Talk:Barbara Zdunk

Legality
On the net are claims that she was in fact sentenced for sorcery, after long complicated legal difficulties, despite the fact that witch trials had been banned in Prussia, and that she was sentenced to be burned alive at the stake, although the executioner had been given instructions to strangle her as discretely as possible before he lit the fire. I suppose this is possible. I am not familiar with the details of the legal situation, and other witch trials with dubious legitimacy occurred which are still categorized as witch trials, such as that of Anna Göldi, so I suppose that fact that withc trials were formally banned would not necessarily be an obstacle. I myself am not an expert on this case. I hope this is sorted out. --Aciram (talk) 14:45, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

From the viewpoint of attracting tourism, sorcery or witchcraft are much more of a "pull" than arson, which is probably why these claims persist. The town staged a big event to commemorate the 200th anniversary. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.61.212.198 (talk) 14:25, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Prussian Legal Code
It's difficult to find out all the relevant facts about this execution which took place when Prussia was at a very low ebb, having been humiliated and much reduced in size by the French.

Professor Richard J Evans views the Prussian General Law Code of 1794 as the "summation of Enlightenment thinking on criminal law". This code eliminated corporal punishments and created a limited number of graduated means of execution for a shorter list of capital crimes. While it did not abolish the death penalty, the General Law Code desacralized it, secularizing the execution ceremony through the work of rationalist officials and elites.

The Zdunk case seems to be very much at odds with this enlightened approach. Mark Hasker (talk) 14:12, 11 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, it is interesting. Though not suprising. I believe the Anna Göldi case, as mentioned in the entry above, was somewhat similar in terms of contradiction between formal law and reality. There was such a big difference between theory an reality, law and practice, in that age.--85.226.42.57 (talk) 20:50, 11 July 2009 (UTC)