Identity, Memory, Self-fashioning: Narratives of Non-confession in the Witch-trial of Margaretha Horn, 1652

Abstract

This article focuses on the trial of Margaretha Horn, a sixty-two year old peasant woman arrested for witchcraft in 1652 in the German region of Franconia. At the heart of the trial lay two competing narratives about Margaretha's identity: one begun by her neightbor, Leonhard Gackstatt about Margaretha being a harming witch; the other, maintained by Margaretha, that she was not. I show how Margaretha used a range of cultural resources and narrative strategies to define herself as not a witch. I also argue that we can interpret her testimony as doing memory work relating to her experience of the Thirty Years War, and as an example of early modern self-fashioning