WITCHCRAFT IN GERMANY

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28321, 5 July 1957, Page 6

WITCHCRAFT IN GERMANY

Official Campaign Of Eradication

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.) (Rec. 8 p.m.)

LONDON, July 4. The West German State of Lower Saxony has announced an official campaign to stamp out the remains of medieval mysticism especially witchcraft, says the Associated Press.

Hundreds of Germans still believe in witchcraft and there are hotbeds of superstition in remote areas in Lower Saxony. “We cannot stamp it out entirely,” said Dr. Rolf Bunnemann of the State Health Department. “It is amazing that in our atomic age we have to fight witchcraft” ecently a woman had been tried for claiming that she could “de-witch” man and animals.

Another woman successfully peddled a concoction to ward off the “evil eye.”

It consisted of a mixture of starved caterpillars and dried leaves. In yet another case a man shot his mother-in-law, claiming that she had bewitched his family. He later killed, himself.

A 19-year-old youth shot his grandfather because he believed the old man had bewitched him. The youth hanged himself, still considering himself bewitched. In another case, a woman was slashed by villagers when 67 hogs died after she had allegedly given them an evil eye stare. She afterwards committed suicide.