The Bamberg Drudenhaus — the witch prison, 1627–1631

OVERVIEW

The Drudenhaus (also Malefizhaus, witch house or witch prison) was a prison in Bamberg built specially to hold and interrogate people accused of witchcraft, with a torture building beside it. It was built in 1627, at the height of the persecutions under Prince-Bishop Johann Georg II Fuchs von Dornheim, for about 30 prisoners, and was in use until the end of 1631. A 1627 etching the prince-bishop himself put into circulation, probably by Peter Isselburg, shows the building and its plan — 26 single cells and two larger ones — with a line of Virgil over the door: 'Learn justice, being warned, and do not scorn the gods.'

HISTORY

The Bamberg witch trials of 1626–1632 were among the largest mass trials and executions in European history. After frost destroyed the harvest across Franconia on 27 May 1626, petitions demanded why the authorities tolerated the witches who had done it; Katharina Merckhlerin confessed to causing the frost that November. A special Witch Commission tortured without the limits of the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina and banned all criticism of the trials; those who confessed were tortured again to name accomplices, so arrests spread to every class. At least 642 people died in 1626–1631 (the German article) — confirmed cases alone run 15, 85, 137, 167 and 54 for 1626–1630 — and around 1,000 in the prince-bishopric by the last trial in 1680. Most were burnt alive. The Emperor protested repeatedly; Dorothea Flock was executed on 17 May 1630 just before an imperial edict for her release arrived. In July 1631 the Emperor installed Anton Winter, an opponent of the hunts, at the head of the commission; the prince-bishop fled, and the last ten prisoners were released when Swedish troops approached on 11 February 1632.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

A record of the witch-hunt, not of any haunting. A catalogue of April 1631 sent to the Imperial Aulic Council lists the prisoners with their arrest dates and estimated wealth, and puts the property confiscated from those 'justified' in Bamberg and Zeil at 500,000 guilders at least. Johannes Junius wrote to his daughter Veronica from prison in June 1628 that he was innocent and had been tortured into confessing and naming others; the letter was smuggled out and delivered. His daughter Maria Anna Junius, a Dominican nun, recorded the end of the prison in her diary.

VISITING

The house stood on today's Franz-Ludwig-Straße, at about nos. 8 and 10, with the torture house ('Peinliche Frag') on the site of no. 10. Nothing of it remains; its stones went into the Capuchin monastery in 1654.