German street paper, Apropos, delves into what really happened 340 years ago in Salzburg
By the end of the story of the sorcerer Jackl, 167 people had died. But nobody ever found Jackl. And yet he, the 20-year-old Jakob Koller, was the reason why the worst pogrom against sorcerers and witches in Salzburg’s entire history ever got underway. In truth, of course, it was no coincidence the wave of persecution became a bloody campaign against beggars and other people on the margins of society, driven by zealous court officials, sanctioned by the archbishop, and fed by a populace riddled with superstition and apocalyptic pessimism, looking for people to blame.
The avalanche began with Barbara Koller, Jakob’s mother. She worked in the animal slaughter trade in the Werfen area, near Salzburg, and was thus seen as belonging to a social group which aroused the contempt of the general population. In 1675, after the theft from a church in Golling of the offertory box, she was arrested on suspicion of witchcraft. Under torture, she admitted to being a witch and was executed in Salzburg. Her son disappeared and became a local legend, mainly because no one was able to find him, despite the fact that the authorities increased the reward for his capture several times.
It was alleged that Jackl had created a “blood brotherhood” of child beggars who protected him. Other yarns were spun around diabolical baptism rituals, Jackl turning himself into a wolf, or being able to turn blocks of wood into mice. Others routinely put witches’ sabbaths and desecrations of church artifacts on their charge sheets against alleged witches and sorcerers, and accusations of ruining harvests, causing extreme weather events or wildfires, or even making animals miscarry were made almost as a matter of course.
“Did you know the sorcerer Jackl?” was always, with good reason, the first question asked by Sebastian Ziller, who was both prosecutor and judge in the Salzburg Trials. Thereafter followed the use of torture, which people were convinced was a method of driving the devil out of the accused and getting them to speak the honest truth.
Some people who were accused did manage to free themselves by not confessing to anything, despite extreme torture. This was seen as an indication that they weren’t possessed by or in league with the devil. Their pain must have been indescribable. It should come as no surprise that most people accused gave their interrogators what they wanted as soon as they saw the instruments of torture. It limited the length of their ordeal.
Torture, witch hunts and pogroms weren’t at all uncommon in Europe right up until the early part of the 18th century, both in Catholic and Protestant communities. They were more frequent in geographically smaller regions such as Salzburg than they were in the larger principalities and more likely to occur in times of economic crisis than prosperity. It’s striking that the majority of people who lost their lives were young males, half of them still only in their teens.
However, in common with other pogroms across the entire continent, it was disproportionately often the case that those who met their deaths were people without means – those classed as vagrants or beggars. It was precisely this group of people that others wanted rid of. The authorities wanted to legitimize their own power, and the populace wanted to extinguish these irksome “parasites” who served as living proof of declining material standards.
Fritz Messner, the brains behind Die Lungauer Querschläger (The Ricochets of Lungau, a cult-folk band from the Lungau region near Salzburg) joined forces with the Mokrit Theatre Company back in 2004 to address the social problems of this period. The Beggar’s Wedding deals with precisely that group of impoverished young people who were forced out to the margins of society after the economic crisis and collapse of silver mining that followed the Thirty Years’ War.
“As such, they were an irritation to the authorities, because the increasing emergence of beggars was proof to everyone that times were bad, and that maybe the people in charge weren’t doing such a great job,” says Messner, summing up the social background to the Jackl trials.
Messner has written a song dedicated to “the Sorcerer Jaggl” which shows clearly how the Jackl story has embedded itself in the collective folk memory of this mountain region. Jackl continues to be present in the folk tales told in the Lungau region, though mostly as a “good spirit” or ghost who arouses sympathy for the fate of those who suffered alongside him.
“Jaggl has become the comforter for the despairing, the poor, the wrongly-accused,” Messner explains. “He’s a kind of patron saint of outsiders who have lost all hope.”
Right now, up at Hohenwerfen Castle, there is a fascinating new exhibition dedicated to the Jackl myth and the so-called “witches and sorcerers of Salzburg.” It’s been running since 2020 and soon became a magnet for visitors.
“On a total of four levels of this historic armory, visitors can immerse themselves in the world of witches and sorcerers,” the press release states. “The exhibition fascinates and captivates with authentic and sometimes disturbing exhibits, multimedia installations and fantastical characters.”
And as a special treat, a “life-like” Barbara Koller explains to visitors “how individuals like her were suspected of being witches, then persecuted and locked away for it.” The language used to market this exhibition gives one the impression that this may be a lurid retelling of disturbing historical events. The exhibition itself is a little bit more sensitive with regard to the events of the time.
And yet it does give one pause: the witch trials and the pogrom against beggars – presented as a spooky exhibition for all the family? It makes you stop and think. Can we – and should we – approach crimes like this in such a way, when 340 years have all but extinguished the shock and horror from all the suffering endured from those who were persecuted? Will the Holocaust be suitable for the Disneyworld treatment by the year 2300?
If you want to understand in more detail the rather delicate topic of these witchcraft trials, which targeted children and youth, there is plenty of material out there to sink your teeth into. This is primarily thanks to Heinz Nagl, who published his dissertation in 1966 and drew on every document and every item of correspondence from the time that was related to these events.
Everything that has been published since then, whether academic or artistic, has been developed from the seed sown in this single piece of research. For example, the playwright Felix Mitterer writes in his autobiography that it wasn’t until Nagl published his work that he was able to write his own play The Devil’s Children.
These days the only aspect of Nagl’s work that is disputed is his judgement of the role of the archbishop. This itself is bound up with the question regarding the extent to which the pogroms were specifically targeted against beggars and planned and initiated from the very top. Salzburg journalist and non-fiction author Wolfgang Fürweger argues, in his 2015 book Verbrannte Kindheit (“Burnt Childhood”) – a book that is accessible even to non-historians – that this was indeed the case. Heinz Nagl disagrees: the prosecutors were concerned exclusively with witchcraft and sorcery. The fact that the people executed were all beggars, and all young people, is purely the fault of one person: Jakob Koller, the “Sorcerer Jackl.”
It’s an academic debate and, as Fürweger correctly points out, a cynical one at that. As far as the 167 people who were executed, and the even greater number of people who suffered imprisonment and torture were concerned, it made no difference whether or not they were tortured and killed for being beggars or because they were indeed considered to be sorcerers and witches in league with the forces of evil. Their deaths were, as he states, “cruel and unnecessary.”
Does this case still have implications for us today, we might wonder? After all, we are living in a time when beggars are once again sat on the streets of Salzburg, and the times, they say, are once again becoming harsher and more unstable, with a worsening economy.
Translated from German by Peter Bone
Courtesy of Apropos / INSP.ngo
Street Roots is an award-winning weekly publication focusing on economic, environmental and social justice issues. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
