“Praetorius’s world and his work were constructed of wonderment at the magical universe and of the speculations of the new science.”
-from Ways of Knowing in Early Modern Germany: Johannes Praetorius as a Witness to His Time (2006) by Gerhild Scholz Williams
Among Germany’s many legendary sites, the Brocken (formerly known as the Blocksberg) is most often associated with witchcraft and the dark arts. According to Kaspar Friedrich Gottschalck, the author of Die Sagen und Volksmährchen der Deutschen (1814), every single witch and sorcerer on earth would gather on its peak on the “dread Walpurgis Night” to participate in the grandest bacchanal of the year. Accompanied by a ghostly train of devilkin and horned beasts, they feasted, sacrificed, cavorted, and danced all night along. Their hi-jinks would stop only after the Master of Ceremonies–Satan himself–gave the sign. Then in a flash, the entire assembly would vanish in the dawnlight, dispersing in all directions to find “other windfalls until a future meeting”.
Gottschalck was one of many authors, such as the Brothers Grimm and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose conception of the Brocken and its reputed nightime cavalcade was primarily influenced by the Blockes-Berges Verrichtung (1668). Written by Johannes Praetorius, this famous text also includes a frontispiece depicting what’s arguably the most graphic and recognisable illustration of the witches’ sabbath in history. Praetorius himself–though not nearly as well-known as the Blockes-Berges woodcut–became a principal source for numerous writers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The Brothers Grimm, in a foreword to their eponymous fairyale collection, lauded his “perspicacious erudition”. Among other things, they declared that Praetorius was their “most significant written source”. Likewise, Heinrich Heine, in his “Elementargeister” (1836), admitted that “Good Old Johannes Praetorius” was “full of learning”. His Anthropodemus plutonic (1668), Heine wrote, contained not only “mere curiosities” but also traditions “important for the study of old German religious antiquities”. Der Abentheuerliche Glücks-Topf (1669), Praetorius’s tome on popular superstitions, also earned praise from Charles Godfrey Leland, who called it “marvellously curious and widly erudite”.
Praetorius was born in 1630 and studied at the University of Leipzig. After vying for a faculty position, and failing to secure one, he pursued a career on the fringes of academia. Keeping one foot in the library and the other on the open road, Praetorius gradually accumulated a vast amount of miscellaneous anecdotes and facts. Collectively, these became the primary source material for his manifold writings on folklore, astrology, demonology, and witchcraft. But Praetorius was not just a purveyor of strange tales; in addition to serving as an “imperial poet laureate” of the Holy Roman Empire, he also engaged in what could be described as semi-journalistic activity, producing regular, highly descriptive–sometimes sensational–“news updates” on global current affairs.
To learn more about Praetorius and his magical world, The Thinker’s Garden spoke with Gerhild Scholz Williams, Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Washington University, St. Louis. In 2006 she published, Ways of Knowing in Early Modern Germany: Johannes Praetorius as a Witness to his Time, the first major study on both Praetorius’s influences and his unique mode of news writing.
The Custodian: What first attracted you to Johannes Praetorius?
Professor Gerhild Scholz Williams: I had published a book on witches, Defining Dominion (MUP, 1995) and his name came up; I also was impressed by the wide reach of his writings.
C: In your view, would it be reasonable to describe Praetorius as a
kind of proto-folklorist?
GW: I can’t see the value in that. Why? If he was anything, he was a proto-journalist in the way he gathered news.
C: Who were Praetorius’s primary literary influences? As a storyteller
who was his desired audience?
GW: The seventeenth century was a century that was passionate about collecting news, stories, reports from distant places. He lived in Leipzig, at the university, one of the centres of news print and distribution, which gave him much material to use. Unlike [Erasmus] Francisci, he rarely mentions sources. His audience were educated/literate, not necessarily Latinate readers of all stripes.
C: Did his books on witchcraft have an immediate impact on German popular culture?
GW: I don’t think so, he was one of many who wrote demonologies at the time, quoting each other. His books were reports on unusual phenomena, and witchcraft was one of those that sold especially well.
C: You’ve said that Praetorius, in his works on popular beliefs, frequently constructs “geo-demonologies”. As you put it: “His basic assumption is that topography affirms demonology.” Could you elaborate more on this?
GW: Certain areas, like mountains, caves, etc. lent themselves to habitats of creatures, like witches, giants, dwarfs which he talks about at length in his Anthropodemus plutonic and elsewhere (like Blockes Berges Verrichtung and Ruebezahl.
C: Could you tell us more about his concept of magical beings? Who
were the mysterious “dragon children”?
GW: He does not have a concept, he simply describes, excerpts, and offers to the readers what he has read. He often mentions that he has heard something strange. He reports it as he has heard it letting the reader decide (like juxtaposing witches making weather and [Athanasius] Kircher’s reports on thunder and lightning).
C: Do you know if anyone is currently working to make Praetorius’s
expansive corpus available in English?
GW: No and no. I get enquiries now and again and I remember there was a dissertation being worked on, but I don’t remember the details. And no, except for my edition and translation of the Apocalypsis mysterorum Cybeles entitled “Mothering Baby”, ACMRS (2010), I am not aware of any, which is too bad, he is really an interesting writer.
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