The Würzburg Witch Trials: Germany's Deadliest Hunt

Between 1626 and 1631, the Prince-Bishopric of Würzburg in Germany became the epicenter of the deadliest witch hunt in European history. Approximately 900 people—men, women, and children—were burned at the stake in just five years. This wasn't superstitious peasants running wild. This was systematic, bureaucratic mass murder. Prince-Bishop Philip Adolf von Ehrenberg was convinced that witches were responsible for the region's troubles: crop failures from the Little Ice Age, economic devastation from the Thirty Years' War, and various natural disasters. Rather than addressing systemic problems, he chose scapegoating. But Würzburg's witch hunt was unique in its calculated efficiency. The Prince-Bishop constructed a special building called the Drudenhaus (Witch House)—a dedicated witch prison with purpose-built torture chambers. It was industrialized persecution. The tortured weren't marginal people. They were Würzburg's elite. The Prince-Bishop's own nephew was burned. Burgomasters, city councilors, clerics, merchants—no one was safe. Children as young as four were accused and executed. One record lists a girl of seven burned for having 'congress with the Devil.' The 'confessions' extracted under torture grew increasingly baroque. Accused witches named accomplices under duress, who then named others, creating an ever-expanding circle of accusations. The trials supported a cottage industry: witch commissioners, torturers, executioners, and guards all drew salaries from the property of the condemned. Dr. Friedrich Spee, a Jesuit priest who served as confessor to condemned witches, became the unlikely voice of sanity. After accompanying over 200 people to their deaths—every single one proclaiming innocence until the end—Spee wrote *Cautio Criminalis*, a devastating critique of witch trials. He noted that torture could force anyone to confess to anything. He pointed out that witch hunters profited from accusations. He argued that the trials themselves were far more diabolical than any alleged witchcraft. Spee's work was published anonymously because criticizing witch trials was dangerous. Yet his arguments eventually influenced thinkers across Europe, contributing to the gradual end of the witch hunts. The Würzburg witch trials ended not because authorities developed compassion, but because they literally ran out of people to burn. The economy collapsed. So many productive members of society had been killed that the region couldn't sustain itself. The Prince-Bishop died in 1631, and his successor had different priorities. Nine hundred people. Five years. An entire generation of Würzburg's population murdered because authorities needed someone to blame for problems they couldn't solve. Study Würzburg carefully, young witch. It teaches us that persecution isn't always ignorant mobs with pitchforks. Sometimes it's educated officials following procedures, bureaucrats filling out forms, lawyers applying laws. The banality of evil in action. It teaches us that scapegoating accelerates during times of crisis—economic collapse, disease, war, climate change. When society faces overwhelming problems, those in power may choose to blame the vulnerable rather than address root causes. It teaches us that torture produces the confessions interrogators want to hear, not truth. And it teaches us the cost of silence. For years, people watched their neighbors burn and said nothing, fearing accusation themselves. When we see persecution—of any group, for any reason—silence is complicity. Remember Würzburg. Remember the 900. Remember that 'I was following orders' and 'I was following the law' are not moral defenses. Remember that standing against injustice is dangerous, but necessary. And remember that we survived. Despite centuries of persecution, despite hundreds of thousands killed, the craft survived. We are still here. That is its own kind of magic.