News from Austria

Two monographs from Austria promise new insights into neglected areas of the history of magic. Manfred Tschaikner discusses the much ignored and underestimated field of treasure hunting. In his pioneering study, he introduces us to treasure seekers who haunted the eastern Alpine region, or to be more precise the territories of today’s Austrian federal state of Vorarlberg and the principality of Liechtenstein. Hansjörg Rabanser deals with witch trials in the Tyrol, a region that has been virtually disregarded by recent research.

Tschaikner is one of the most productive Austrian historians working on magic. His new book on magical treasure hunting acquaints us with dozens of mostly ill-starred ventures of magicians and frauds spanning the years 1464 to 1858, and spares future historians countless hours of work in the archives of Austria and Liechtenstein. Tschaikner gives his audience all the facts one might wish for, even the most minute ones. His account of treasure hunters’ activities, their biographies, and the social and legal framework they worked in is so incredibly detailed the unwary reader might well get lost in it.

Even though there is hardly any new literature on treasure hunting, it is well known that until the nineteenth century, treasure seeking was steeped in magic. One common belief was that treasure could allegedly move about and thus actively escape treasure hunters. Ghosts, fairies, or demons were also supposed to watch over treasure, and the connection between ghosts and treasure was especially important. Treasure, often consisting of ill-gotten goods, bound the soul of the person who had hidden it to earth. Thus, contemporaries often regarded treasure hunting as a godly deed—by finding the treasure they released the ghost from captivity and the person would finally be able truly to die.

Tschaikner’s analysis of the social background of treasure hunters reveals that most of them came from the rural and small town middle classes of peasants and artisans. Treasure hunters worked in groups. As a rule, an expert magician led the group or at least lent it advice. These experts were often clerics. The fraud Franz Peter Hagspiel, a professional mining expert who had fallen on hard times, posed very successfully as a treasure magician. Tschaikner is able to reconstruct Hagspiel’s biography and his criminal career in great detail. Unsurprisingly, Tschaikner finds many more male than female treasure hunters. Just as witchcraft was predominately female, treasure hunting was male magic. What few exceptions there are only serve to confirm the rule.

Authorities punished treasure hunting as fraud and magic. Yet stereotypes of witchcraft and legislation against it played hardly any role in trials against treasure seekers in Vorarlberg and Liechtenstein. Considering that most of these trials took place late in the eighteenth century, this comes as no surprise, for witch trials were already declining in this period. While authorities might not have labeled treasure hunters as witches, they largely refrained from licensing treasure hunts.

Tschaikner confirms this reviewer’s own interpretation of treasure hunting as a typical phenomenon of the early modern period. Treasure seeking was used as a means to better one’s position without engaging in economic competition. It was a product of an economic mentality that had begun to engage in competition and market-oriented production but still struggled with corporative thinking and the concept of the limited good.¹ In Liechtenstein and Vorarlberg, treasure hunting was mostly an affair of the eighteenth century. Tschaiker believes this conjuncture of treasure seeking was not just the accidental outcome of faulty recordkeeping and the incomplete preservation of documents. He points out that the magical literature that treasure hunters often used to find treasure troves and to banish guarding spirits was much easier to come by in the eighteenth century than in previous periods. In addition, Tschaikner emphasises that treasure hunting went hand in hand with attempts to reactivate the ore mines of the eastern Alps that...