Anna Göldi

Anna Göldi (also Anna Göldin, ca. 1740–1782) is known as the "last witch" in Switzerland. She was executed for murder in June 1782 in Glarus.

A native of Sennwald, Anna Göldi arrived in Glarus in 1765. For seventeen years, she worked as a maidservant for Johann Jakob Tschudi, a physician. Tschudi reported her for having put needles in the bread and milk of one of his daughters, apparently through supernatural means. Göldi at first avoided arrest and the authorities of the Canton of Glarus advertised a reward for her capture in the Zürcher Zeitung on 9 February, 1782. Göldi was arrested and under torture admitted to being in a pact with the Devil, which had appeared to her as a black dog. She withdrew her confession after the torture ended, but was sentenced on June 18 1782 to execution by decapitation. The charges were officially of "poisoning" rather than withcraft, even though the law at the time did not impose the death penalty for non-lethal poisoning.

During her trial, official allegations of witchcraft were avoided, and the court protocols were destroyed. The sentence does therefore not strictly qualify as that of a witch trial. Still, because of the apparent witchhunt that led to the sentence, the execution sparked outrage throughout Switzerland and the Holy Roman Empire.

Exoneration

On 20th September 2007, the Swiss parliament decided to acknowledge Anna Göldi's case as a miscarriage of justice. Fritz Schiesser, as representative for Glarus in the Swiss parliament, called for Anna Göldi's exoneration which was granted on 28th August 2008 on the grounds that she had been subjected to an "illegal trial". A museum is open in Glarus dedicated to her.

See also

• Barbara Zdunk

References