When Death Was a Relief
Nightshift – Kurzgesagt After Dark · 2026-08-28 · 16 min
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=205swuI0JlYVideo summary
Bamberg’s witch trials killed over 600 people as torture, confiscated wealth, and war-driven panic fueled persecution.
In 1626, a failed harvest amid the Thirty Years’ War and the Little Ice Age sparked a deadly witch hunt in Catholic Bamberg. Prince-Bishop Johann Georg Fuchs von Dornheim created a seven-lawyer commission, while torturer Ernst Vasoldt extracted confessions with thumbscrews and the strappado. The purpose-built Witch House became a self-financing machine: condemned estates funded further trials, and judges received one-third of proceeds. By 1628, about 60 citizens—including council members, wives, and children—had been executed. Chancellor Georg Haan, his family, and councilman Johannes Junius were destroyed after resisting the prosecutions. Appeals eventually reached Emperor Ferdinand, who imposed the Carolina Code in 1631, banning secret trials, unlimited torture, and arbitrary seizures. Von Dornheim fled, but more than 600 innocent people had died. The broader European witch hunts prosecuted roughly 100,000 people between 1400 and 1750, with about half executed.
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