The Last Witch of Langenberg: Murder in a German Village (review)

At its core, this book tells the story of Anna Schmieg, accused, tried, and (spoiler alert) executed for witchcraft in the south-central German state of Hohenlohe in 1672. Thomas Robisheaux skillfully brings to life the circumstances of her initial arrest for the fatal poisoning of a young mother, Anna Fessler, and over the course of nineteen chapters unveils ever more about the central individuals and relationships in question, seeking to solve the mystery of Fessler's death and the culpability of Schmieg. Proceeding in the chronological order of the official investigation, we encounter Schmieg's immediate family members and neighbors, as well as a determined but fair-minded governmental investigator, an impassioned young preacher, a skeptical medical examiner, and a host of other vivid characters. In each instance, Robisheaux relies heavily on extensive archival material and first-hand testimony, while unobtrusively weaving in a wealth of background information on the social, economic, intellectual, and cultural contexts.

Beyond its artful spinning of a riveting tale, The Last Witch of Langenberg succeeds in conveying to a broad readership three key components of the early modern witch craze. The most familiar of these is the collection of popular and learned beliefs about the devil and witches current in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century German lands—a range of ideas and images much too incoherent and inconsistent to merit the designation of a "system of beliefs," much less an ideology. Virtually every reader will already have some awareness of the greatest hits—the diabolical pact, the witches' orgy, imps and other familiars—but Robisheaux provides fuller contours of such notions and importantly stresses the diversity and flexibility of such ideas over time and space (many of which had faded from memory by Schmieg's day). He also situates beliefs about magic and witches within the broader context of related popular thinking about pregnancy and childbirth, millers, Shrove Tuesday, herbs, and an impressive array of early modern cultural artifacts.

The second key component of the witch craze concerns the likewise diverse but influential roles that a number of educated experts—legal, medical, theological—played in mediating such ideas in various settings, occasionally validating or even intensifying beliefs that seem the most alien to us and at other times debunking or at least mitigating popular diabolical notions. Robisheaux is especially adept at sympathetic readings of these individuals in Anna Schmieg's story. The leader of the official investigation, Dr. Tobias von Gülchen, is no hysterical zealot, but rather a thoughtful and persistent (albeit often perplexed) seeker of truth. His objective is not a tortured confession of sex with the devil but rather concrete proof of poison. Repeated interrogations and other emerging evidence (including the autopsy itself) produce differing opinions, frequent setbacks, and an overall precarious procedure whose outcome is far from predetermined. Some of the operating assumptions of these seventeenth-century professionals are clearly alien, even absurd, from our perspective but for the most part it is the similarity to a modern forensic investigation—particularly its non-linear, even haphazard development—that will strike most readers as both noteworthy and unexpected.

The third and final key component of all witchcraft prosecution centers on the personal antagonisms involved. Whether or not all politics are local, certainly all witchcraft accusations were. At its heart, Anna Schmieg's tale is a domestic tragedy, involving an illicit pregnancy, dead children, a mother-son alliance against a "loose and crazy" daughter, and the various heartbreaks and betrayals that result. Robisheaux masterfully elucidates, with considerable compassion yet lack of sentimentality, the family dynamics involved as well as significant relationships with neighbors in the hamlet of Hürden. Understanding the volatile village world of shifting friendships, lasting grudges, gossip, and drinking is indispensible for understanding the origins and momentum of witchcraft accusations and in this respect too The Last Witch of Langenberg delivers the goods.

Successfully elucidating these three core components of the witch craze in a nuanced...