English witches and SS academics: evaluating sources for the English witch trials in Himmler’s Hexenkartothek

Badger, William and Purkiss, Diane (2017) English witches and SS academics: evaluating sources for the English witch trials in Himmler’s Hexenkartothek. Preternature, 6 (1). pp. 125-153. ISSN 2161-2196

Creators:
Badger, William and Purkiss, Diane
Description/Abstract:

Prior to WWII, Himmler organised a team of SS researchers to collate records of historical witchcraft trials that had taken place in lands of the expanding Reich. The ideological pretext for this undertaking was the collection of evidence demonstrating an anti-German crusade by the Church. While this was a figment of historical imagination, the SS pursued it doggedly against the backdrop of the Holocaust. Whereas trials that had taken place on historically German lands were often sourced from primary documents to which the researchers had access within Reich libraries, trials further afield were less rigorously sourced. Little was done to differentiate between primary and secondary or even tertiary sources. One SS source for English witch trials was a text by a German-Jewish literary scholar about witchcraft in Renaissance drama. Such critical indifference on the part of the SS is thought by some to render the archive of little interest, but examining the ideological underpinnings of Nazi reception of these materials can help situate these researchers among the turbulent social and political structures of the Third Reich and its uneven privileging of the intellectual fringe. This also constitutes the first critical/biographical analysis in any language of the sources for the English trial cards in the catalogue.

Item Type:
Article
Official URL:
http://muse.jhu.edu/article/653126
Date:
4 April 2017
Identification Number:
10.5325/preternature.6.1.0125
Additional Information:

Copyright © 2016 The Pennsylvania State University. This is the accepted manuscript version of the article. The final version is available online at: http://muse.jhu.edu/article/653126

Uncontrolled Keywords or tags :
witchcraft, Nazism and the occult, Hexenkartothek, Himmler, witch trials, witch-cult in Europe
Schools:
School of Film, Media & Performing Arts
Related URLs:
Depositing User:
Amy Robinson
Date Deposited:
23 Feb 2017 16:00
Last Modified:
01 Mar 2022 08:50
URI:
https://research.uca.ac.uk/id/eprint/3283

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