Where witches fly

Over the years I've collected quite a bit of of more-or-less interesting trivia about the Harz mountains of Germany, where my ancestors lived. Today I've been poking around in some of my old family history docs,  and gathered these for your edification -

Where witches fly
The highest peak in the Harz is the Brocken (1142m) known far and wide as the home of the Harzhexen (Harz witches). The witches, mounted on their wooden brooms, sweep across the sky above the Harz to their landing ground on the Brocken.

Long after the introduction of Christianity, the Brocken was the scene of pagan festivities on the Witches Sabbath, on April 30th each year. The witches were said to dance with the Devil until midnight, when the May King would arrive to clean them out. This was also an ancient Norse festival, for the god Odin married Freya on the last night of April.
Pagan beliefs survived in the Harz, perhaps due to isolation, longer than in any other part of Germany. The early Catholic priests tried to fit the festivities into the Christian calendar by renaming the feast ‘Walpurgisnacht’ after St. Walpurga, who was born on the 1st of May.

 The legends of the Brocken have inspired several musicians and writers, most notably Goethe’s ‘Faust’.  Walpurgis Night festivities continue to the present day, with parties and fireworks, not unlike the American tradition of Halloween, and many of the witches have landed in local tourist shops, hoping to emigrate to warmer climes.

Neanderthal Man was named for remains found in the Neander River valley at Dusseldorf, about 100 miles from Bad Grund.

Harz Roller is the name of a breed of domestic canary bred in the Upper Harz mountains of Germany. The birds were bred in the Upper Harz between Lautenthal and Sankt Andreasberg in the middle of the 19th century and achieved European-wide fame. Since 2001 there has been a Harz Roller Museum in Sankt Andreasberg.

By patient breeding a breed of canary was able to be produced that had a very pleasant, melodious song, full of variety and delivered with an apparently closed beak.

The breeding and sale of this popular breed of canary was an important secondary occupation for the mining folk as was the making of cages for the birds. Especially in the second half of the 19th century the business for these canaries boomed. In contrast to widespread legend, the birds were not used in the mines to indicate the presence of oxygen, they were too valuable for that. The Harz miners used captured wild birds for that purpose.


Miners in the Harz wore a kind of leather apron across their backs. Called an arse leather, the apron was thought to protect the kidneys, and kept their trousers dry, and cleaner.

Kate Greenaway illustration

Hameln (of Pied Piper fame).....is about 50 miles west of Lautenthal.  The Pied Piper of Hamelin (German: Rattenfänger von Hameln) is the subject of a legend concerning the departure or death of a great many children from the town of Hamelin (Hameln), Lower Saxony, Germany, in the Middle Ages.
The earliest references describe a piper, dressed in pied (multicolored) clothing, leading the children away from the town never to return.
In the 16th century the story was expanded into a full narrative, in which the piper is a rat-catcher hired by the town to lure rats away with his magic pipe. When the citizenry refuses to pay for this service, he retaliates by turning his magic on their children, leading them away as he had the rats. This version of the story spread as a fairy tale. This version has also appeared in the writings of, among others, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the Brothers Grimm and Robert Browning.

early Bobbin lace

Lacemaking "Here lies Barbara Uttmann, died, 14 Jan. 1575, whose invention of lace in 1561 made her the benefactress of the Harz Mountains."  In fact, Frau Uttmann, wife of a rich mining overseer, didn't actually invent lace, but learnt the skill from a Flemish exile.
 According to legend, bobbin lacemaking came to the German Erzgebirge in around 1560 because a refugee from Brabant found a room in the house of the family Uttmann in Annaberg. She is said to have had her lace pillow with her and to have taught Frau Uttmann how to make bobbin lace. Barbara Uttmann is then said to have introduced bobbin lacemaking into the Erzgebirge and invented the bolster-shaped lace pillow which is typically used there. Until the advent of machine-made lace, bobbin lacemaking a source of income for many women in the Harz villages.

 The Lichtenstein Cave  is an archaeological site about 10 miles to the south of Bad Grund. The cave is 115 metres long and was discovered in 1972. Finds include the skeletal remains of 21 females and 19 males from the Bronze Age, about 3000 years old. In addition, about 100 bronze objects (ear, arm and finger rings, bracelets) and ceramic parts from the Urnfield Culture were found.
 DNA tests on 300 local inhabitants showed that 40 of them were descendants of these Bronze Age people.
The Lichtenstein site is closed to the public, but the Museum am Berg at Bad Grund has an exhibition about 'the oldest family in the world'.  In addition the museum looks at life in the Bronze Age and displays a number of artefacts from the period.