When Burning People Became a Business

A bucket of water slams into the unconscious woman's face. She feels the strapado haul her up again by the wrists. A boot kicks her back, ankle weights yanking her down. Her shoulders pop from their sockets and she screams. Finally, she whispers, "Yes," to dancing with the devil, to blising the crops. The chief witch hunt her watches with greedy eyes. In such pain, truth no longer matters. Pressed for accomplices, she names neighbours, friends, family. By the end of 1631, hundreds in Bambeg will be killed, turning the German town into one of the deadliest places in Europe. The witch hunt frenzy will spare no one, not even the rich and powerful. A perfect storm. 200 years earlier, magic is old news in Bambeg, a Catholic state in the Holy Roman Empire. Most people live scattered across the countryside where every village has the cunning folk said to heal livestock or find lost objects. The church mostly tolerates their harmless superstitions, but some like Heinrich Krammer claim witches are destroying Christianity. The inquisitor secures backing from the Pope that witches are a real threat. He writes the "Malias of Manificarum, the witch hammer," a field guide on hunting them. Krammer argues that women's weak are nature and desire make them easy targets for the devil. The spicy descriptions of packs with demons stealing and eating children in satanic banquet turn the book into a bestseller. So its idea is quickly hardened into the belief that witchcraft is heresy. But by then, the church faces a new threat, the reformation. The Protestants claim salvation is between believers and God, while the church has been butting in like a greedy middleman. For Protestants, the Pope is the devil himself. Soon, the empire fractures into Protestant and Catholic territories promoting competing truths. The Catholic church tightens its grip on a dwindling flock. Confession is enforced, and the ideal believer is both obedient and watchful. In 1618, the Thirty Years' War erupts over which version of God is the right one. Moroiding mercilaries raid the countryside for their supplies, stripping villages bare, and spreading play that finishes what hunger starts it. On top of everything, Europe is gripped by the little ice age. Harsh winters turn lethal, cutting weeks from the growing season. Crops fail, just as war is already starving the population. So when a freak frost wipes out Bamberg's fields in May 1626, people look for someone to blame. The new Prince Bishop, Johann Georg Fuchs von Donheim, is both religious ruler and sheriff for a town of 10,000 souls. When the crowd starts speaking of witches, he needs no convincing. von Donheim establishes a professional witch hunting commission of seven skilled lawyers who become judge, jury, and executioner. Among them is Dr. And Fassert, soon the most feared of them all. The first arrests fall on the obvious targets, poor and marginalized women, which hunter Fassert always breaks them the same way. He begins with interrogation about Sabbaths, the devil's pact, who else was there. If the words don't come, he lays out thumb screws, leg screws, and his favorite, the stropada. Naming neighbors or family members might buy hours of relief, but Fassert demands denunciations by the hundreds. Soon, the torch should turn from familiar names to the town's richest and most powerful. In April 1627, the mayor's wife is named, and all hell breaks loose. I love telling these stories because they show that for better or worse, humans can really move heaven and earth together. In Bamberg, this energy turned into something horrific, but with the right mission, amazing things are possible. That's why we partnered with and joined Planet Wild. Planet Wild is a community-based nature protection organisation that supports conservation projects around the globe. Every month, their community of over 25,000 members, including ourselves, funds a new mission to restore nature. At Night Shift, we love to get the birds eye view. Planet Wild documents all their missions in video reports right here on YouTube, so you can see what your contribution helped achieve. With their plastic cleanup mission in Mumbai, to fight ocean waste, they helped install this huge floating barrier that can stop up to 10,000 kilograms of plastic per month before it reaches the ocean. If you'd like to help our planet's ecosystems, consider joining Planet Wild. You can give any amount that feels right to you and you can cancel anytime. The first 100 people to sign up using our code Night Shift 8 will get their first month paid for by us. Just scan the QR code or click the link in the description. If you want to see them in action first, check out their plastic mission link below and now back to our story. The Witch Factory In the quiet of dawn, Fassold walks through the merchants' quarter. At the Mayors house, his wife Christina opens the door. She can't believe Fassold came for her. People like her don't get arrested. Her sons watch from the doorway as their mother is dragged out. Inside the house, estate administrators throw open cupboards and trunks, recording each item. The silver candlesticks, the jewelry and coins, the value of the house itself. The inventory book goes to the commission that takes one-fifth of the estate if the condemned has children, half if they're chardless, everything if there are no ares. One-third of proceeds goes directly to the judges and executioners. And Bamberg's wealthiest families are worth tens of millions of dollars in today's money. And all this wealth funds more trials. Witch hunting becomes Fondornheim's fiscal policy. His zeal echoes beyond Bamberg and he hires out Fassold to assist other districts for a fee of course. By summer, Bamberg's prisons are bursting and Fondornheim orders a two-story building raised against the city walls. The Witch house. Inside, 26 narrow cells line two long corridors with two larger cells for groups. The guards' rooms are warmed by tiled stoves but prisoners shiver on cold stones. It's a machine built to extract confessions, setting off a chain reaction that manufactures more witches to feed itself. After confessing, the accused are burned and sometimes beheaded in a public spectacle, three to six at the same time for cost efficiency and effects. Another respected citizen, Catalina Hahn, watches in horror as her neighbor and friend Christina is swallowed by the flames. The stench of burning hair and searing flesh bites at her nostrils. The screams echo in her head for weeks. Every morning, Fassold's men drag a new neighbor from their house and Catalina urges her husband. You have power here, do something. He is Dr. Gail Khan, chancellor of Bambeg and the senior legal administrator and he's privately troubled by the witch hunter's brutality. There are laws and they demand evidence before torture. Confessions must be given freely, property can't be seized at will and the accused have a right to appeal. The Fondornheim and Fassold follow none of that. But the Holy Roman Empire is a sprawling patchwork and the Emperor in Vienna has bigger concerns than one bishop's prisoners. Hahn shows quiet mercy for his cases and voices doubts in council chambers. But now his wife wants him to do something bolder. So he begins accepting petitions from the victim's families. It's a high risk move. Powerful men who obstruct prosecutions are considered witches themselves. In December 1627, while Hahn is away on business with his son, his wife Catalina and their daughter are taken to the witch house. Under torture, Catalina accuses her husband and their son. By the time Hahn returns, his wife and daughter are dead, burned to ash. And waiting at his house stands Fassold. Dead on arrival. Gail Khan, once Bambeg's chancellor, a man who could halt trials with his signature, is taken to the witch house with his son. Hahn urges him to confess at once, but it doesn't save him. With most of his family dead, Hahn has no reason left to stay strong. This surrender is exactly what Fassold needs to take down another disgraced official. Kneeling in the torture chamber is Johannes Unius, former head of the city council and Hahn's colleague. He keeps insisting he's innocent, but Hahn answers coldly. He claims he saw him at a witch gathering in the council chamber. When Unius denies it, Fassold orders him to strip make it. His body is surged for the devil's mark. A clover shaped spot on his side is enough. They start tightening their screws and the stropado. The five days later, he breaks down. Just before his execution, Unius bribes a jailer to smuggle out a letter to his daughter. His confession is all lies, all six who'd announced him said they were forced. He writes, "For whoever comes into the witch prison must become a witch or be torches until he invents something out of his head." By the end of 1628, around 60 people, large parts of the city council of Bamberg, along with their wives and children, are executed. Still, the witch house remains full. The execution ground works without pause and the city keeps consuming itself. But the screaming eventually reaches beyond Bamberg's walls. A race against time. A horse pounds through the night. Bamberg's councilman flock, writes hard, torch snapping in the wind. He can't believe this is happening again. Two years ago, the witch hunters arrested and killed his first wife. And now, they've taken her to heavily pregnant. By dawn, he reaches Nuremberg and hammers on the door of Dorothea's family. They have ties to petitions with direct lines to the emperor. Maybe they can help. Their letter arrives at the Imperial Palace in Vienna, where similar appeals have been piling up. Emperor Fett and Anne wreaths about the burning of the Han family, and now, the pregnant wife of another councilman has been taken prisoner. In April 1630, he demands Fondanheim explain himself and release Dorothea. The Prince Bishop replies that he's just serving God. Desperate flock threatens to appeal to the Pope. So, in May, the Emperor sends a second command. Stop proceedings against Dorothea flock. But when his messenger arrives, Fassalt's executioners have already dragged her from her newborn child and beheaded her. Dorothea's bereaved family begins to organize a resistance. They gather testimonies from victims' families and escape prisoners to bring before the emperor. The timing is just right. When the Swedish army invades from the north, Emperor Fett and Anne needs unity and order, but the Maverick inquisitors in Bamberg have become a liability. At the Imperial Assembly, the victims' accusations are read and two survivors of the witch house make their case. Fondan accuses Fondanheim of illegal trials of torture without cause and of contempt for both imperial and papal authority. He orders an investigation requiring trial documents to be handed over and halts all arrests. Fondanheim panics. He orders the burning of the original trial records and forges new ones that appear lawful, but he doesn't stop the trials. In June 1631, Emperor Fett and Anne decrees that the Carolina Code, the first German criminal law, applies without exception across the empire. No secret trials, no unlimited torture, no seizure of property. The system that made Bamberg's witch hunt possible and profitable is finally dismantled. By winter 1631, the Swedish army is closing in and Fondanheim flees to Austria. These men release the last ten prisoners from the witch house, forcing them to swear silence, then scatter. Johann Georg Fuchs Fondanheim, now known as The Witch Bishop, dies two years later. He's never brought to justice for the execution of more than 600 innocent people. The trials continued after him across the Holy Roman Empire long into the 18th century, as witchcraft was gradually decriminalized. In 1417-50, around 100,000 people were prosecuted in Europe. Roughly half were executed, mostly women. The cause was structural. Fragmented rule left no central court to halt mass panics, and local rulers acted without oversight. Unless the trials were shut down by higher authorities or disrupted by war, they could run on for years. But witch hunting never really ended. All accused of witchcraft are still killed in certain rural regions of sub-Saharan Africa, India, and Papua New Guinea where legal protection has limited reach. Intentionally are alone 20,000 people have lost their lives to witch hunt violence in just two decades. The accused are still mostly women and the elderly. Skate goats for illnesses and misfortunes, especially in times of economic hardship. The pattern remains unchanged, a commute his fear turned inwards, settling on whoever's easiest to blame. [Music] [Music]