BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

with the occult culminated in the “collective insanity” and debasement of law that extended
witchcraft persecutions throughout Germany into parts of Europe and beyond. 40
Drawing upon the fame of Paracelsus and the Faustian legend, Germany’s notoriety as a
place of witchcraft and demonic possession had received great impetus from the publication by
two German Dominicans of the Malleus Maleficarum or “Witches’ Hammer,” in 1486. 41 This
inquisitors “bible,” sanctioned by a papal Bull declaring witchcraft heretical, laid the foundation
for the classical conception of the stereotypical witch found in the dramatis personae of early
English witch stories and plays. 42 Herford attributed the negative shift in Germany’s reputation
partly to a comparative loss of literary and civic prestige as England made advances in
commerce, politics and literature, even supplanting Germany as the stronghold of Protestantism.
He also blamed English indifference to German political history and preoccupation with a
“literature of marvels,” prodigy collections and cheap leaflets advertizing “Wonderful strange
40 Rinehardt, Germany: 2000 Years, 265-68, cites Luther’s Explanation of the Monkish
Calf of Freiberg in Saxony, published in 1522, Melanchthon’s The Popish Ass in Rome, and the
raft of Teufels-literatur generated by Lutheran preoccupation with the devil. According to
Rinehardt, witch persecution in Germany claimed 100,000 German victims. Norman Davies,
Europe: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 567, mentions the marked
susceptibility of Germany and the Alps to this form of collective hysteria and oppression.
41 Paracelsus or Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (1493-
1541) earned his reputation for wizardry as a Swiss alchemist and extraordinarily gifted
physician. See Davies, Europe, 489. Doctor Georg Faust (1480?-1541), arch sorcerer, physician
and alchemist, later fictionalized as Johann Faust, claimed through his mastery of black magic to
have engineered the conquest of Rome in 1527. See Rinehardt, Germany: 2000 Years, 266.
42 Herford, Literary Relations, 220-23, 232-37, cites three Elizabethan works as examples:
Thomas Middleton’s (d. 1627) The Witch, Thomas Heywood’s (d. 1641) The Lancashire
Witches, and Thomas Dekker’s (1570?-1641?) The Witch of Edmonton. He also traces its
influence, and elements of Teutonic mythology (e.g., “the mystic Norns”), to Shakespeare’s
Macbeth (p. 236).
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