The Diary of Caspar Kruse III, Executioner: Goslar, 14 April 1638 – Anna Middendorf – The Hands of the Widow

 The rain beat relentlessly against the windows of the Ulrich Chapel. The sky above Goslar had that pale hue you only see when spring refuses to arrive. My hands were dry from the ashes I had taken from the forge earlier that morning. The furnace for the iron had burned for hours — the sentence was already written, long before the pain began.

Anna Middendorf, widow of Thomas Schrader, was brought in first.
She stumbled down the stairs, held by two guards. Her left hand was bandaged — a wound from earlier interrogations. She had been imprisoned since March. The air around her smelled of mold, urine, and iron. Her eyes were dull. Not broken, but far away.

The accusation:
“Child maimed at birth.”
“Seen in the mist with a dead hen.”
“Wife of a man who once dealt with a witch.”
The pastor had called her the mother of devils. The neighbor said Anna had always been too quiet. Her niece had refused her at table. The council had heard enough.

I asked her:
“Will you speak before we begin?”
She lifted her chin. The skin beneath her eyes sagged like lead.
“I have nothing to say but what I have already said. I am a woman with empty hands.”
I laid her on the bench.
Jörg tied her ankles. Bastian took the straps. She did not struggle. I even thought she relaxed as the leather tightened around her knees and wrists. As if she surrendered to the mechanism of the inevitable.

The first turn.
The wood creaked.
Her shoulders began to tremble. No scream.
The second turn.
Her left hand, already bruised, began to bleed.
The third turn. Then she roared. Not an ordinary scream, but a raw, hollow sound like that of a beast at slaughter.
“The hen was dead! It was already dead! I didn’t kill it, I plucked it—”

I asked:
“Did you do anything to the child?”
She bit her tongue.
I gave the signal for the iron.
Jörg brought the rod, still glowing red from the furnace. I held it above her ribs, near the breastbone. The heat made ripples in the air.
She screamed. Her back arched from the wood. And then, at last, the voice of surrender:
“I wanted to baptize the child! The mother was already bleeding, I had no time, the water was cold, it slipped away, I thought it moved—”
She began to sob. Not like a woman, but like a child. A child crying for something long lost.

I wrote:
Confession obtained.
But I did not record how.
The pastor stood behind me.
He whispered:
“She is ripe for the fire.”
And I nodded — out of habit. But deep within, I heard something break. Not in her. In me.

The day ended in silence.
Anna was carried back to her cell. Her hands lay like wilted leaves in her lap.

Note (later that night):
Her eyes followed me. Even when she no longer spoke. Even as she slipped away. Even now, as I write this, I see her watching me. Not with hatred. Not with fear.
With pity.



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