The astronomer before the court of witches

Heinrich died the following February – but his words were said and they stayed in the world. That should be confirmed very soon. Katharina’s youngest son, Christoph Kepler, who had achieved modest prosperity as a tin caster in Leonberg, got into an argument with a neighbor of his mother’s over unpaid bills. In the course of a verbal battle, he accused the woman, Ursula Reinbold, of a dissolute lifestyle. When the neighbor complained about this to Katharina, she in turn repeated the accusations of her son and raised “the town against Reinboldin,” writes the Kepler biographer Lemcke. The Reinboldin, however, who was evidently no less argumentative than the Keplerin, was now agitating against her elderly neighbor – and resorted to Heinrich’s remarks, among other things. Katharina was clearly a witch, she claimed. After all, years ago she had become sick and lame years ago from a potion the old woman had given her, and she was still suffering from it.

“This Kepler woman should lift his spell before I die,” demanded Ursula Reinbold and had the most powerful man in town at her side: Vogt Luther Einhorn was responsible for the judiciary in Leonberg and a friend of her brother. Soon the two men were quoting Kepler’s mother on the sidelines of a carousing party in the Leonberger Amtshaus and, at gunpoint, demanded that she heal the victim of her witchcraft. She was neither to blame for Reinboldin’s suffering, nor could she cure it, replied Katharina dryly – and went her way. But of course this did not resolve the dispute. Christoph Kepler and his sister Margaretha filed a defamation suit against Ursula Reinbold – of necessity at Vogt Einhorn. In turn, after all, he was no longer an impartial observer since the illegal questioning and threat to the Kepler woman, abandoned the lawsuit and the necessary court date passed several times.

More and more witnesses incriminate Katharina Kepler

On the other hand, in the increasingly heated mood, there were other alleged witnesses who, in turn, raised allegations against Katharina. The butcher, for example, thought he could remember that he had a pain in his thigh and that his vision was only blurred when Katharina just walked past him one day. The tailor was certain that the Kepler woman had bent over the cradles of his children, who were sick at the time, with the firm intention of killing them. The schoolmaster also remembered how pain had plagued him after the old woman had made him drink of her bitter wine. Another day laborer reported that his daughter was paralyzed after being touched by Katharina and demanded compensation. The Reinbolds followed suit in 1618: They asked for 1000 guilders, an astronomical sum.

Meanwhile, Christoph and Johannes Kepler and Margaretha’s husband, Pastor Georg Binder from Heumaden, wrote numerous letters and petitions to the responsible authorities in Stuttgart. In a letter to Duke Johann Friedrich von Württemberg (1582–1628) personally, the astronomer explained that the allegations against his mother are primarily based on “that she had to fight off common rabble for twenty-eight years, under whom she was without help and as A widow lived with her children, lived poorly, improved her country, defended her interests and at times got into all kinds of quarrels, annoyance and enmity ”. Now that she is old and frail, she is all the more in danger, since women who “in the opinion of the young, common world have lived too long” are among the preferred victims of those people who demanded in an unchristian spirit: “Only to the stake with the old women! “

As a young widow, Katharina Kepler stands on her own two feet for half a lifetime

To make matters worse, the ducal Vogt Einhorn, who was only appointed to his office in 1613, was overzealous as a newcomer. Indeed: in 1615 and 1616 alone, he had put seven women at the stake. By the end of his tenure in 1629, his balance sheet will rise to nine. The allegations against Katharina came at the worst possible time.

In fact, the Kepleress had raised her four surviving children largely on her own. She herself was born in Eltingen in 1547, which is now part of Leonberg. Her wealthy father Melchior Guldenmann ran an inn and, as the town’s mayor, was a respected man. Until her wedding, the daughter helped out in her parents’ economy, where she probably also met her future husband Heinrich Kepler – as the son of a man who had only recently been elected mayor of his home town, also a scion from a good family.