An eternal light for Anna Göldi

On the 13^th June, 1782, Anna Göldi was executed for murder in Glarus and became known as the last witch in Switzerland. Her accuser was a physician called Johann Jakob Tschudi, who Anna had worked as a maidservant for, for some seventeen years. Tschudi reported her to the authorities for putting needles in the bread and milk of one of his daughters, seemingly via devilish means. According to documents found in local archives, after the eight-year-old girl fell ill, she began to have coughing fits in which she spat up pins.

Anna was arrested and tortured, under which she admitted that she had entered a pack with the Devil, who came to her in the guise of a black dog. She withdrew this confession when the torture stopped but was still sentenced to death by decapitation.

Rather than hold a ‘witchcraft’ trial, this was avoided by her charges being stated as ‘poisoning’ and the court protocols were destroyed to wipe out all allegations of pacts with the Devil having to be used as evidence against Anna.

Following her execution, there was uproar across Switzerland and Rome, the Holy Empire.

It took over 200 years after Anna’s dreadful death by decapitation, for the Swiss parliament (in August 2008) to decide to exonerate her for this crime, on the grounds that she had been subjected to an illegal trial. Jakob Tschudi, her employer, had falsely and maliciously accused Anna of this crime after she threatened to reveal their love affair. Evil as this was, Tschudi was not alone in this violation. The authorities at the time willingly accepted his accusations and zealously acted on them.

It was Fritz Schiesser, the representative for Glarus in the Swiss parliament, who, in 2007, called for this injustice to be recognised and now there is a memorial for Anna in Glarus, consisting of two permanently lit lamps on the side of the court house.

A plaque on the building's facade explains the lamps' significance.

“The memorial is an expression of atonement for the injustice that took place here. It will be an eternal light for Anna Göldi.”

Anna Göldi-Stiftung

Links

·        Anna Göldi / Göldin association and museum

Elyse - The Evening Wolf Stories - Chapter 4

It has been hard going these past couple of weeks. I wanted to get on with my next book, Elyse, but there has been so much happening in my life, it has been difficult to concentrate or find the time to write. I managed to read the last couple of chapters and do a few corrections but that is about all. Problem is, I need to remain in the flow of the story or I will have to start from the beginning and read through it, which I have already done once. The way it is going, I probably will have to do it again though.

Writing prequels and going back in time is not the easiest of things to do. As I am writing Elyse, I have to think about the previous book, Elisa (Elyse’s granddaughter) and also set the story up the next book after Elyse, which will go back another 2 generations.

The other difficulty I found in writing this series, based as it is on a family, is to have each main female character sufficiently different from one another; Elizabeth different from her grandmother Eve, who is different from her grandmother, Elisa, and so on. So far, I think I have managed that. In the first two books it was easy to do this. Elizabeth is a gentle and private person and put on by others. Eve on the other hand is a strong and fiery soul … no one would mess with her. She was as straight as they come as well, morally, whereas Elisa, her grandmother, had fewer morals and enjoyed her sex.

Elyse is different again and I am currently developing her adult character. In the book so far she is now 18 years old and just finding her womanhood. I have my thoughts on how she will evolve and it will be interesting to see if those ideas work. I usually have a few characters in my head for the main person in the book but it is not until they are set out in black and white, that I can see if I am happy with them.

As I go back in time, the women also have fewer scruples about the suffering of those who have damaged them. For example, it took a lot for Elizabeth to stand up for herself and even then, it is not clear how far she would go to protect herself. By the time I am writing about Elyse, she is still gentle but with a more calculating mind then her later female family members.      

          

So … back to my latest book. I hope to get stuck in on it this week and put a few chapters behind me. I woke up last night and had some thoughts on the next episode, so I want to crack on with that. Hopefully, I will be able to report back on my next blog how well I did with that.

My latest publication Elisa - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Elisa-The-Evening-Wolf-Stories-ebook/dp/B00Q1SWJVI