Barbara Zdunk, the last witch burned in Europe-1811

[OotKust]

Well, if you want a fantasy element amongst ‘real’ gaming, probably doesn’t get better than this.

https://revolutionsehri.wordpress.com/2018/08/25/barbara-zdunk-la-derniere-sorciere-brulee-en-europe/

A reliable source with some strangely Napoleonic but then medieval flavour-

We are in the far East Prussia, not far from the town of Bartoszyce, now in Poland… Prussian town since the arrival of the Teutonic Knights in the region in the Eleventh and Twelfth century, this small town peaceful, gave birth to Barbara Urbana (Zdunk), around 1769…

Her life turned upside down as a fire destroyed the city of Reszel (night of September 16-17, 1807), the authorities searched for a culprit, and threw their attention at Barbara Zdunk. As is often the case, the population needed a culprit, someone offers one of them in the person of Barbara, witnesses said they saw roaming in the vicinity of the fire. She was thrown into a dungeon of Castle…

And so the sad story goes… the translators do not get the pronouns correct no matter that a ‘witch’ is female, so I;ve had to adjust some to what I think they were writing:

The executioner hanged her himself before her torture [?], and her body was burned on a hill not far from the city on August 21, 1811.
There was no evidence against her, [and] that historians have concluded that the fire was possibly due to the Polish of the soldiers of the Grand Army [but this is also discounted as few recognisable Poles were about in 1806…].

A following thread gives details likewise of a Yorkshire women who suffered the same fate in 1809. Mary Bateman, who was born in 1768, had a ‘career’ quite similar. From Asenby, in Yorkshire.
In a fairytale ghoulish twist it is noted:

For the story, her skeleton remained the object of public curiosity… until 2015, exhibited in the museum of Leeds, before it is finally removed from exhibition and was entrusted to the local university.

Yikes!

regards
==davew==

[Guy Farrish]

Never heard that story. Fascinating and horrible.

(The gender bit – son supplice, son jugement’, son corps for example – all relate to the ‘gender’ of the nouns – the torture, the judgement, the body, which are all ‘masculine’ not the gender of the subject. ‘She’ was undoubtedly a female and ‘witch’ is ‘la sorciere’ but the auto translators do, as you say, default to the masculine ‘his’ if there is no further info.

If you want  to test it you can take the ‘l’ from ‘l’etrangla’ and insert ‘la sorciere’ after etrangla in the following  and it miraculously gets the picture and inserts ‘her’ in the relevant bits:  ‘Le bourreau l’étrangla avant son supplice, et son corps fut brûlé sur une colline non loin de la ville, le 21 août 1811.’

Best answer I suppose is not to rely on auto translators! But they can be helpful.)

Thanks for posting. Must be a good/horrible story to be made from that – or possibly a scenario for one of Patrice’s games – maybe with a less unpleasant ending.

[Not Connard Sage]

‘Le bourreau l’étrangla avant son supplice, et son corps fut brûlé sur une colline non loin de la ville, le 21 août 1811.’

The executioner hanged her himself before her torture [?], and her body was burned on a hill not far from the city on August 21, 1811.

That translates as ‘The executioner [bourreau] strangled [l’étrangla] her before her ordeal [supplice], and her body was burned on a hill not far from the city on August 21, 1811.’

And the gender isn’t ‘wrong’, unless the executioner was female 🙂

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[Guy Farrish]

True, that’s what I was getting at in my long winded way.

When I read Dave’s link I realised it was probably an auto translator that had thrown him. Sure enough if you use Google translate for example it defaults to ‘him’. So using our test piece you get:

‘The executioner strangled him before his torture, and his body was burned on a hill not far from the city, on August 21, 1811’. (actual auto translate just done).

Which is obviously wrong and shows you AI needs a lot more hand holding yet! To be fair it needs context.

[Not Connard Sage]

It’ll be fine once it masters context 🙂

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[OotKust]

Thanks for the education guys.
My French after 40 years is purely militarily based and I can’t conjugate to save myself. I’m probably very lucky I met indulgent French people in all walks of life in the 5 months I spent in France and environs doing my private research and history tour!

AS to why the ‘strangling’ didnt come out I cant say; I wasnt going to assemble it piecemeal as cognitive functions with flu for two weeks are seriously hampered.

I do use a pro-translator, not current AI in any form, which deals reasonably well with most of the European languages we encounter:
https://www.online-translator.com/

It also doesn’t make sense to strangle someone before torture does it? Except I suppose that this ritualistic legacy and the burning of ‘the body’ isn’t technically what I understood of this black ritual.

On the subject matter, it wasn’t habitual that the ‘invading’ French did such malice against potential allies either, so I think the deflecting or assignment of cause is sadly lacking. (Iberian peninsular excepted I guess).

cheers d

[Not Connard Sage]

OotKust wrote:

It also doesn’t make sense to strangle someone before torture does it? Except I suppose that this ritualistic legacy and the burning of ‘the body’ isn’t technically what I understood of this black ritual.

Context again, it was considered merciful. Only you can decide if it’s merciful to be strangled, rather than burned to death.

Besides, supplice is a word with many meanings. As I explained, the context here is ‘ordeal’, not ‘torture’. It could also be martyrdom, anguish, misery.

I recommend a Collins Robert French-English dictionary, like what I used 😉

Incidentally, in 1811 Reszel was in East Prussia (Rossel), not Poland. Witchcraft was not a capital offence in East Prussia in 1811.

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

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