ATHENS IS in flames, the eurozone on a knife edge but yesterday Cologne’s city fathers closed the book on some unfinished business dating back 400 years.
Cologne city council adopted a resolution acquitting wealthy local postmistress Katharina Henot of being a witch.
She was arrested on charges of witchcraft in January 1627, imprisoned and tortured so badly she lost movement in her right hand.
Her last act was to scrawl a written plea of innocence using her left hand before she was burned at the stake in a square outside the city walls.
Researchers say there is no evidence Henot dabbled in the occult, and that jealousy was the most likely motive for the witchcraft claim, filed by a local nun.
Yesterday’s rehabilitation is part of a campaign to reverse witchcraft rulings which cost over 25,000 Germans their lives.
“Katharina held her own reputation in high esteem. She would want to have it cleared,” said Hartmut Hegeler, a Lutheran minister and religion teacher.
He lodged the rehabilitation request with Cologne city council, the same body that condemned her to death, when research by his students revealed that Henot had never been acquitted and was thus, technically, still guilty of witchcraft.
As part of their research, Hegeler’s students found a distant relative of Henot’s, who welcomed his efforts.
“I think she should have her name cleared,” said Martina Hirtz. “But I think of the endless amount of people still living who are being mistreated and find that much worse.”
After yesterday’s council session, Mr Hegeler said it was belated justice for a woman wronged. “I’m thrilled because they tried to silence her forever but that didn’t succeed,” he said. “To this day they talk about her fate in this city.”
Henot is remembered in Cologne in several folk songs and by a statue in front of the city’s old town hall.
In total 38 people were executed in Cologne on charges of witchcraft including three men, a teenage boy and an eight-year-old girl.
Katharina Henot’s brother tried to have her name cleared after her execution, but in 1629, he was himself accused of being a witch by Christina Plum, one of the victims of the 1626–31 Cologne witch trials.
He was arrested in 1631 together with a number of other influential citizens, but the witch trial was eventually aborted.