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Liber XXXV · Witchcraft & Wicca

Liber XXXV · Witchcraft & Wicca · Chapter VIII: Witch Trials

Anna Göldi (1782): The Trial of Europe's Last Witch Explained

Anna Göldi, beheaded in Glarus in 1782 and called Europe's last witch: her trial, the pins and the Tschudi household, her 2008 rehabilitation and legacy.

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Anna Göldi (also written Göldin or Goeldi) was a Swiss maidservant beheaded in Glarus in June 1782 after being accused of bewitching her employer's young daughter so that the child vomited pins. Because the case came so late — two generations after Britain had abolished witchcraft prosecutions — she is often called the last person executed as a witch in Europe. The court avoided the word "witch" and convicted her as a poisoner, but contemporaries across the German-speaking world condemned the trial as a judicial murder, and in 2008 the canton of Glarus formally rehabilitated her.

Anna Göldi's Life Before the Trial§

Anna Göldi was born in 1734 in Sennwald, in the Rhine valley in what is now the canton of St Gallen. She came from a poor Protestant family and went into domestic service young, as did many women of her background. Her life before Glarus was already marked by misfortune: around 1765 a child she had borne out of wedlock died shortly after birth, and she was accused of having caused its death. She was punished and left the region, working for years as a maid in various households.

In 1780 she entered the service of Johann Jakob Tschudi, a physician who also held judicial office in the canton of Glarus, one of the small rural republics of the Swiss Confederation. Glarus was religiously divided, with separate Protestant and Catholic institutions, and the Tschudi family belonged to the Protestant elite that dominated its government. A servant from outside the canton, with a troubled past, was in a weak position against such an employer.

The Pins in the Milk: Accusation and Trial§

In the autumn of 1781 pins were reportedly found in the bread and milk of Tschudi's daughter, Anna Maria, then about eight years old. Göldi was blamed and dismissed, and she left Glarus. Soon afterwards the girl fell ill with convulsions and was said to spit up pins and nails. Her family interpreted the illness as bewitchment, and Tschudi's position allowed him to set the authorities in motion. A wanted notice describing Göldi was published in the press with a reward for her capture, and she was arrested early in 1782 and brought back to Glarus.

Healing as proof of guilt§

The proceedings followed a pattern familiar from earlier witch trials. While in custody Göldi was made to visit and treat the sick child. When the girl's condition improved, the judges took this as evidence that the person able to lift the affliction must have caused it — the same logic that had condemned many earlier suspects whose neighbours believed that a witch could unbewitch. Under repeated torture Göldi confessed that the Devil had given her a poisoned treat to pass to the child, and she named an accomplice, a local craftsman named Rudolf Steinmüller. Steinmüller was arrested and hanged himself in his cell.

Verdict and execution§

The Protestant council of Glarus condemned Göldi to death, and she was beheaded with the sword in June 1782, usually dated 13 June. The written verdict carefully described her crime as poisoning, and the word "witch" was avoided. Historians generally see this as a sign of the times: by the 1780s witchcraft was embarrassing to educated Europeans, but the evidence, the confession of a diabolical pact and the logic of the trial were those of a witch trial. Göldi had in effect been executed for witchcraft under another name.

Why Was Anna Göldi Executed? Modern Interpretations§

Even in 1782 many observers doubted the case. Modern research, especially by the Glarus journalist and lawyer Walter Hauser, has examined the surviving records and the family politics behind them. A widely discussed explanation is that Göldi may have had a sexual relationship with Tschudi, or knew compromising information about him. Adultery was a serious offence that could have ended a magistrate's public career, and an accusation of witchcraft would both remove and discredit a dangerous witness. This interpretation, explored in Eveline Hasler's historical novel Anna Göldin. Letzte Hexe (1982), remains plausible rather than proven.

Other factors are clearer. Göldi was poor, unmarried, an outsider in the community and already marked by the earlier death of her child — the social profile of many accused witches across Europe. Glarus was a small society in which a few families controlled both the courts and the government, so a powerful man's accusation met little resistance. The child's illness, whatever its cause, provided a visible affliction that the old categories of bewitchment could explain. For the broader patterns behind such accusations see The European Witch Trials.

Europe's Last Witch? Comparing Late Witch Trials§

The title "last witch in Europe" needs care. Late executions and near-executions occurred in several places. In Britain the last execution, at Dornoch in Scotland, took place in the 1720s, and the Witchcraft Act of 1735 abolished such prosecutions altogether — see Janet Horne. In southern Germany, Anna Maria Schwägelin was sentenced to death at Kempten in 1775 and long described as Germany's last witch to be executed, but research published in the 2000s indicated that the sentence was never carried out and that she died in prison. Accounts of mass burnings in Poland in the later eighteenth century are poorly documented and often doubted. In 1811 a woman named Barbara Zdunk was executed in Prussia for arson in a case shaped by witchcraft suspicions, and she is sometimes given the title instead.

Göldi's claim rests on the fact that hers was a formal trial, conducted by a state authority, with a confession of a diabolical pact, ending in execution. Even so, many historians prefer to call her one of the last rather than the last. Witch beliefs themselves did not end with her: informal accusations, unwitching rituals and violence against suspected witches continued in rural Europe into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The Enlightenment Response and the 2008 Rehabilitation§

News of the Glarus case spread quickly. The Göttingen historian and publicist August Ludwig von Schlözer printed reports of it in his widely read political journal and condemned it as a Justizmord, a judicial murder; the term has been attached to the case ever since. For Enlightenment readers, Göldi's execution showed how superstition, torture and the power of local oligarchies could still produce injustice in a supposedly enlightened century. The publicity embarrassed Glarus and contributed to the case's notoriety outside Switzerland.

Memory of Göldi revived strongly in the late twentieth century. Hasler's novel was a best seller in the German-speaking world, and a film based on it, directed by Gertrud Pinkus, appeared in 1991. Campaigners argued that the canton should acknowledge the injustice. In 2008 the cantonal parliament of Glarus declared the trial a judicial murder and rehabilitated Anna Göldi, an unusual act of official historical reparation. A foundation dedicated to her memory supported research and exhibitions, and a museum devoted to her and to the wider history of injustice opened in the canton in 2017.

The Same Year: Etz Hayyim Printed at Korets§

The year of Göldi's death also saw a landmark in Jewish mysticism. Etz Hayyim (Tree of Life), the central compilation of Isaac Luria's teachings as recorded by his disciple Hayyim Vital (1542/3–1620), had circulated for more than a century and a half in manuscript, in versions arranged by later editors. Its first printed edition appeared in 1782 at Korets in Volhynia, a town whose presses served the rapidly growing Hasidic movement.

Printing made the Lurianic system — the contraction of the divine (tzimtzum), the shattering of the vessels and the work of repair (tikkun) — far more accessible to students across Eastern Europe. The doctrines themselves are explained in Lurianic Kabbalah, their background in The Ten Sefirot and the Tree of Life, and their reception among the Hasidim in Hasidism and the Baal Shem Tov. The coincidence of dates is only that, but it is a reminder that 1782 belonged both to the last echoes of the witch-hunt and to a living, expanding mystical tradition.

Frequently asked questions§

Who was Anna Göldi?§

Anna Göldi was a Swiss domestic servant, born in 1734, who worked in the household of the Glarus physician and magistrate Johann Jakob Tschudi. Accused of bewitching his daughter, she was tortured, condemned and beheaded in 1782.

Was Anna Göldi really the last witch executed in Europe?§

She is the most commonly cited candidate because her case was a formal trial ending in execution, with a confessed pact with the Devil. Some later cases, such as that of Barbara Zdunk in Prussia in 1811, are sometimes named, so many historians call her one of the last rather than definitively the last.

Why did the court call her a poisoner rather than a witch?§

By the 1780s witchcraft prosecutions were discredited among educated Europeans, and the Glarus authorities avoided the word in the verdict. The evidence and confession, however, followed the pattern of a witch trial, which is why critics then and now describe it as one.

Has Anna Göldi been exonerated?§

Yes. In 2008 the cantonal parliament of Glarus formally rehabilitated her and declared her trial a judicial murder.

Sources and further reading§