Pappenheimer witch trial
The Pappenheimer Case centered around a family who were tried and executed for witchcraft in 1600 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. The family were executed, along with accomplices they were forced to name under torture, after a show trial as scapegoats for a number of unsolved crimes committed years back in a display of extreme torture intended to given a public example deterring the public from crime. The witch trial resulted in the death of twelve people: four of the Pappenheimer family and two of their accused accomplices in the first trial, followed by the remaining member of  the family and five other accomplices in the second trial. The trial was of one of the most well-publicized witch trials in German history. Background. The Pappenheimer family consisted of Paulus and Anna Gämperl and their three sons: the adult sons Michel (sometimes called Jacob) and Gummprecht Gämperl, and their youngest son, ten-year-old Hansel (sometimes called Hoel) Gämperl. While their last name is individually given as Gämperl or Pämb, the family as a whole are often referred to, and became known in history as, the Pappenheimer family. They belonged to the lower class in society, and were  vagrant beggars from Swabia. They supported themselves as traveling emptier of privies and by digging graves, which at this time belonged to the very lowest of professions. Arrest. At this time, the government in Bavaria conducted a campaign against vagrants and criminals. There had been many crimes committed by vagrants, whom the government had been unable to arrest. An arrested thief pointed out the two adult sons of the family, Michel and Gumpprecht, as his accomplices in the murder of pregnant women, and denounced the whole family as robbers and murderers prior to his execution. Witchcraft was a crime in  which could include many other crimes, which made it useful as a general charge in a show trial toward scapegoats. The family appear to have been subjected to a show trial and meant to be made an example of, and "As many as possible of the unsolved crimes of the past few years were to be put down to the account of the accused." The local officials of the Danubian provinces of Bavaria were informed to look out for the family. In February 1600, the family was arrested and imprisoned in Altmannstein under the custody of prefect Alexander von Haslang  zu Haslangsreut, Grosshausen und Reid. They were arrested in the middle of the night, taken from their beds and taken to jail. Initially, only the adults of the family was arrested and the ten-year-old Hansel was left with their landlord, who shortly after brought him to his parents in jail, not knowing what else to do with him. They were tortured to confess a great number of crimes. Among them were the confession that they had murdered pregnant women to secure the hands of their unborn children for use in witchcraft. Interrogation and trial. On the order of  Maximilian I (Elector of Bavaria), they were taken from Altmannstein to the Bavarian capital of Munich, where they were imprisoned in Munich's Falcon Tower. A leading official in the trial was the duke's councillor Johann Sigismund Wagnereckh, who had long made unsuccessful attempts to promote witch trials in Bavaria, but with the exception of some trials in 1589–90, witch trials had been uncommon in Bavaria because of the general opposition to such trials among the Bavarian elite. Wagnereckh conducted several interrogations of the family by use of severe torture. A main concern of Wagnereckh was the charge that  the Pappenheimers had murdered children to grind their hands to a powder they could eat, which would give them magical powers and help them in their murders and robberies. It appears that the Duke's government wished to make an example of the family in a period of many vagrant crimes, which the government had been unable to solve. Witchcraft was a crime in which could include many other crimes, which made it useful as a general charge in a show trial toward scapegoats. The Pappenheimers appear to have been subjected to a show trial and meant to be made  an example of, and "As many as possible of the unsolved crimes of the past few years were to be put down to the account of the accused." Hansel was tortured first because he, as a child, was expected to break first. They were tortured by the strappado, squassation, rope burns, and torch burnings while Hansel, as a child, was beaten with a cane. Initially, they denied the charges, but they were exposed to torture so fierce that all but Hansel confessed to anything of which they were accused. They confessed to have had sexual intercourse with the Devil and  to have made a pact with him, promising to aid him in exchange for money and possessions. They made the pact by giving the Devil hair from the left side of their head, their armpit and their private parts as well as a piece of nail from the big toe of their left foot and "powder of children's hands." The Devil then scratched them on their left side, drawing blood, "which he collected in a little box; took out a sheet of paper, which he placed on his knee; and put a pen into" their hand for them to  sign. Because they were illiterate, he guided their hands as they wrote. "Then he wrapped up in the paper all the things that" they "had given him, and took them with him". During prolonged torture, they were made to confess to almost every unsolved major and minor crime of the last decade. They were also tortured to name accomplices, and implicated over four hundred other people, including people who did not appear to exist. In the Summer of 1600, two more men were arrested as their accomplices: the farmer Ulrich Schülz and the tailor Georg Schmülz. Executions. First execution. The  four adults of the family, the parents and their two eldest sons, were all sentenced to death, along with the two men who had been charged with them. Paulus Gämperl was considered the leader of the group. Hansel Gämperl, being ten years old, was not sentenced to death, but Wagnereckh ordered that he should be made to attend his family's execution and watch them die, as this was regarded to provide a salutary effect on him. The sheriff took Hansel to the execution on his horse and allowed him to mix with the spectators under watch and under the  order to note how he behaved and what he said. All six were ripped, six times, with red hot tongs. Anna Gämperl's breasts were cut from her body, a highly unusual punishment, and the severed breasts were rubbed around Anna's mouth, and the mouths of her sons. Following this, the six condemned were transported by cart to the place of execution. According to the sheriff, the child Hansel, watching the two carts, said: The carts temporarily stopped by a cross by the Neuhaus gate, were they were, according to custom, led in chains to say a prayer. The  condemned were led to the cross, and on their way back to the carts, given vine by two municipal officials before proceeding to the place of execution. At the place of execution, the five males had their arms broken on the wheel. According to the sheriff's notes, Hansel cried 'Look how they're thumping my father's arms!'. The father Paulus Gämperl was executed by impalement: a sharp stake inserted into his anus and through his intestines — a punishment normally no longer used at this point in time. Finally, they were executed by burning. Normally in Bavaria, the execution  by burning was performed by first strangling the condemned, but the law made provision for burning people alive if it was deemed necessary as a deterrent. According to the sheriff's notes, Hansel, on the sheriff's horse, burst into heart-rending cries: 'My mother is squirming!' he cried in despair." Hansel was re-baptized and renamed Cyprian following the execution. Second execution. The first execution was followed by the arrest, interrogation and trial of the people named by the Pappenheimer's as their accomplices under torture. Six additional people: two men and three women (a mother and her daughters ) were condemned to be burned for witchcraft after having been tortured to confess and name accomplices. The remaining condemned was the ten year old Hansel Gämperl. After having examined the report made by the sheriff of Hansel's behaviour and comments during the execution, Hansel Gämperl was himself sentenced to death, despite his age. On 26 November 1600, the execution of the ten year old Hansel Gämperl and the five other condemned took place in Munich. The end. Hansel Gämperl and the other recently executed had named accomplices under torture, and Johann Sigismund Wagnereckh wished to continue the witch hunt  by arresting those named. However, some Bavarian lawyers and officials questioned if it was legally justified to subject anyone to torture after a denunciation made under torture. Further more, people denounced were of higher social position, with the knowledge, contacts and ability to defend themselves. In this situation, the Duke ordered a stop to the witch hunt referring to irregularities in the legal procedure. However, no one was punished, and Johann Sigismund Wagnereckh continued to have a successful career in government hierarchy. Aftermath and legacy. The Pappenheimer Case became infamous in contemporary Europe; it was widely publicized throughout Germany, and  was discussed in the academic witchcraft debate among demonologists such as Martin del Rio. Johann Sigismund Wagnereckh continued to promote the use of witch trials in Bavaria, but the Bavarian opposition to witch trials ensured that they were to continue to be uncommon: with the exception of a witch trial with 39 victims in Wemding in 1629–1630, the cases in Bavaria were few until Veronica Zerritsch became the last witchcraft execution in Bavaria in 1756. Accounts. The historian Joseph Hormayr, Baron zu Hortenburg provides a detailed excerpt from an old chronicle depicting these events in the 1844 edition of "Taschenbuch  für die vaterländische Geschichte", pages 331–332. Some divergences, such as Anna Gämperl having died prior to being burnt, rather than burning alive in the Hormayr account, in the chronicle used by Hormayr can be seen relative to an English account of the trial already in 1601 (translated from a Dutch copy of the German original), "A Strange Report of Sixe most notorious Witches"