Anna Göldi

Anna Göldi (also Anna Göldin or Anna Goeldin, October 24, 1734 – June 13, 1782) is known as the "last witch" in Switzerland and the last person to be executed in Europe for witchcraft. She was executed by decapitation on June 13, 1782 in Glarus.

A native of Sennwald, Anna Göldi arrived in Glarus in 1765. For seventeen years, she worked as a maidservant for Johann Jakob Tschudi, a physician. Tschudi reported her for having put needles in the bread and milk of one of his daughters, apparently through supernatural means. Göldi at first escaped arrest, but the authorities of the Canton of Glarus advertised a reward for her capture in the Zürcher Zeitung on February 9, 1782. Göldi was arrested and, under torture, admitted to entering in a pact with the Devil, who had appeared to her as a black dog. She withdrew her confession after the torture ended, but was sentenced to execution by decapitation. The charges were officially of "poisoning" rather than witchcraft, even though the law at the time did not impose the death penalty for non-lethal poisoning.

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

In 1982, Eveline Hasler published a book 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.

On September 20, 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 August 27, 2008 on the grounds that she had been subjected to an "illegal trial". Apparently, Göldi's married employer abused his power after she had threatened to reveal their affair.

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