. It was as if the council and
the accusers, through the very force of their sympathywith the
ostensiblevictim, found their moral and emotional entitlement
to unleashtheir own aggressionagainstthe witch. Becauseof the
unboundednessof this sense of being at one with the supposed

63 SSBAugs., Cod. Aug. 289, pp. 50, 134-6. The council

authorities who had urged
herto modify the child's food intake were questioned, and they said they had advised
a 'diet'. This widely held view about the connection between moderate diet and
disciplinedhabits was also reflected in the food provided for the inmates of Augsburg's
orphanages.See Safley, Charity and Economy,192.
 CHILD-WITCHES AND THE END OF THE WITCH CRAZE 127

prey of the witch, the fact of the child's separateidentitymattered

little. Identificationwith the child victim thus practicallyannihil-
ated recognition of childhood and children in this context as
separatefrom the accuser.(This could even structureperception:
in a late seventeenth-centurywitch case, one elderly man saw a
little bewitched child all shrivelledup, as if as he put it the
child were an old man.64)But once this identificationbecame
prisedapart,once the old womanwas no longerunproblematically
the source of evil and once psychic merging in fantasy with the
child was no longer possible, then a space opened up, preventing
a complete identificationwith the child as victim.
Identifications,of course, still operated;but the kinds at work
seem to involve split-off elements of the self. Parentsfound their
children'sbehaviourintolerableand were unable to dismiss it as
childishplay. The children'sworld of fantasywith its unmediated
aggressionwas disturbing to parents because it forced them to
encounterchildish emotions hatredof a new partner,fascina-
tion with sexuality in situationswhere parentswere implicated.
Their attitudesthroughoutthe case indicatethat they felt a sense
of helplessnessin the face of their children'sbehaviour,an impo-
tence which led them finallyto resigntheirparentalresponsibilities
altogether, taking the council's own rhetoric about its paternal
role towards its citizens at its word. Something seems to have
gone seriously awry in these parents' relationshipswith their
children, making them, too, unable to deal with childish aggres-
sion: instead, they seem to have become sucked into their chil-
dren's imaginativeworlds, respondingby becoming ill from the
dirty objects in their beds, beatingtheir childrento excess, view-
ing the children's activities as diabolic and in one case starving
them to death to drive out the Devil. Their participationin the
fantasysuggeststhat the childrenmay have been expressingsome
of the parents' own unacknowledgedconfusions, ambivalences
and hostilities.In the short run, recognitionof the separatenature
of childhood, we might say, opened up a space for negative
projective self-recognition. Parents saw their own dilemmas in
their childrenwithout recognizingthem as such, and reacted by
being unable to continue to care for their children.
This shift had its correlative in a fascinationwith children's
64 Lyndal Roper, 'Angst und Aggression. Hexenbeschuldigungen und Mutterschaft
in fruhneuzeitlichen Augsburg', Sozui. SozialzvissenschaftlicheI^lfornlationen,xxi
(June 1992).
 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER167
128
bodies. Parents inspected their children'sbodies to
truth. So one nine-year-old girl was found to be uncover the
covered in
bruises she received when the Devil beat her.
Other parents
uncoveredthe diabolicmarkson their children'ssexual
like the parents of the children who played the parts, or,
Jesus and Mary
game, found tell-tale scars. One mother claimed
that she had
seen 'with her own eyes two smallbrownmarkson
her daughter's
genitals;and that she was formed like a woman who
had lived in
marriagefor some years'.65She had been initially
have her child inspected because she could not reluctant to
believe that chil-
dren of this age her daughterwas about nine
years old at the
time-could have sex but had submitted to the orders of
confessorthat the child should be investigated.66 her
Instead of the
customaryphysical inspection of the female witch,
by the executioner,the bodies of childrenwere undertaken
being scrutinized
by parents. Later, on the council'sorders, the girl
underwentan
inspectionby midwives to see whether she had
indeed been
debauchedby the Devil. She was found to be a virgin,
girlherself testified that 'the sign had been but the
pressed into her by
theEvil One, but it hadn't hurt her. He reached
with his hands
or claws inside her body, and this gave her
pleasure, and he
committedindecency with her'. It was noted that 'she
to be questioned further about the corruption was not
of the body in
ordernot to give her ideas'.67She and another
girl who also
claimed to have had diabolicintercourseand to have been
inthe lower part of her body by the Devil were 'tickled'
inspected by a
surgeonand vicario, who found nothing 'contraryto
This interest in children'sbodies was not entirelynature'.68
isa similar lively interest in the physical new: there
symptoms of child
victimsof witchcraft throughout the seventeenth
thisparticularinterest in children'sbodies is century. But
characterizedby an
especialconcern with children'ssexuality as somethingwhich
connectedwith the Devil in an actual rather than a is
manner. symbolic
Physical inspections of adult witches were designed to
65 SSBAugs, Cod. Aug. 289, p. 89.
66 Ibid.
67 'das Zeichen habe ihr der
bose feind hineingedruckt, so ihr nicht weh
ihr
mit seinen handen oder Klauen an dem Leib gethan, it.
und hineingelangt, so ihr wohl gethan,
Unzucht mit ihr getriben. Wegen der Corruption des
erst Leibes ist sie, um ihr nicht
Nachdencken zu machen, nicht befragt worden': ibid., pp.
68 'Widernaturlich':ibid., p.
91-2.
102; tickling: p. 92. But in this case, Weng
mothershould be gaoled for twenty-four hours for false thought the
accusation: p. 105.
 CHILD-WITCHES
AND THE END OF THE WITCHCRAZE 129
uncover the Devil's mark, which could be on any part of the
body: here, by contrast, the inspection was to find out whether
diabolicintercoursehad occurred.(Suchinspectionscarrystrange
echoes of more recent investigationsin cases of sexual abuse
but in this case there is no evidence for the historianthat sexual
abuse had occurred.) For Protestant sceptics, once it had been
determinedthat the child was physicallyintact, the child's stories
became fantasies not to be encouragedby further questioning.
Both sides relied on a physical examinationto settle the matter.
But when the physical examinationhad 'disproved'their claims
to be his paramours,the childrenimmediatelyproducedelaborate
stories about how the Devil had stamped them with his mark.
The progress of the case was forcing parents and authoritiesto
ponder the natureof the fantasieson which the childreninsisted
so vigorously.
Not surprisingly, the authorities soon became interested not
only in children'sbodies and their fantasiesbut in masturbation.
The prison warders reported that Juliane Trichtler and Anna
Regina Gruber were committing indecency with each other by
means of a sheet. By the time Gruberwas interrogated,she had
converted this into a partiallydiabolic narrative,confessing that
she had 'committed indecency . .. with the Devil as well, and
both of them already had committed this indecency while in
irons'. She blamed the Devil and the seamstressas the ones who
had led her astray. Gruber was considered to be 'incorrigible',
and was reported to be corruptinganothergirl. In consequence,
the council'sdeputies recommendedthat she should be separated
from the other children,removed from the hospitaland returned
to solitary confinement in the irons.69Joseph Betz and Franz
Anthoni Ludwig were found to 'have been milking themselves,
and committing indecency'; or as Ludwig put it, 'pressing one
another like the dogs, when they are on heat'.70It was recom-
mended that these 'indisciplinedincorrigiblechildren', boys and
girls, 'were to be separated,beaten painfullywith rods, and put
69 'Incorrigible';
'zu obgedachterUnzuchtverleitet':ibid., pp. 174, 175.At firstshe
had been punishedby being smackedon her handsand admonishedby the priest,
but this had not helpedand she had continuedto masturbate:p. 172. The council
determinedthatall the masturbating childrenshouldbe punished(castigiert) andthat
Grubershouldbe separatedfromthe otherchildren.
70 'an ihnenselbstgemolken,und Unzuchtgetriben':ibid., pp. 174, 177;they had
'einanderunzuchtiggemolken,und wie Ludwiggesagt,an einandergedruckt,wie
die hund,wan sie lauffigsind':p. 177. Two otherboys were alsoinvolved.
 130 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER167
on a fourteen-daydiet of breadand water every other day'.7l On
considerationin council, the beating of Gruberwas suspended;
but the 'worst' childrenwere still to be separatedfrom the others
and, if there was no room in the hospital, to be returnedto the
prison.72The councilwas also worriedaboutthe sleepingpatterns
of the childrenin the hospital.At first, the deputies thought they
should not be allowed to sleep duringthe night, becausethis was
when the Devil was most likely to attack the children and take
them out on night flights while they slept; instead, they should
sleep during the day. However, the new council deputies argued
that their sleep patterns should not be inverted in this way,
because 'the childrenbecome very fatiguedin body and spirit as
a result, and are strengthenedin their fantasies'.73
By April 1726 the warders were reporting that almost all of
the childrenshowedimprovement,and could be let out of custody
altogether. But amongst those who were still being pestered by
the Devil were all those accusedof masturbation.74 The boundar-
ies between fact and fantasywere becomingever harderto draw.
It was reported that many of the children were still flying to
sabbaths,but when three of the girls were reportedto have told
storiesabout flying to a 'beautifulgreen square'at night at table
while the warder watched, it was thought they were only con-
fessingto these 'foolish and absurdthings' in order to cast doubt
on all their other confessions, in particular,their admissionthat
theyhad harmedthe warderby means of a diabolicpowder. But
the diabolic powder had been acquired on a visit to a sabbath.
71'man solle dise unzuchtige incorrigible Kinder separieren, mit Ruthen
wohlempfindlich zuchtigen und 14. Tag alternis diebus mit Wasser und brod
speissen':ibid.
72 The 'schlimmsten' children; guards should 'ihre
Schuldigkeit beobachten':
ibid.,p. 178.
73Ibid., p. 179: 'die Kinder hierdurch am Leib und Gemuth sehr fatigiert, und in
ihrenPhantasien gestarckt werden'. The different views of the new deputies (as ever,
oneCatholic, one Protestant) became a confessional issue, with the Catholic jurists
incliningto the view of the old deputies that the children should not sleep at night
indeed,the outgoing deputies claimed this had been the children's own request because
theyfeared the Devil's nocturnal assaults while the Protestants agreed with the
adviceof the new deputies. The Catholics prevailed.
74The exception among the group of seven masturbating children was Juliana
Trichtler,who was pronounced fully improved. Eight children were in the group of
thosestill seeing the Devil (six of them named as having masturbated);but even these
eightchildren were resisting his blandishments, refusing to go on sabbaths and calling
onthe name of Jesus and making the sign of the cross whenever the Devil appeared:
ibid.,p. 184. David Kopf and Gottfried Betz, who were kept in prison apart from the
otherchildren, showed no improvement.
 CHILD-WITCHES
AND THE END OF THE WITCHCRAZE 131
Even when they were supposedly recovered, some children still
spoke of flying to sabbaths,of flying naked and of sabbathsfull
of naked people yet the warders knew they remained in the
room, and, indeed, the whole point of keeping them awake at
night was to prevent them flying to sabbaths.75How, then, could
one distinguishbetween real reportsof the sabbathand stories?76
The council now received from the wardersregularreportson
the children's masturbatoryactivities and their alleged night
flights. The witch-hunt had increasinglybecome focused on the
activity of masturbation,which was linked with the production
of the diabolic fantasies. Ludwig, Steingruber, Gruber and
Fischer, all guilty of masturbation,remainedthe last of the evil
children, 'persisting in their old wicked life'.77Once again, the
council thought that reducing their food intake would dampen
their sexual desires, and the council's deputies advised that they
should be 'broughtto recovery by putting them on a diet of such
poor food that they hardly have enough to live'.78But by then
the advice of the legal faculty of Heidelbergarrived,assuringthe
council that 'not all the acts and pleasuresof these unfortunate
people consist in reality, but often in illusions, fantasies and
dreams'.79As had been suggested by other Augsburg officials
before, healingthem was a matterof 'by degreesgraduallydraw-
ing their imaginationsand fantasiesfrom their minds, and leading
them by contrast to a true fear of God'.80This was the course
finallysettledupon by the council,using a combinationof beatings
for godlessness, incarcerationin the hospital and later at home,
and detailed spiritual supervision. Finally, the children were
released, and in line with its responsibilityof care, the council
appointedspiritualadvisers,admonishedthe parentsto raisetheir
childrenin a God-fearingfashionwith regularattendanceat mass

75 One childsaidthe Devil madeanotherbodyfor him, whichstayedin the room:

ibid.,pp. 187-8.
76 Ibid.,p. 181. Two of the threegirlshadbeen guiltyof masturbation.
77 'im altenLuderleben verharrende[Kinder]':ibid.,p. 188.
78'durchso schlechtekost, dass sie kaum zulebenhaben ... [illegible]tenzur
besserunggebrachtwerden':ibid.
79 'nichtalleactusundfreudendiserungluckseeligen Leuthenin derrealitesondern
in illusionen,phantasienund Traumenvilmahlenbestehen':ibid.,p. 189.
80 The suggestion of the Baumeister:'ihnennachund nachihrebose Einbildungen
und Phantasienaus dem Sinn [zu] bringen, und sie hergegenzu aller wahren
Gottesforchtan[zu]fuhren':ibid.,p. 121. GottfriedBetz and David Kopf were the
lastchildrento be let out. All the childrenwereto be givenspiritualadviceandtheir
spiritualdevelopmentwas to be monitored.The boys were to be taughttrades.
132 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER 167

and provided certificatesthat the children were 'witch-free' so

that they could gain positions as apprentices.

IV
The story of the Augsburg diabolic children and their release
forms part of the more sombre early history of what is often
taken to be the enlightened,secular,progressiveinterest in chil-
dren as separatefrom parents,and in their imaginativeworlds.82
Hugh Cunningham, aptly summarizing current views of this
transition in the history of childhood, argues that 'the key to
these changesis the long-termsecularizationof attitudesto child-
hood and children'.83As J. H. Plumb has describedthis develop-
ment for eighteenth-centuryEnglandin a ground-breakingessay,
there is but one shadow in this optimistic, light-Slled picture of
eighteenth-centuryattitudes towards children, and that is the
increasingly repressive interest in masturbation.84There were
certainly many developments which led to a new interest in
children and an understandingof childhood as a separatestate;
but in Germanythese cannot simply be attributedto seculariza-
tion. Children were crucial to the Pietist project, a movement
just beginningto gain groundin Augsburgwith the arrivalof the
charismaticfigure of SamuelUrlspergerin 1723; and it had been
around the newly establishedPoor Children'sHouse that early
AugsburgPietist devotionalactivity had first centred at the turn
of the century;85while Jesuit pedagogy, with its use of theatre
81 Ibid., pp. 210-19; and the councildiscussedthat the last two godlesschildren,
BetzandKopf,shouldbe taughta trade:Stadtarchiv Augsburg,Reichsstadt,Ratsbuch
1728,20 Apr. 1728,p. 300. Betz was, however,refusedcitizenship:Ratsbuch1729,
30 Apr. 1729,p. 322.
82 On late eighteenth-century attitudesto childrenand schooling,see Karl A.
Schleunes,Schooling and Society: The Politics of Education in Prussia and Bavaria,
1750-1900 (Oxford,1989);Jamesvan Horn Melton,Absolutismand the Eighteenth-
CenturyOriginsof CompulsorySchoolingin Prussia and Austria (Cambridge,1988).
83 HughCunningham, Childrenand Childhoodin WesternSocietysince1500 (London,
1995),61. He alsoallowsthatthe declinein the beliefin originalsin wasgradual,and
thatChristianity continuedto be important.
84 J. H. Plumb,'The New Worldof Children', in Neil McKendrick,JohnBrewer
and J. H. Plumb(eds.), The Birth of a ConsumerSociety: The Commercializationof
Eighteenth-CenturyEngland(London,1982),312.
85 Baier, 'Die evangelische Kirche', 524; Melton,Absolutismand the Eighteenth-
CenturyOriginsof CompulsorySchooling,esp. 24-50. The samewas trueof Francke's
initialproject,his schoolin Halleof 1695for poorchildrenandbeggars;andFrancke
visited Augsburg,holding catechismclassesin the Armenkinderhaus. On Pietist
pedagogy,see HartmutLehmann,CDieKinder Gottes in der Welt', in Martin
Greschat(ed.), Zur neuerenPietismusforschung (Darmstadt,1977).
 CHILD-WITCHES
AND THE END OF THE WITCHCRAZE 133
and exploitation of popular culture, had long operated with a
shrewd sense of how to communicate with children and the
unlettered.86
The interestin these particularchildrenin Augsburg,however,
stemmed from a conviction of childish evil, not of innocence.
Concernwith their masturbationwas not an 'offset cost' of the
new tolerant attitude towards the child but intrinsic to the pre-
occupationwith childrenand fantasy.This concernis often taken
to be a late eighteenth-centurydevelopmentin Germany:Isabel
Hull argues that the literarydebate on masturbationin German
did not fully unfold until the 1780s, when it linked the themes
of childhood, excess and imagination.87There were of course
earlier eighteenth-centurypublicationsagainst onanism: Onania
in the first decadeof the eighteenthcentury,publishedin German
in 1736, the even more famous work of Tissot in 1758, or of his
German counterpartGeorg Sarganeck,who in 1740 wrote the
first majorpublicationin Germanon masturbation.88
But strictures against masturbationhad not been unknown
before the eighteenth century. As Karl Braun has shown, there
was some discussion of the 'dumb sin' amongst Calvinist and
Pietiest writers. Interestingly,the issue occasionallyarose in con-
nection with witchcraft. Demonologists warned that the Devil
might steal the seed of those who practisedthe sin, to use in his
incubus form in sexual relationswith witches.89Because the sin
86 Melton,Absolutismand the Eighteenth-CenturyOrigins of CompulsorySchooling,
64, 68.
87 IsabelV. Hull, Sexuality, State and Civil Society in Germany,1700-1815 (Ithaca,
NY, 1996).
88 Samuel-Andre Tissot'sfamousOnania wasfirstpublishedin 1758,andnot trans-
latedinto Germanuntil 1785 However,therewas a seventeenth-century literature
whichdiscussedthe sin of masturbation; and KarlBraunshowsthat a concernwith
masturbation was typicalof Pietistsin Germany.Amongthe writerswhoseworkson
masturbation were influentialwere the Swiss CalvinistJohannFriedrichOsterwald
(Traite'contrel'impurete'(Amsterdam,1707;Germanedn 1717), the compilerof the
EnglishworkOnania (1710?;firstextantcopy from4th edn, 1717;firstGermanedn
1736)andthe SaxonPietistChristianGerber,who wrote UnerkannteSundender Welt
(1692),in which,however,the sin of Onanmeanscoitusinterruptus.SeeKarlBraun,
Die Krankheit Onania. Korperangst und die Anfange xnodernerSexualita't im 18.
3:ahrhundert(Frankfurt,1996).
89 See,for example,JeanBodin,De la demonomanie
dessorciers(Paris,1580),fo. 108r
on thosewho give theirseed to Moloch;while, as Braunnotes,JohannEllingerin a
treatise on witchcraft similarly says that the Devil often stole the seed of
'SamenflussigenLeuten / dessgleichenvon stummenSundernund Weichlingen',
quotedin Braun,Die Krankheit Onania, 159;JohannesEllinger,HexenCoppelI Das
ist Vhralte Ankuntft vnd grosse Zunfft Der Vnholdseligen Vnholden oder Hexen
(Frankfurt,1629),47.
134 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER167
of witchcraftwas itself necessarilya sexual sin witches had to
have intercoursewith the Devil-the subject inherentlyraised
the issue of the connection between the power of the imagina-
tion and sexuality, the issue which also lay at the heart of the
eighteenth-centuryconcern about masturbation.
And yet there is an importantdifferencein emphasisbetween
the condemnationof masturbationwithin demonology and the
later discussionswhich moved beyond the demonologicalframe-
work. Writers such as Johann Ellinger link those guilty of the
dumb sin with the Devil, and argue that their sexual practices
supply the Devil with seed: here, the moral point is made, but
the author is more interested in the role semen plays in the
diaboliceconomy of seed collectionand distribution.And writers
like Georg Spizel could warn in 1687 that 'as soon as the
Whoredom-Devilhas creptinside . . . the Evil One often disguises
himself in the shape of the desired person and appears before
them, inciting them to unseemly things, and makes them one of
his fellows through damnableintercourse(Unzucht)'.90Here, it
is the individual's fixation on the desired person which then
allows the Devil to appearthrough illusion; but the relationship
is real (and, we might note, heterosexual), as are the diabolic
consequences.The 'fantasy'is just a tool of the Devil by which
he tricks us into committing real sin. We are still in the grip of
the witch-hunt. By contrast,Georg Sarganeckin the 1740s could
speak straightforwardlyof 'imagination'and 'fantasy'as what lay
behind masturbation.In this kind of writing, the prime focus of
concern is moving towardsthe actualactivitiesof the individual,
their fantasiesand the nature of their sexuality, and away from
the activitiesof the Devil. Even for those who no longer believed
in witchcraft, the Devil could remain the ultimate source of
wicked fantasy, but it was the mental world and the physical
actions of the sinner that increasinglycommandedattention. It
might be interestingto speculateabout the role played by witch-
craft literature always astute on the role and function of the
imagination in this transition.In their last phase of crisis and
dissolution, witchcraft beliefs provided a major stimulus for an
interest in fantasy and the world of the child, just as throughout
their history they had provided a forum for an interest in the
imaginationand in sexual pleasure.

90Spizel, Die GebrochneMacht, 45.

 CHILD-WITCHES AND THE END OF THE WITCH CRAZE 135

In Augsburgit was not just the councillorsand the jurists whose

growing scepticismabout witchcraftled them to develop the case
againstthe childrenin new directions.Catholicparentscontinued
to deploy the old-establishedremediesagainstthe diabolic,bless-
ing their children,using protectivescapulas,and even in one case
lacing their children'sfood with St Philip's water; but these did
not work. When parentsfailed to get the seamstressexecuted, a
deed fervent believers in witchcraftwould have expected to end
their troubles, they were faced with having to deal with their
'incorrigiblechildren'. After all, no witch had been executed in
Augsburgsince 1699;and even a case of 1701, broughtby power-
ful merchantparents,had ended with the acquittalof the witch.9l
The involvement of large numbers of children and the focus on
the contentof theirfantasiestook the materialof the witch fantasy
into new realms-the objects in the parents' beds, the sexual
gamesof childhood and confrontedthe children'sparentswith
the problemsof bringingchildrenup, dilemmaswhich could not
crediblybe blamedon the witch. Some parentsbecameconvinced
that their children were no longer infected with witchcraft:for
instance,JohannesWilhelm Kuttler tried to get the council to let
his son Franz Joseph out of custody and requested a certificate
from the council that his son was 'witch-free'. The boy had been
told he could not take up a prestigious apprenticeshipwith a
clockmakerin nearbyFriedbergbecauseof the witchcraftallega-
tion. Convinced his son was no witch, Kuttler apparentlysaid,
9lIn 1699 ChristinaHaberhad been freed after havingbeen accusedof killing
babiesandnewlydeliveredmothers.Sheworkedas a 'lying-inmaid'(Kindbetthellerin)
andcamefromthenearbyvillageof Lechhausen.Thiscasefollowedthe classicpattern
broughtagainstolderruralwomenwhoworkedas lying-inmaidswhen
of accusations
mothersand babiesdied in childbed:StadtarchivAugsburg,Reichsstadt,Strafbuch
des Rats 1654-1699,12 Dec. 1699,p. 725. ElisabethaMemminger,accusedaboutthe
sametime, was not so lucky:she diedin prisonandher bodyunderwentthe dishon-
ouringritualsof execution,carriedpubliclythroughthe streetson the 'shamecart'
andburiedunderthe gallowssinceit was thoughttherewas sufficientproofthatshe
was a witch:ibid.,pp. 722-3. In the 1701case,a younggirl had been bewitchedto
death.The accused,probablyan old womanat the time of the case, who was cited
together with her daughter,died shortly after in 1703: StadtarchivAugsburg,
Steuerbucher1703, fo. 89a. The man who broughtthe case, AndreasHuber, was
describedas a 'Speceryhandelsherr' and he paid 10 guldentax in 1700-2, a not
inconsiderablesum:Steuerbucher1700,fo. 86b, 1702,fo. 85c; but even so, for him
these must have been hard times, for he had paid as much as 60 guldenin 1699:
Steuerbuch1699, fo. 86b. For the case, see Urgichtensammlung 1701 b 3, 6 Aug.
1701;VerbrecherBuch 1700-1806,fo. 31, 20 Aug. 1701.
 136 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER167
'he knew from experience, that such childrenoften confess more
than is true because of their incomprehension'.92By April 1725
some parentswere petitioningto be allowedto take their children
back as cured: this time the council refused.93And when the
other parentswere finallytold that they had to take their children
back again, they had to live with children who had lost their
families for some of the key years of their growing up; and who
had finally come to learn - or persuade the council they
accepted that their troubles were caused not by a witch but
by their own 'evil imaginingsand fantasies'.94
In the old fantasticeconomy of witchcraft,witchcraftaccusa-
tions formed a way of dealingwith unbearableillness and death,
particularlythe deaths of young children and babies; and their
prime targetsoften tendedto be older women. As manyhistorians
have noted, this is also reflectedin numerousfeaturesof the stuff
of the accusations.Milk, blood, causing harm through food and
drink, midwivesand caulsmakeregularappearancesin witchcraft
accusations;and a significantgroup of accusationsagainst older

92 SSBAugs.,Cod. Aug. 289, pp. 154, 169: 'Er es aus

der Erfahrungwisse, dass
dergleichenKinderausUnverstandmehrbekennenals wahrseye'. Whenthe council
did not supplysucha certificate,Kuttlergot one fromthe priestat Pfersee,a village
nearAugsburg.The wholeKuttlerfamilyhadbeen caughtup in the allegationsin a
majorway: Kuttler'sthree sons and one daughterall confessedto involvementin
witchcraftandwere takeninto custody;so Kuttler'sscepticismmarkeda significant
shift.Kuttlerpetitionedagainin Feb. 1726:p. 182. Similarly,whenthe councilcame
to takeJosephReischle,agedten or elevenin 1725,intocustody,his motherinformed
themthathe was in Anconain Italy.This boy hadalsoconfessedto beingone of the
godlesschildrenbackin 1723,but had addedthat he was now free of the evil. He
hadbeen listed by the Catholicjuristsas one of those who shouldbe taken into
custody,andby the Protestantsas one who shouldbe whipped.It seemslikelythat
hismotherhad madesure the boy was out of reachof the council'sjustice a far
cryfromthe hard-lineattitudeof someparentsconvincedof the realityof witchcraft
atthe startof the panic:pp. 56, 161, 170.
93 Ibid., 21 Apr. 1725,p. 175:the matterhad to awaitthe
arrivalof the opinionof
theHeidelberglaw faculty.
94 Ibid., pp. 195, 199. Only the Kuen family and the
guardiansof JulianaKopf
refusedto take their supposedlycuredchildrenback, the Kuens simplyfailingto
appearafterhavingaskedto be excused;the Kopf guardians,becausethey already
hadmanychildrenthemselves.When the childrenwere returnedto their parents,
theywere meantto be kept understrictsupervisionand periodsof confinementat
home;but,contraryto thecouncil'sinstructions, manyparentsin factlet theirchildren
evenleavetown,a factwhichsuggeststhey no longertook the matterveryseriously:
p.208. However,in 1728two new accusations weremadeagainstsupposedlydiabolic
children by theirmothers,andthe by now standardprocedureswerecarriedout with
questioning, beatings,confiningthe childrenin the hospitaland arrangingspiritual
supervisionfor them. These childrenwere freed in 1730. See also Stadtarchiv
Augsburg, Reichsstadt,Ratsbuch33, 31 May1729;Ratsbuch34, 23 Feb. 1730,p. 27.
 CHILD-WITCHES AND THE END OF THE WITCH CRAZE 137

women arose during the period of lying-in after a mother had

given birth, when motheror child failed to thrive.95The character
of such accusations, which were directed against older women
who were involved in caring for mother or child in some way,
was vicious in the extreme, sendingolder women to interrogation,
torture and death. Their force and power suggest that deep
ambivalentfeelings about motherhoodwere unleashedin them.
Where did such feelings and fantasies come from) In witch-
hunts people resorted to strongly polarized views of good and
evil. They engaged in the kind of splitting which, if we follow
MelanieKlein, also characterizesthe early psychic experienceof
infants, as they cope with the inexplicableabsencesof the breast,
comfortand feeding, and experiencepowerfulambivalence,even
hostility, towards their mothers.96As these feelings reach their
height in the oral phase, the infant wants to attack and bite the
mother. Witch-hunts reawakenedin adults feelings of this kind
of disorientationand hostility towards mothers and offered a
culturallyacceptableway of giving expression to such hatreds.
But once belief in such figures as the explanationof illness and
death had begun to wane, the stuff of these primitiveoral sadistic
attacksreturned, this time to batten on childhooditself.97
The parents and step-parents of the diabolic children were
unable to merge themselves with the suffering victims of witch-
craft by blaming a mother figure and securing her execution. In
any case, they were confrontingchildren whose behaviourthey
found intolerable, and with whom they simply could not cope.
Parents, step-parentsand children confronted the sexual games
of infancy the hostility to parents expressed through putting
excrement in their beds, the oral and anal sadism and both
95 See Roper, Oedipusand the Devil; and for interpretationswhich also stress similar
themes, Deborah Willis, Malevolent Nurture: Witch-Huntingand Maternal Pozverin
Early ModernEngland(Ithaca, NY, 1995); Diane Purkiss, The Witchin History: Early
Modern and Twentieth-CenturyRepresentations(London, 1996); Evelyn Heinemann,
Hexen und Hexenangst.Eine psychoanalytischeStudie uber den Hexenwahnder fruhen
Neuzeit (Frankfurt am Main, 1986).
96 Here I am drawing on the work of Melanie Klein. See, in particular, The Psycho-
analysis of Children, trans. Alix Strachey, rev. H. A. Thorner with Alix Strachey
(London, 1932), 1975; Envy and Gratitudeand Other Works,1946-63 (London, 1975);
and on Frances Tustin, Autistic States in Children(London, 1981, rev. 1992).
97 It thus took place before the development of children's literature in the mid-
eighteenth century. On reading in the second half of the eighteenth century and
masturbation, see the provocative argument of Rudiger Steinlein, Die domestizierte
Phantasie. Studienzur Kinderliteratur,KinderlektureundLiteraturpadagogik des 18. und
frlxhen19. ffahrhunderts(Probleme der Dichtung, xviii, Heidelberg, 1987), 49.
 138 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER167
sides, adultsand children,seem to have felt the attackswere real,
whether caused by the 'diabolic' children themselves or by a
witch. But the old symbolic structureof witchcraftwas starting
to crumble,and this was partlywhy the materialof this case was
so poorly symbolized, the latent content of the fantasies sex
and excrement barelydisguisedat all. The elaboratedemonol-
ogical science which had converted such powerful hatred of the
mother into mythic form, taking it out of the realm of real
motherlyrelationsand translatingit into the languageof witches,
sabbaths and diabolic hierarchies, was losing credibility. And
when the children drew on the repertoireof witch beliefs, they
formed their own childish versions, telling of devils who came
down the chimney on a donkey, who told them not to obey their
parentsand who instructedthem to drop their trousersand kiss
each other's shamefulparts. What had alwaysbeen the source of
all witchcraftfantasies the fears and obsessionswhich spring
from childhood-emerged in more direct, and therefore more
troubling, fashion.
The shift of focus of attention onto the child away from the
motherfigurealso broughtwith it an interestin children'simagin-
ative worlds, and in play. For the gradualdisintegrationof the
belief in witchcraftalso entailedredrawingthe boundarybetween
the realm of fantasy and the realm of reality. Play is about the
intersectionbetween these two worlds.98What went on in chil-
dren'sheads what they imaginedas they played, what fantasies
surroundedtheir sexual games-became an object of parental
concern. This transitionwas only partial,for at the same time as
Weng was convinced he was dealingwith childish imaginings
none the less wicked for that other parents were equally
passionatelypersuadedof the Devil's realactivity,their children's
diabolicactivity or the mysterious seamstress'sguilt. However,
even the jurisconsultbelieved that the Devil was at work in the
case. The children's'fantasies'on the whole accordedwith what
was culturally known about the Devil and witchcraft,99and so
they could not be dismissed out of hand. This meant that their
interrogationentailed redrawing the line between fantasy and
acceptedcultural reality; and this was partly why the process
98 See, in particular, Donald W. Winnicott, Playing and
Reality (London, 1971).
99There were some wonderful exceptions, carefully noted by Weng: one child
insistedhis Devil was called Jesus; another claimed that the Devil had boiled him in
oil;while one child said the Devil had come down the chimney on a donkey.
 AND THE END OF THE WITCHCRAZE
CHILD-WITCHES 139
took so long. The interconnectednessof ideas about evil with
ideas about witchcraft meant that once women were no longer
being put to death for witchcraft, the boundariesseparatingthe
real, the supernaturaland the imaginarywere themselves called
into question. Parents, too, had to accept that the 'witch' would
not be executed, and learn to live with their godless children.
Increasingly,the interrogationsand trial proceedingscentred on
a concern not only with witchcraft, but with child masturbation
and child fantasy.
* * *

Witchcraft,we might say, was always in the nursery, indeed, in

the nursing bond itself, in the sense that it was nourished by
infantile fantasiesand fears about the maternalrelationship.But
in the final stages of the witch panic, the death of the old woman
as a credible witch led to a brief moment in which the fears and
fantasiesof childrenthemselves the psychic sourceof the witch
terroramongadults emergedin pretty much unmediatedform.
Beforewitchcraftwas finallyconsignedto the nursery,it paradox-
ically helped to give birth to an ambivalent fascination with
children, their games and their fantasies.

Royal Hollozvay,London LyndalRoper