Anna Göldi

Anna Göldi (also Göldin or Goeldin, 24 October 1734 – 13 June 1782) was a Swiss housemaid who was one of the last persons to be executed for witchcraft in Europe. Göldi, who was executed by decapitation in Glarus, has been called the "last witch" in Switzerland. She was posthumously exonerated by the government of the canton of Glarus in 2008.

Biography

Born in Sennwald as the fourth of eight children, Göldi started working as a domestic servant at aged 18. Between 1762 and 1765, she worked at the rectory of Sennwald. Göldi's baby died the night it was born (something not uncommon due to the high infant mortality of the era). Anna Göldi filed a complaint against her employer for sexual harassment (and possibly rape) with the cantonal religious and judicial authorities, among whose officials was a member of the Tschudi family.

During her trial, official allegations of witchcraft were avoided, and the court protocols were destroyed. The sentence does not, therefore, 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.

The sentence was described at the time by historian August Ludwig von Schlözer as a judicial murder ("the murder of an innocent, deliberately, and with all the pomp of holy Justice". )

Legacy

In 1982, Eveline Hasler published a novel about Anna Göldi, since translated into English as Anna Goeldin – The Last Witch. A Novel. In 1991, Gertrud Pinkus released a film based on Hasler's book.

Exoneration On 20 September 2007, the Swiss parliament decided to acknowledge Anna Göldi's case as a miscarriage of justice. Fritz Schiesser, as the representative for Glarus in the Swiss parliament, called for Anna Göldi's exoneration, which was granted 226 years after her death, on 27 August 2008 on the grounds that she had been subjected to an "illegal trial".

On August 20, 2017, the Anna Göldi Museum was opened in the Hänggiturm building.

Doom metal band 1782’s song “She Was a Witch” along with the band name were inspired by Anna Göldi