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Catherine of Siena: This icon of Catherine of Siena hung in the church of Lütgeneder and probably had a strong influence on Karoline Beller
Photo:
Erich Lessing / picture-alliance / akg-images
In the spring of 1845 Karoline Beller fell ill.
She had convulsions and stopped talking and eating.
The red-haired girl lay on a cot, opened her eyes and kept her arms in the air.
Then blood oozed from her hands and feet - without injuring herself.
Word quickly got around in the village of Lütgeneder.
Here, in the deepest part of Westphalia, lived almost 600 people who had been Catholics for generations and who listened to village pastor Anton Happe.
On May 18, he went to the girl's bed and said: Her wounds were stigmata, like those of many saints.
Karoline is a stigmatized woman, the Lord speaks through her body personally.
The news of the supposed miracle spread quickly.
Although the roads to Lütgeneder were so muddy that no stagecoaches drove here, hundreds of people soon flocked to Karoline's bed, from the neighboring villages and then from far beyond the borders of the then Prussian province of Westphalia.
Everyone wanted to marvel at the girl with their own eyes.
"Her eyes seemed to shine"
By July 15, there were 20,000 onlookers, reported the Mindener Sonntagsblatt.
In far-away Bavaria, the "Fränkische Merkur" reported: "Thousands of people besieged their house, crowded up to the windows and to their sick bed and did not allow themselves to be deterred by violence and beatings."
Master craftsman Franz Joseph D. from Gehrden near Hanover took a look at Karoline kneeling in bed: "The girl's features expressed a heavenly joy, and her eyes seemed to shine." sat as immobile as a stone statue ”.
Karoline Beller was one of many young women who were revered as stigmatized in the 19th century.
Reports of women with Jesus wounds appeared in many corners of Europe, by the dozen also from German-speaking areas.
The belief in miracles was a Catholic lay movement.
It was directed against the Enlightenment, secularization and Protestant Prussia, which had expanded its sphere of influence to many Catholic areas after the Congress of Vienna in 1815.
And so the bleeding girl from the village of Lütgeneder got into a power struggle.
Smart, beautiful and healthy
Karoline Beller, born in 1830, grew up as a half-orphan with her aunt in a dilapidated house on the edge of the village, as the historian Rudolf Muhs has reconstructed.
The girl was considered smart, beautiful and healthy.
However, her childhood fell at a tense time: In Westphalia, famine and epidemics drove many people into the soup kitchens.
At the same time, the Prussian central power tried to penetrate the country and encountered passive and sometimes active resistance.
In April 1844, Anton Happe came to Lütgeneder as the new pastor.
He was only 25 years old and brought with him ideas that Prussian officials considered radical, but parishioners considered pious.
In his sermons, Happe distanced himself from the Enlightenment and followed old customs with May devotions: In the blooming May one should be able to feel the presence of Mary especially.
This spiritual form of belief should make God experienceable in the present.
The pastor apparently impressed the then 13-year-old Karoline with his ideas: A few months after his arrival, she withdrew from village life for four weeks to meditate in seclusion.
During this time she read the stories of saints who, like Jesus on the cross, bled.
The best known of these stigmatized people - derived from stigma, the ancient Greek word for sign - was Francis of Assisi (1181–1226), who saw himself as following Jesus and, as a mendicant monk, preached renunciation and humility.
Only a few stigmata have come down to us from the Middle Ages and the early modern period.
In the 19th century, however, the number of people sweating blood increased, 90 percent of them women.
"In the Catholic world, suffering was considered productive and meaningful," explains Belgian historian Tine Van Osselaer, who conducts research on stigmatists when her hands and feet were bleeding.
No more »juggling«
The onlookers split into two camps: for some, the stigmata were proof of God's presence, while others were convinced that it was fraudulent.
The hustle and bustle was particularly displeasing to Warburg court director Ludwig von Beughem: When he heard about the case, he wanted to put an end to the "juggling" that was beyond state control.
On May 25, Beughem drove to the Westphalian hinterland to take Karoline to a hospital.
So he wanted to end the stream of pilgrims and demonstrate the state's ability to act.
But in Lütgeneder a crowd blocked his way to Karoline's house.
People did not want to let the girl go, "even if it cost them their lives," as Pastor Anton Happe reported.
Beughem turned helplessly to Happe.
But, according to Beughem's memoir, he is said to have replied: "Violence has priority, but I will only give way to the cannons." In the meantime, the representative of the state even considered using mercenaries against the community.
Before the situation escalated, the Paderborn bishop turned against the believers in miracles.
The church leadership wanted to prevent scandals in order not to be considered rebellious in Prussia.
In addition, the lay movement basically made the Catholic Church as a hierarchical men's union superfluous.
A clear mind was a man's business
"By presenting the signs on her body, Karoline did not need a clergy to mediate," says historian Tine Van Osselaer.
The women challenged the contemporary image of women, even though they presented themselves as chaste and humble.
Because they were often unmarried and were in public.
With the consent of the Paderborn bishop, the district physician Dr. Pieper to Lütgeneder to investigate the case. On June 1, 1845, he entered Karoline's room and diagnosed cramps in the spinal cord, but could not help Karoline: no leeches, no mercury tincture and no opium made the girl well. Pieper only speculated about the wounds that they might have been stabbed with a knife or needle.
Since the physicist could not find an explanation, he attributed the symptoms to Caroline's sex: "She is beginning to exaggerate the cramps, as every sensitive, nervous woman Zimmer usually does," he wrote.
For Dr.
Pieper was not a swindler - it was rather her "irresistible urge" to blame.
According to prevailing medical opinion, a clear mind was reserved for men.
So the medical officer could simply declare the teenager to be insane.
In the early morning of June 6th a carriage came to pick up Karoline.
Pastor Happe had to bow to the will of his bishop.
The whole village gathered in front of Karoline's house, some women and men wept when the carriage drove away with the girl.
She disappeared into the darkness of the night
It was a goodbye forever.
The Warburg hospital was like solitary confinement, because Karoline was no longer allowed to receive visitors.
Occasionally pilgrims came by, but were not allowed in.
Because the public gradually lost interest in her, the District Administrator Wolf decided to dismiss Karoline on August 25, 1846.
Condition: You are not allowed to return to Lütgeneder.
So she moved to her mother in the village of Borgentreich and lived there for the next 20 years.
Her convulsions and seizures continued to haunt her.
Only she was no longer considered a saint, but a confused one.
One morning her bed was suddenly empty: Shortly before Ascension Day in 1865, she disappeared into the darkness of the night, as reported by the Prussian Central Police.
It remained the last clue to the fate of Karoline Beller.