A Demon-Haunted Land: Witches, Wonder Doctors, and the Ghosts of the Past in Post-WWII Germany

by Monica Black

Overview

This account of German citizens swept up in a wave of supernatural obsessions after WWII and the Holocaust is "an engrossing story from beginning to end" (Booklist).
In the aftermath of World War II in Germany, a messianic faith healer rose to extraordinary fame, prayer groups performed exorcisms, and enormous crowds traveled to witness apparitions of the Virgin Mary. Most strikingly, scores of people accused their neighbors of witchcraft, and found themselves in turn hauled into court on charges of defamation, assault, and even murder. What linked these events, in the wake of an annihilationist war and the Holocaust, was a widespread preoccupation with evil.
While many histories emphasize Germany's rapid transition from genocidal dictatorship to liberal democracy, A Demon-Haunted Land places in full view the toxic mistrust, profound bitterness, and spiritual malaise that unfolded alongside the economic miracle. Drawing on previously unpublished archival materials, acclaimed historian Monica Black argues that the surge of supernatural obsessions stemmed from the unspoken guilt and shame of a nation remarkably silent about what was euphemistically called "the most recent past." This shadow history irrevocably changes our view of postwar Germany, revealing the country's fraught emotional life and deep moral disquiet, and the cost of trying to bury a horrific legacy.
"How do societies that commit monstrous atrocities recover from them? . . . Chock-full of colorful anecdotes and charismatic figures, A Demon-Haunted Land not only offers a brilliant rethinking of postwar German history, but also asks us to see the irrational as an integral part of modernity." —Boston Review
"Absorbing, gripping, and utterly fascinating . . . Beautifully written, without even a hint of jargon or pretension." —Richard J. Evans, The New Republic
"Vivid character sketches and keen psychological insights enrich impressive historical research." —Publishers Weekly
"Readers interested in German and Cold War history and cultural studies of religious and supernatural beliefs will find much to enjoy." —Library Journal

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250225665
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	07/02/2024
Sold by:	OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED - EBKS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	334
File size:	19 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Monica Black is a professor of history at the University of Tennessee and the author of Death in Berlin: From Weimar to Divided Germany, which won the prestigious Fraenkel Prize, among other awards. She lives in Knoxville.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Reading Signs
2. A Stranger in Town
3. The Miracle of Herford
4. Soul Medicine
5. Messiah in Munich
6. If Evil Is the Illness, What Is the Cure?
7. Sickness That Comes from Sin
8. Are There Witches Among Us?
9. Kruse’s Crusade
10. Dawn of the New Age
Conclusion
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index

Editorial Reviews

2020-08-18
Of witch trials, quack medicine, and millenarian terrors in the ashes of the Third Reich.

Given the fiery end of Hitler’s regime and the firebombing of Dresden and other cities, it’s understandable that ordinary Germans might have been apocalypse-minded in 1945. That was still true in 1949, writes history professor Black in this sometimes circuitous but well-paced account, four years after the Allied occupation and the division of the country into East and West Germany. In the wave of denazification that immediately followed surrender, old grudges surfaced in accusations of witchcraft and conspiracy theories. At the time, writes the author, German newspapers and kaffeeklatsches alike were also rife with rumors of the end of the world—not so far-fetched given the nuclear proliferation of the Cold War—and with revisitations of the old Norse stories of Ragnarok. Against this backdrop came one of Black’s principal subjects, a Danziger who changed his name from a Polish antecedent to the German Gröning—and who signed up for the Nazi Party years before the annexation, suggesting that he was looking forward to a comfortable life under Hitler. Instead, he grifted his way across the postwar landscape, engaging in a form of faith healing that yielded a string of faux miracles—but also a negligent homicide or two. (One of Gröning's tools, not surprisingly, was tin foil.) The German courts eventually restrained “Gröning the Wunderdoktor” from practicing medicine without a license along about the time he died and he and his victims were forgotten. Other memorable figures Black examines include a crusader who “had a way of popping up almost anywhere that witchcraft accusations surfaced” in a country where pharmacies still sold magical potions with names such as “devil’s dung” until legally ordered to use “ordinary German names.”

Though of specialized interest, an eye-opening look into a corner of postwar history that seems more medieval than modern.

Kirkus Reviews