Witches: Myth, Stories and Reality

The exhibition in the Historical Museum of the Palatinate in Speyer, Germany, deals with witchcraft, prosecution and society in the Early Modern Period. The exhibition tells this story chronologically and based on expressions by artists, legal proceedings, printed documentation, reconstruction of prisons, judicial practice, myth, folk magic, religion and ritual. Witches in Popular Tradition still exist today as objects but also as narrative elements in our rich tradition of fables. Special attention is paid to the Research into Witches During the National Socialist Era. In his so-called “Special Order on Witches”, Heinrich Himmler had the records of all witch trials reviewed and these witch hunts were supposed to be exposed as part of the Judaeo-Christian world view.