A group of Swiss politicians is agitating to get a pardon for the last European woman executed for witchcraft in 1782, albeit a little too late to do her much good. A court sentenced Anna Goeldi to death for witchcraft 225 years ago, and she was beheaded (rather than hanged or burned, as in other countries). Now Walter Hauser, an attorney from the village where the trial, or mistrial, took place, has taken up her cause, and is urging that she get a posthumous pardon. Mr. Hauser's book Der Justizmord an Anna Goeldi (in English The Judicial Murder of Anna Goeldi) just published, puts forth the thesis that her employer framed her because the two had been having an affair and she threatened to reveal it. Here's more on the story in a Daily Telegraph article by Bojan Pancevski. Here's an essay by Ronald Bruce Meyer on witchcraft and witch hunting in Switzerland. Apparently Anna's story inspired someone named Martin Derungs to write a libretto for an opera; it was published in 1991. Kaspar Freuler also published a novel about Anna Goeldi (Zurich: 1945).
Compare with the flurry of activity over Helen Duncan, convicted of witchcraft in 1944 under the Witchcraft Act of 1736. She was sent to prison for nine months.
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