A WITCH TRIAL

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXX, Issue 4811, 20 February 1936, Page 6

A WITCH TRIAL

WOMAN ACQUITTED. A sixty-year-old woman, Ida Markus, has been acquitted in Vienna of causing grievous bodily harm to another woman “by causing her to collapse, paralysed, as the result of mysterious hpynotic passes.” The supposed “witchcraft” was alleged to have been perpetrated at the Schafberg bathing pool in 1934. The “victim,” Frau Prinz, is still paralysed. Ida Markus told the court that “her eyes had been opened” in 1928, and that, since then, she had watched all the activities of the spirit world, about which she had published 15 books. Every pure-souled person was accompanied by a guardian spirit, which was joined by a second guardian spirit as each person's spiritual development grew. These spirits were opposed to demoniac escorts, whom she could also see. “The air around Frau Prinz at the bathing pool,” she said, “was so thick with demons trying to paralyse her that I made mystic passes to banish them, but was not strong enough.” With Viennese tact she told the judge she was surrounded with guardian angels, “all creatures of light, who are telling you to find me not guilty.” She added that, recently, she met the spirit of Hindenburg in the Wunderer Cafe, in Vienna. Hindenburg was surprised to learn from her that Hitler had succeeded him as Reichs J President.

Doctors, who had been called in to give evidence, told the court that Frau Markus held her beliefs honestly, and there was no proof that the condition of Frau Prinz was due to hypnotism.