Kepler's Witch (32 page)

Suddenly a letter arrived from the University of Bologna. Giovanni Antonio Roffeni, a philosophy professor at the university, had written Kepler about the death of the astronomer and mathematician Magini, offering the chair to Kepler. He quickly refused, because Bologna was a Catholic city and too closely allied with the papacy. At heart, he was a German and would never leave his country for another. Also, how could he give up the fight?

A year after Kepler's arrival in Linz, in 1613, in the middle of his entire struggle with the church, Kepler married again. She was Susanna Reuttinger, a twenty-four-year-old woman from the town of Efferding. Her father and mother were both dead, but they had been upstanding citizens—her father had been a cabinetmaker—so Susanna had a good reputation. Baroness Elizabeth von Starhemberg, the wife of Kepler's patron, adopted her after her parents had died and for the next twelve years acted as her guardian.

Just before his wedding he wrote to an unknown nobleman, possibly Peter Heinrich von Strahlendorf, and told him the entire sordid story of his courtships. The attacks from the church authorities were in full swing, and Kepler typically wrung his hands over his unhappy conscience. “Can I also discover God inside myself,” he asks, “the God whom I so easily grasp when I consider the universe?”
¹⁰
Were all his failed courtships not a sign of moral weakness? Maybe they were right about him. Maybe he had so many false starts because of lust, or because he was a fool and lacked judgment, or because he knew nothing. Then Kepler finds his feet and the rest of the letter goes on tongue-in-cheek. One can almost hear him: If I am a fool, then I might as well show it. Perhaps it was all God's will anyway.

Kepler had decided that he wanted to marry again only a few months after Barbara's death. There was a widow in Prague whom Barbara had introduced to Johannes before her illness. The widow had been a close acquaintance of Barbara's, perhaps even a friend, and as her illness deepened Barbara apparently recommended the woman to her husband as a suitable replacement. Shortly after Barbara's death, out of respect for his
dead wife, Kepler presented his case to the widow, who considered it quite seriously: “At first she appeared to agree; she certainly contemplated the matter, but finally excused herself most humbly.”
¹¹
This was probably a wise move on her part, because Kepler's interest in her was founded mostly on grief and on a sense of obligation to Barbara's memory. This is rarely a good basis for a marriage.

Apparently, there were enough people around who wanted to play matchmaker, so there was another attempt to fix him up. A woman in Prague offered him one of her daughters for marriage, a girl who was quite attractive, “the looks of the curent one and her pleasant face caught my attention.”
¹²
Still, there would have been hell to pay if honor had not been satisfied to the letter. Oddly enough, however, this pretty young girl was too educated for him. “Her education was more brilliant than necessary for me. She had been given more than her share of intellectual pleasures, and she is too young to take on household matters.”
¹³
Apparently, Kepler was not looking for an intellectual equal, but a woman to take care of his children and to run his domestic affairs. In the end, however, the choice was taken out of his hands, when the girl's mother decided on her own that her daughter was too young for marriage. After that, Kepler left Prague. On his way to Linz he stopped at Kunstadt with his children, and there he met a young girl who turned his head. “Here my soul grew warm. I liked the girl, for she was well brought up, the way I prefer it. She cared about my children with extraordinary willingness.”
¹⁴
They struck an agreement, and Kepler left his children with her, promising to return from Linz at a later time to collect them and to finalize their arrangements. Before the year was out, however, the girl had, not too surprisingly, become engaged to another man.

In Linz, the process started all over again. The first of the Linzer women was something of a dish. “I fell for her because of her tall build and athletic body, and it would have been settled, had not both love and reason forced a fifth woman on me.”
¹⁵
We should all have such problems. The fifth woman was Susanna Reuttinger, and he would marry her, but he did not know that yet. “This one won me over with love, humble loyalty, economy of household, diligence, and the love she gave the stepchildren. I also liked her loneliness and the fact that she was an orphan.”
¹⁶

But then, he actually listened to people's advice, which he shouldn't have done. Helmhard Jörger's wife preferred the dish athlete to Susanna and convinced Kepler to drop Susanna in favor of the other girl. Kepler was angry at this, but he did it anyway. After all, women know about these things. Then his stepdaughter, Regina, and her husband got into the act and recommended another woman, who came from the nobility and had money to boot. As Kepler said: “…and not without money, which was attractive.” But once again, she was too young for him, and he worried about her noble status, which he feared might make her proud and difficult. Besides, the wedding would have cost him a fortune. All the while, Kepler was still thinking about Susanna and remembering her presence, her voice, the way she carried herself, her kindness. She was in fact perfect for him, because she was intelligent enough to appreciate something of his work and supportive enough to help him continue on with it. But that didn't stop him from courting a seventh contestant, a woman presented to him by friends, who praised her sophistication and her skill in running a household. Another pretty girl, but Kepler's heart wasn't in it. Even as he courted her, he warned her about himself and revealed the doubts he had about her. He wasn't surprised when she refused him.

Then there was an eighth woman, and he liked her well enough. She wasn't pretty, but she would have made a good mother; she was honorable, with a good education, and had some money of her own. At first, things went well, but then the woman had doubts, and no one could figure out whether she wanted to marry Kepler or not, so he quietly backed away and found woman number nine. He was unsure; she was unsure—nothing happened. Number ten he didn't find attractive at all. He was thin as a stick, and she was short and round. Then a friend introduced him to number eleven. Once again, she was a young girl who was not ready for marriage, but the friend wanted to act as go-between and carried on the negotiations in secret. This went on for four months, but once again nothing happened. The girl was too young, as Kepler already knew.

Sick of endless rounds of dating, he prepared for a trip to Regensburg and all the while thought of Susanna. Before leaving, he rode over to see
her, declared his love, proposed marriage, and Susanna accepted. One can imagine that she knew he would come back all along.

The wedding took place in Efferding on October 30, 1613. The reception took place at the Sign of the Lion. One story has it that during the reception Kepler got distracted by the problem of inventing a new way to measure the amount of wine in a barrel and spent half the time in a mathematical haze. Because he was the imperial mathematician, he invited Emperor Matthias, who sent his regrets. He also invited the representatives of the Estates, who sent him a wedding gift of a goblet worth about 50 gulden.

When the festivities were over, everyone started complaining again. People did not approve of his choice. Regina wished that he had married the aristocratic girl, and she did not think that Susanna was capable of properly caring for Kepler's children, who were eleven and six. With time, however, Kepler and his new wife proved them wrong. His marriage to Susanna was far happier than his marriage to Barbara, for she understood him. For the first time, perhaps in his entire life, with his wife and children around him Johannes Kepler found peace.

Over the next fourteen years, Susanna Kepler gave birth to six children. The first three died as babies. Margareta Regina, born on January 7, 1615, struggled with epilepsy and died two years later on September 8 of a simple cough that turned into consumption. Katharina, born July 31, 1617, died eight months later, on February 9. She too caught a cough that turned into consumption or possibly pneumonia. Sebald was born January 28, 1619, and died from smallpox on June 15, 1623, on the Feast of Corpus Christi, the Body of Christ.

The last three children survived. Cordula, born on January 22, 1621, came into the world while her mother was visiting Regensburg. Then, two years later, Susanna gave birth to Fridmar on January 24, 1623, and finally, after another two years, Hildebert on April 6, 1625. Kepler liked the name Hildebert and chose it for scholarly reasons. There had once been an eleventh-century theologian by that name who wrote beautifully on the nature and importance of the Eucharist and was the first to use the term “transubstantiation.”

L
ETTER FROM
L
UTHER
E
INHORN
, M
AGISTRATE OF
L
EONBERG, TO THE
D
UKE OF
W
ÜRTTEMBERG
O
CTOBER
22, 1616

Where Katharina's trial begins, and she is horribly mistreated, and where Johannes must leave the emperor's service for a time to come to her aid.

A
FTER THE SHAMEFUL ATTACK ON
K
ATHARINA
, Einhorn moved to quash the Kepler family's slander case against Ursula. The Keplers expected their case,
Kepler v. Reinbold,
to come to court within a reasonable period of time, but because he was the magistrate, Einhorn was able to postpone it for over a year. His continuing disregard of the duke's order to proceed with the Kepler family's case against Ursula Reinbold during that time was surreal, a parody of justice, and can make sense, even politically, only if we consider that through Kräutlin, Einhorn enjoyed a secret behind-the-scenes channel of communication with the duke and his councilors. They were willing to forget his insubordination because Katharina's main supporter, her son Johannes, was himself in a stink with the Stuttgart consistory over charges of hidden Calvinism. There was talk that Johannes might be as guilty of witchcraft as his mother. Some industrious soul had dug deep into the Tübingen archives and found a disputation that Kepler had written while in school there, which later became his
Somnium,
or
Dream,
illustrating Copernican theory by imagining a
fanciful flight to the moon so the universe could be described from the perspective of moon people. Because in this tale, perhaps the first actual piece of science fiction, it was his mother who, through magical powers, summoned the spirits of the air to carry him to the moon, the wagging tongues of Leonberg assumed that this proved that the son too was a practitioner of dark magic.

Although nasty tongues could threaten a simple, stubborn old woman, there was not much they could do against the emperor's mathematician. In many ways, despite his loyalty to the duke, Kepler had outgrown his homeland and was too big a fish for them to spear. When he heard about this new round of gossip from his sister, he fired off a hot salvo to the Leonberg councilor and to the Leonberg Senate. In his letter (quoted in full before Chapter 1) he attacked the “devilish” people who had threatened his mother and used illegal means to terrorize the poor old woman into admitting that she was a witch when she was not. He rejected the talk about himself as one more intrigue to bring down his mother and then blatantly referred to his many years of imperial service, hinting not too subtly that they really should be careful, because he had the ear of the emperor himself. He demanded that the court send him copies of any documents they had gathered to date, and exhorted, or possibly even instructed, the councilor to do his job properly and to look after his family's interests. Then he soundly reprimanded the magistrate without mentioning any names. But Einhorn had no shame, and because of his powerful protection by the Prince Friedrich Achilles and Kräutlin, Kepler's admonitions meant little to him. He had little choice but to carry on, for he was afraid of being implicated in the events of August, when he and his dear friend Kräutlin had intoxicated themselves and threatened the life of Katharina Kepler with a sword.

After a year of Einhorn's stall tactics, the court in Stuttgart grew nervous. When the Reinbolds tried to postpone the case for another twenty weeks by “forgetting” to send their defense brief to the clerk, the judge, who had finally hit his limit, stopped the postponements and set the date as a
terminus peremtorius,
that is, no more delays.

Then the Reinbolds got a break. There was a woman in town, the wife
of Jörg Haller, who lived almost strictly on Ursula Reinbold's charity; Ursula threw her odd jobs and passed her name around town as someone who would work cheap. The husband, Jörg, was the son of the long-dead
Wasenmeister,
what the British would call a knacker, the man in charge of killing sick horses and disposing of them. Jörg Haller was a day laborer and alcoholic who had “chased his money down his throat” and from that point on had tried to support himself through theft, so that his family had the reputation of being “loose, thievish, and godless riffraff.”
¹
Jörg had only recently stolen oats and hay from a local dyer and had run confidence games; he would often contract for labor, get paid, and then not show up.

The sad condition of the Haller home caused two of their children to suffer from chronic illnesses. Frau Haller was terribly superstitious and spent a good deal of her time measuring other people's heads, which was illegal because it involved magic and fortune-telling. Her brother also dabbled in fortune-telling and sold snake oil on the side.

In October 1616, during the harvest, while the days were growing shorter and cooler and the townspeople prepared for winter, the local brick maker, Endriss Leibbrandt, needed some day labor. He was hiring young girls in town to carry baskets full of bricks to his new kiln and had already conscripted his daughter Barbara and about ten other girls, when he stopped by the Haller house to ask if their daughter Katharina could join them. Frau Haller agreed, because work was work and she could at least be assured that her daughter would get a hot meal that day. The girls gathered at Leibbrandt's kiln on October 15 and carried bricks, probably from around five in the morning to past sundown. Katharina Haller had been with them, carrying heavy bricks and limestone, and her muscles must have been tired.

At nine o'clock in the morning, the Kepler woman walked by, just as the group of girls had finished unloading their baskets of limestone at the kiln and was returning to the lime hut. The Haller girl was startled when she saw Frau Kepler and circled around her rather than get too close. Either her mother had said something to her or the gossip about Katharina Kepler had permeated everywhere, because the Haller girl was afraid
when she saw her and tried to run away. After Frau Kepler had gone, the Haller girl returned and carried bricks for another hour and a half, when her arm hurt. Likely, she had tendonitis and her arm did hurt, or possibly she was lazy and wanted to skip off work early. That was when she claimed that Katharina Kepler had hit her on the arm.

The brick maker didn't believe a word of it, but his wife did. He argued that the girl had just been frightened when she saw the Kepler woman and there was no evidence that old Frau Kepler had done anything, so he questioned the other girls to find out what they saw. All of them said they saw the Kepler woman walk by, but only one girl saw Frau Kepler hit the Haller girl on the arm. The Haller girl then said that the other girls didn't see the Kepler woman hit her, because they had already gone. Frau Kepler had returned after she had walked by and that's when she hit her. The brick maker refused to attach any significance whatsoever to the Haller girl's story, but his wife, possibly because he was so skeptical, believed every word. She went to Ursula Reinbold and told her the whole story.

Ursula saw her chance. She suggested to the superstitious Haller woman that the pain that the poor girl had suffered was the
Hexenschuss,
the witch's shot.
²
When her daughter's pain did not subside, Frau Haller took her case to Luther Einhorn.

Two days later, Katharina Kepler was carrying an armload of hay to her home. Suddenly the Haller woman stood in front of her in the street, just before the gate to Katharina's house, and demanded to know by what right she had beaten up her daughter, the poor girl who had never done her any harm. Katharina denied hitting Haller's daughter, saying finally that perhaps she might have brushed her lightly with her basket as she passed her on the narrow path, but nothing more. Suddenly the Haller woman became violent, screaming, “Help the poor girl! I demand you help the girl!” Still shouting, she advanced on Katharina, who slowly backed away toward her home, which made the Haller woman scream even louder, accusing Katharina of witchcraft and demanding that she come at once to heal her daughter. Katharina was finally backed up against the wooden gate of her house, still denying that she had done anything to the girl, so the Haller
woman pushed her so hard that Katharina fell against the gate, springing the latch, and then she stumbled backward, nearly falling.

The Haller woman stood over her, demanding that Katharina come at once to cure her daughter, but Katharina insisted that she had done nothing to hurt the girl, which only made the Haller woman more violent still. Finally, she drew a knife from her belt and screamed at Katharina that she would help the girl or die on the spot. Saying this, she advanced on Katharina once again and held the knife at her throat. To save her life and to calm the mad Haller woman, Katharina agreed to follow her home. Standing, she followed her out onto the street and then suddenly turned and called out for her son Christoph to come: “Help me please!” she said. “Just one more time!” Christoph appeared from the house and stood between the two women. He spoke sharply to the Haller woman and told her that if she had any accusations to make, she should do so in a court of law.

Luther Einhorn, spotting an opportunity, summoned Katharina to him two more times. On both of these occasions, the Keplers made some unfortunate mistakes and gave ammunition to the Reinbolds' camp. The first time Katharina and Christoph appeared, Christoph muttered some foolish remark to the magistrate about this being only a silly matter between women; he said that he knew that his mother was a pain, and if he could, he would just leave town and be quit of her. He never thought his mother was a witch, but neither did he seriously reckon the forces that were gathering against her. He did not realize when he spoke with Einhorn that the magistrate was set against his mother and had no scruples about misusing his position.

Katharina, however, was not much help. As with Johannes, it was her nature that once she believed she was in the right, she would pursue a dispute until she was vindicated. But she was also naïve. All this time, Einhorn was trying to keep Katharina's slander case against the Reinbolds from coming to court and was looking for any opportunity he could find to turn the tables on the Keplers. During her second visit, Katharina begged the magistrate not to report the situation to Stuttgart and to allow
her trial against the Reinbolds to come up. At this point, she did something incredibly stupid. She offered Luther Einhorn, who was already dead set against her, a bribe, a silver cup worth about 50 gulden, an act that would come back to haunt her throughout the trial.

On October 22, Einhorn reported the affair to Stuttgart in a letter, for this was his chance to divert the duke's attention from the slander case to the witchcraft case, which up until this point had gotten little notice. He related the Haller woman's claim and placed himself into the story as a witness, saying that the girl's agony started immediately and increased to the point that her hand was paralyzed. He also said that the Haller woman requested an investigation, though she fell short of accusing Katharina Kepler of witchcraft. Later on in his letter to the duke, he quite simply lied, making claims about the brick maker's story that were not so, saying that he called the brick maker and his family in to testify and that the brick maker and his wife told him that their daughter had run home with the story, but they told her to be quiet about it.

Einhorn here gives little indication that the brick maker had found the Haller girl's story dubious or that he believed she had made up most of it. Charging on, however, Einhorn relates how the Kepler woman had been under intense suspicion of witchcraft for some years, which was not entirely true. Moreover, a week after the incident, people saw the Haller girl in the forest cutting wood.

Einhorn then gets to the point—his point. For the first time, he has the opportunity to tell Ursula's story in a legal setting, to bring her accusations out of the shadows of gossip where they had been festering for years and into the well-lighted courtroom. “The wife of the local glazier, Jakob Reinbold, in her defense to the civil charges brought against her by the Kepler woman, swears to her death that the Kepler woman gave her a magic potion four and a half years ago. That potion caused her to suffer inhuman pain that could not be relieved by any remedy or cure. The trial date (for the slander case) had been fixed for last Monday in order to examine the witnesses; however, it was then canceled in light of the above developments.”

This was it. This is what Einhorn had wanted all along. At this point,
he played his trump card. “After this, the Kepler woman returned to the court for a third time solely to see me and beseeched me to refrain from reporting her to you, or at least to cause a delay or a halt. She wanted to give me a nice silver cup (unknown to her creditors, etc.), which she would promptly deliver.”

Einhorn needed to stop the slander trial and to insert the witchcraft trial for several reasons. First, the slander trial would have inevitably brought up questions about his own behavior; second, he was thoroughly entrenched in the Reinbold camp; and, third, if Katharina Kepler were convicted of witchcraft, then her property would be forfeit and, as magistrate, he would have control of its dispersal. On October 24, 1616, two days later, Einhorn got his wish. The
Oberrat,
the superior adviser to the courts, having been influenced by Prince Friedrich Achilles, who was in turn influenced by Urban Kräutlin, ordered from Stuttgart that the magistrate, Luther Einhorn, arrest the Kepler woman on suspicion of witchcraft, leave her in jail for a few days to let her fears work on her, and then seriously examine her. The use of torture was not specifically mentioned, but the threat of torture always remained in the background, a shadowy threat in any court examination.

After the order for Katharina's arrest came out, Christoph sent a letter to Johannes in Linz, informing him of their mother's dangerous situation. The two brothers conspired to get the old woman out of town and as far away from the Leonberg authorities as they could. They wanted to talk Katharina into immigrating to Linz, where Johannes and Susanna could watch over her and where she would be far outside the Württemberg authorities' jurisdiction. This would not have made Johannes's life in Linz any easier, to have a mother accused of witchcraft move into a house where the son had been accused of heresy. Nevertheless, to have Katharina move to Linz was the best of a number of bad choices.