witch without end: examining depictions of witches in the

Witch without End:

Examining Depictions of Witches in the Contemporary German Novel

Braden Muscarello, graduating 15 May 2021

Franklin & Marshall College

Submitted to the Department of German, Russian, and East Asian Languages

GER 490

Professor Meagan Tripp

6 May 2021

Abstract

Witches have experienced a resurgence in popular culture, but what it means to be a witch, and

what witches mean to us, has never been more variable. By exploring the expressions of witch

identity through the characters of Mia Holl in Juli Zeh’s 2009 novel, Corpus Delicti: Ein

Prozess, and Medea in Christa Wolf’s 1996 novel, Medea: Stimmen, I elucidate what it means to

be a witch in the contemporary German novel, weaving together threads of history as well as

modern literary complexities. Using the structure of a self-made definition inspired by the shared

qualities of these literary witches, I compare the characters of Mia and Medea to each other and

the conception of witches at large. Furthermore, by analyzing these characters and their stories,

the witch’s larger and recurring role in society becomes apparent, as well as why she has

remained such a vital figure in stories that relate to human nature. Contemporary German

literature is especially suited to the telling of witch stories, as Germany has been a place of

radical change and historical significance for the past century, paving the way for writers like

Wolf and Zeh to use the witch to dig deeper into what scholar Monica Black calls Germany’s

“unprocessed past,” unearthing the recurring themes of the Middle Ages in modern life (A

Demon-Haunted Land).

From the Brothers Grimm to the works of Otfried Preußler, the figure of the witch has

been a mainstay of German literature for centuries. The witches we’re acquainted with today

through Harry Potter and the novels of Cornelia Funke seem far removed from the figures of ill

will and chaos that plagued communities as old as community itself, and yet, beneath the

trappings and wallpaper of warts, brooms, and wands, the “witch” has stayed largely unchanged.

She is, and always has been, an unwelcome harbinger of change, acting as a mirror for society

around her, reflecting cultural anxieties, preoccupations, and gendered expectations. By

examining the witches of the contemporary works Corpus Delicti: Ein Prozess (2009) by Juli

Zeh and Medea: Stimmen (1996) by Christa Wolf, I am able to derive a definition of the modern

witch in the contemporary German novel and use it as a guideline to compare these depictions of

the witch: a figure who lies between the rich history of her past portrayals and the original ideas

these authors bring to her construction, much in the way the witch herself lies between science

and magic, religion and disbelief. This framework of a definition not only lends itself to

comparison between Zeh’s Mia Holl and Wolf’s Medea, but to drawing larger conclusions on the

real-life circumstances surrounding the construction of their characters and exploring how each

witch is tailored to reflect the anxieties of the contemporary age.

There is a reason why the witch is such a recurring figure—and her narrative such a

compelling one. Within the witch narrative lie the stories of centuries; stories about a rebel

versus the regime, heretic versus church, witch versus mob, eternally occurring and recurring, as

spurred on by what historian Monica Black refers to as “the unprocessed past.” Distrust,

suspicion, and a central witch figure, who represents the uncomfortable truth necessary to

confront the past, take center stage in stories encapsulated by the social upheaval of the European

Middle Ages, but relevant to any point in history with a persecutor and a persecuted.

The German literary landscape is uniquely suited to telling this story. Witch stories are

what I describe as “post-something” stories, representing the pains of the ghosts of history. With

the backdrop of World Wars, a divided Germany, and the Cold War, Germany has been a “post-

something” country for the past one hundred years. Though not unique by any means in

possessing a plethora of these post-something historical periods, especially considering the

global nature of the post-9/11 anxieties under which Juli Zeh wrote Corpus Delicti, Germany is

the birthplace of many a fairytale witch as well as the infamous anti-witch treatise Malleus

Maleficarum and still holds a place in the modern imagination as a cradle of both witches and

witchcraft persecution. Therefore, witch discourse seems especially relevant when discussing

historical conditions in Germany, as well as the future that follows, which lend themselves to

being expressed through witch narratives. These novels, one about a witch of classical Greece

and the other a witch of a dystopian future, but both written under the shadow of the present, are

a part of this shared, repeated history of suspicion and distrust that plagues communities in

Germany and the world after earth-shattering events. Mia Holl and Medea of Colchis represent

not only case studies in how the contemporary witch is constructed in German society, but the

existence and wider role of the recurring, eternal witch as well.

1. Contextualizing the Witches of Medea and Corpus Delicti

In examining these depictions of literary witches, it is imperative to examine how their

construction relates both to the established historical framework of the word “witch” and what

new qualities Wolf and Zeh bring to these figures. Attempting to define “witch” in a

contemporary and literary context is a momentous task, as witches are generally defined by the

eras and societies they inhabit, whether it be by way of accusation or reclamation; the definition

is therefore ever changing, and a woman who might once have been labeled a witch could now

be better described using terms like “mathematician” or “pharmacist.” Thus, it’s important to

specify what exactly is meant in using this polysemic title. I have done this by examining the

cultural and historical connotations of “witch” in relation to the depictions of Mia and Medea

and, using both their similar and dissimilar qualities, have created a working definition through

which they can be compared as witches to their historical predecessors, literary models, and each

other.

The origins of the most common German word for “witch,” Hexe, date back to the Old

High German “hagazussa,” and though the term has taken on various connotations throughout

the centuries, it derives its meaning originally from “hazzen” (hassen) or, “‘the one who hates,’

‘the hostile one,’ reflecting in this way one of the most important properties of a witch, her

maliciousness and evil doing” (Madej-Stang 3). The original conception of a terrifying and

vindictive individual is still in the back of the modern imagination, and “up until recently the

word witch did not have a pleasant ring to it. It evoked childhood fears—we often called old

teachers whom we could not stand and whom we feared by that name” (Bovenschen 86).

However, in much the same way pirates have undergone a cultural softening, most individuals

don’t think twice about the historical horror of their children donning a witch’s hat for

Halloween. In addition to this new acceptability, or perhaps the catalyst for it, “the word ‘witch’

experienced the same transformation as the word ‘queer’ or ‘proletarian’: it was adopted by the

person affected and used against the enemy who had introduced it” (Bovenschen 86). With the

continued prevalence of the image of witch into modern day, what it means to be labeled as

witch, or even label oneself as a witch, has changed dramatically over the centuries, and

contemporary witches of literature, especially in a feminist context, demonstrate the two-sided

nature of this word, at once an insult and a pronouncement of power.

From “an evil-doer set to harm others out of pure spitefulness” to something more

culturally and politically nuanced, the definition of the word “witch” is variable and dependent

on context and intent (Madej-Stang 4). What it means to be a witch in Zeh’s Corpus Delicti and

Wolf’s Medea is therefore not a universal definition for describing the functions and qualities of

a witch; rather, I have derived this definition from the shared characteristics of the stated witch

protagonists while considering the common historical threads and established framework vital to

our contemporary conceptions of witches. This line of examination stems from the assertion that,

“In the image of the witch, elements of the past and of myth oscillate, but along with them,

elements of a real and present dilemma as well…In turning to this image, women do not address

the historical phenomenon but rather its symbolic potential” (Bovenschen 87). Bovenschen’s

claim provides for a framework definition that takes into account the importance of the past and

mythology, but also the necessity of exploring where, and why, contemporary witches depart

from their historical iterations. Simultaneously, by defining “witch” in this context, the

similarities and differences of these characters can be laid bare as they pertain to the witch aspect

of their identity, allowing a deeper examination of what this label means, what it can mean, and

what it doesn’t mean.

My definition for understanding the depictions of witches in the contemporary German

novel then is as follows: A witch is a woman who makes a patriarchal society confront questions

or decisions, which causes them to feel inferior or upsets the current balance of power due to the

presence of oppression in said society; she is simultaneously a master of the in-between, liminal,

though not necessarily mystical, pushes the boundaries of gendered expectations1 and rebukes

1 Witch studies and witch scholarship tend to deal mainly in the binary of “male” and “female” due to their

relationship to Christian history and subsequent gender-based persecution. As such, my examination of the subject

also deals in this binary when looking at the figure of the witch and her cultural implications.

efforts to be silenced. Rather than addressing the more folklore-oriented aspects, this definition,

as derived from both historical precedent and the shared characteristics of the literary witches

whom we are examining, takes the perspective of witches as political figures, targets of

persecution, and agents who threaten disruption to the status quo.

By examining the common gears that turn the fictive wheel of these stories, a basis for

comparison can be better substantiated and the nuances of a shared definition better understood.

It is therefore essential to contextualize Mia Holl’s and Medea’s identities as witches within their

respective novels before examining the characteristics and courses of action used to construct

their characters as outlined in my definition above.

Juli Zeh’s Corpus Delicti: Ein Prozess (2009) is first and foremost a book about political

oppression that takes place due to a state-mandated health code called Die Methode, which calls

for daily physical screenings and abstention from tobacco and alcohol, among other strict

legislation. Taking place in and around the year 2050, the novel follows Mia Holl, a biologist

whose transformation from a conformist to revolutionary is sparked by the suicide of her brother,

Moritz, after his wrongful imprisonment by the state due to a DNA test. Fighting a political

battle to expose the injustice of the system against Heinrich Kramer, a famous journalist and

defender of Die Methode, Mia finds herself the victim of a smear campaign and in the end, on

trial for terroristic activities for which she was framed.

Though rightly appreciated for its depictions of a mid-21st century Gesundheitsdiktatur in

Germany, Zeh also weaves the thinly veiled narrative of a witch story within Corpus Delicti. A

cursory search reveals that in creating Mia, Zeh follows a “historical model in particular, a

German woman with the same name accused of being a witch”—the witch in question being

Maria Holl (of which “Mia” is a Germanic diminutive), an innkeeper from Nördlingen who, in

1593, was arrested and tortured under suspicion of witchcraft (Seeber 384). The etymological

addition of her antagonist and persecutor, Heinrich Kramer, whose namesake is the Catholic

clergyman and author of Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches, 1486), as well as

continued allusive dialogue referencing witch hunts and the Middle Ages, makes it clear that

Zeh’s novel on the dangers of a totalitarian state has a decidedly witchy undercurrent.

Christa Wolf’s Medea: Stimmen (1996), a reimagining of Euripides’ Greek tragedy,

Medea, is also to some extent a political novel but deals explicitly with witches, as opposed to

Zeh’s subtle and allegorical inclusions. Medea, daughter of Aeëtes, who is the King of Colchis,

turns against her father and helps Jason the Argonaut steal the Golden Fleece from their

possession due to Aeëtes’ role in facilitating her younger brother’s death. After fleeing Colchis

and marrying, Jason and Medea settle in Corinth, where Medea and her Colchians are regarded

derisively as refugees. Due to Medea’s discovery of the dark secret of Corinth’s monarchy,

namely that King Creon had his daughter, Iphinoe, murdered to consolidate his dynastical power,

she becomes a target of malicious political maneuvers designed to vilify her in the eyes of the

Corinthians. She is branded a witch, a bringer of pestilence and famine, and in the end, is

abandoned by Jason and banished from Corinth.

Medea’s relationship to witches and witchcraft is explicitly stated throughout Wolf’s

eponymous novel. Jason, her disloyal husband who betrays Medea to her persecutors once the

political tide turns against her, remembers upon meeting her saying, “du bist eine Zauberin,2

Medea, und sie, unverwundert, sagte einfach: Ja” (Wolf 66). It is therefore hardly hidden in

Wolf’s Medea that the story deals in witches, and it would be hard pressed to conceal it; unlike

2 Zauberin and Hexe are often used interchangeably and both translate to the English “witch.” The only notable

difference is that a Zauberin tends to learn her magic from dedicated study and a Hexe is born with innate magic,

making Jason’s use of Zauberin here highly accurate.

the story of Maria Holl, the story of the original Medea of classical fame, popularized by

Euripides, is still widely known today.

Though Medea isn’t “historic” in the same way the underpinnings of Corpus Delicti are (the

former based on a Greek myth and the latter a documented historical event), both novels use

established stories to clearly communicate that the main characters are indeed witches, following

in the footsteps of historical precedent but bringing new aspects and implications to the stories as

well. Current scholarship tends to focus mainly on the political aspects of these novels, such as

Eckhart’s "Post-Wall Literary Reflections on the Concept of Utopia," which explicates the

political climate in which Wolf wrote Medea, or Seeber’s “The Tyranny of Health,” which

touches briefly on the allegorical aspects of the witch in Corpus Delicti but tends thematically

towards examining tyranny and body politics. Exploring the implications of the witch characters

themselves, however, seems a subject sorely lacking in scholarship.

The majority of academic texts on witches and witchcraft take place in the context of

historical persecution, and though there is a vast amount of scholarship in this realm, there is a

dearth of contemporary witch scholarship, especially as it relates to German literature. I therefore

choose to focus on what might seem an obvious aspect of these novels, but one that undoubtedly

deserves more attention than it has been given, as Wolf and Zeh both do something remarkable

in utilizing the story of the witch. By using the common framework the familiar figure of the

witch provides, these two contemporary authors expand upon and complicate preconceived

notions of what it means to be a witch, both entrenching themselves in the vast historical

tradition of witch stories and tailoring these characters to reflect the challenges of their own eras.

2. Comparing Representations of the Witch

I will begin examining these two depictions of the witch in the contemporary German novel

by expounding my definition as derived from the observable characteristics of both Mia and

Medea. Using the form of a definition to aid in comparing them to each other and historical

representations of witches, I am able to analyze not only how these characters operate, but how

they complicate and expand upon previous notions and definitions of what it means to be a

witch.

The first aspect of identity that Mia and Medea have in common as witches is that they make

a patriarchal society confront questions or decisions—especially socially disruptive ones. The

patriarchal society takes varying forms depending on each setting, but both Mia and Medea have

a dangerous inability to keep quiet about injustices. Medea’s society is more classically

patriarchal than Mia’s, which is to be expected given the time the novel is set in: “a period in

which the old goddess-centered religions are being overwhelmed by new patriarchal god-ruled

ones, in which kings are flouting the rights of queens” (Atwood xii-xiii). Though in the city of

Corinth rather than her home country of Colchis after fleeing her noble father’s wrath for helping

Jason steal the Golden Fleece, Medea’s adopted society is similarly ruled by a king, Creon, who

regards her as “zu schlau…zu vorlaut…zu sehr Weib,” indicating the prescribed gender

performance for a woman in Corinth, namely acquiescent and demure, which she refuses to

follow (Wolf 123). Medea is conscious of this male-dominated society she resides in, remarking

observantly to herself after seeing Jason cry, “Dafür werde ich zahlen müssen. Immer muß die

Frau dafür zahlen, wenn sie in Korinth einen Mann schwach sieht” (29). This of course relates to

the next aspect of the definition, making men feel inferior, but Medea goes much further with

this action than simply watching her husband shed tears.

Mia’s society, though seemingly more egalitarian, is run by the same masculine ideals

that drive Medea’s. Heinrich Kramer exemplifies this male-minded society in his pursuit of

furthering a smear campaign against Mia for questioning Die Methode, the strict system of

health-based governance that wrongly condemned her brother of the assault and murder of

Sibylle Meier based on a faulty DNA test. Mia and Kramer therefore find themselves locked in a

battle of beliefs: Mia, the “feminine” ideal who values the pursuit of emotional thinking and

Kramer, the “masculine” counterpart who abides by a code of strict and dehumanizing logic.

Regarding their positions on the opposite ends of the stereotypical binary in this political fight,

Kramer remarks, “Verstand gegen Gefühl. Meine prazise Logik gegen Ihre aufgewühlten

Emotionen. Man konnte fast sagen: Das mannliche gegen das weibliche Prinzip,” comparing the

“masculine” ideals of the society he represents and Mia’s new-found “feminine” way of thinking

that runs counter to it (Zeh 189). Though set over two thousand years apart, both Mia and Medea

find themselves as women in a society with little regard for both who they are and who they

choose to be.

Through their subversive actions, Mia and Medea attempt to force a reckoning with these

unpleasant aspects of life their systems of governance propagate; they both confront their

respective patriarchal oppression, as neither character can keep the injustices of these societies to

themselves. Medea herself is an imposing figure—as stated before, considered too much of a

woman, but also, “beautiful, high-ranking, reckless, intelligent and skilled, she cannot simply be

dismissed” (Atwood xiv). Her mere presence in Corinth might’ve been enough to disrupt the

status quo, but combined with being the quintessential “wise child who knows too much and

can’t keep her mouth entirely shut about the Emperor’s lack of clothing,” her knowledge about

the murder of the Princess Iphinoe as ordered by her father, King Creon, to ensure his grasp on

power proves to make her the target of malicious political machinations (xiv). She is unwilling to

ignore the lie this kingdom she finds herself in is built on, even if it means enduring life-altering

retaliation.

Unlike Medea, who from the outset reviles Corinth for the child murder the monarchy is

built upon, Mia takes time to turn against the wrongdoings of Die Methode in condemning her

brother for a crime he did not commit. Expressions of her blind faith in the state-sanctioned

health code are emphasized through her own confession to the Ideale Geliebte, her femininely

described but seemingly incorporeal companion created by Moritz as the “ideal beloved,” who

was gifted to her after his death. While sitting together in Mia’s apartment, Mia admits, “An mir

ist alles Vernunft. Schon in der Schule hat man mir beigebracht, jedes Problem von mindestens

zwei Seiten zu betrachten. Die Vernunft zerlegt alles in zwei einander widersprechende Teile.

Unter dem Strich der Rechnung steht null,” showcasing her embodiment of the masculine ideals

of her society before her transformation into the feminine witch (Zeh 146). This conversation,

which takes place after her brother, Moritz, commits suicide in prison, points to the first inklings

of self-awareness of her own blind faith in Die Methode. She uses the present tense ist in

referring to how she sees the world, and yet the mere existence of this train of thought points to

doubts as to whether her brother actually committed the assault and murder of Sybille Meier that

a supposedly infallible DNA test convicted him of. Only later does she find out that her

suspicions prove to be justified, and it is this confirmation of her brother’s innocence that turns

her into her story’s witch.

In Mia’s moment of transformation, which shortly follows the reminiscence of her past

logical steadfastness, Mia declares, “‘Ab heute... macht sein Name jede Vernunft unmoglich. Ab

heute tue ich alles aus Liebe und frei von Furcht,’” showing how she now runs against the logic

of Die Methode (Zeh 160). From this moment on, she is unwavering in her fight against Die

Methode and journalist Heinrich Kramer, who seeks to hold up the tenets of Die Methode and

paint both her and her deceased brother as terrorists associated with the radicals of Recht Auf

Krankheit. Asserting her unwillingness to be silenced in this manner, she tells Kramer, “Das

Richtige unablassig zu wiederholen, ist der großte unblutige Dienst, den ein Mensch seinem

Land zu erweisen vermag,” referencing the story of her historical model, Maria Holl, who

refused under torture to confess to her supposed crimes of witchcraft (Zeh 186). Though existing

in radically different spheres, both Medea and Mia serve as reminders of the injustices of the

systems they live under: Mia having lost a brother and Medea knowing an unspeakable truth.

Neither are willing to give up in exposing the hypocrisy and cruelty of their worlds and refuse to

be silenced by those in power.

Through their undismissible presences, both witches threaten to upset the current balance

of power, causing the men at the seat of government to feel inferior in their ability to influence

the direction of society. Medea knows the truth about the death of the Princess Iphinoe,

threatening to upset the legitimacy of the king’s power, but she is also accused by her former

apprentice, Agameda, of making Creon’s astronomer and parallel of Heinrich Kramer, Akamas,

feel “daß er es satt hatte, auf ihre Unfehlbarkeit mit gleicher Unfehlbarkeit antworten zu müssen,

um sich in ihrer Gegenwart nicht unterlegen zu fühlen” (Wolf 84). Because Medea makes

members of the patriarchal society she inhabits feel inferior, her adversaries are able to spin her

reputation from public-minded whistleblower into conniving foreigner—a truth most Corinthians

readily accept, due to her perceived arrogance and the unconscious connection between

foreigner, witch, and the broad category of the social “other.” This line of criticism continues

later in the text, demonstrating the constancy of the Corinthians’ indignancy with Medea.

Medea’s friend and supporter, Leukon, wonders after a mob of Corinthians chased her through

the street, “was gab dieser Frau das Recht, uns vor Entscheidungen zu stellen, denen wir nicht

gewachsen sind, die uns aber zerreißen und uns als Unterlegene, als Versagende, als Schuldige

zurücklassen,” directly pinpointing her essential role as the witch of this narrative (Wolf 225-

226). It is both the establishment’s fear that Medea will reveal the truth about Iphinoe as well as

their hatred for the way Medea makes them feel that drives the actions of this novel, eventually

resulting in Medea’s loss of her husband Jason, their two sons, who in this retelling are taken

from her and murdered by the Corinthians rather than her own hand, and her banishment into the

mountains outside Corinth.

Whereas Mia previously provided the governmental regime with a sense of superiority

over her as a compliant follower of Die Methode, she undermines this notion entirely when she

rebels against the totalitarian state, making Kramer specifically feel inferior through her ability to

speak heatedly to the masses; in this way, she upsets the balance of power in her world by

rejecting the rule of law on a public stage. Beginning by proclaiming such radical and anti-

Methode ideas such as “Ich kann Sex haben, ohne mich vermehren zu wollen. Ich kann

Substanzen konsumieren, die mich für eine Weile von der sklavischen Ankettung an den Korper

erlosen,” she eventually turns into even more of an anarchist while being on trial for terrorist

affiliation based on false evidence devised by Kramer (Zeh 78).

“Brennt das Land nieder, ” sagt Mia. “Reißt das Gebaude ein. Holt die Guillotine aus

dem Keller, totet Hunderttausende! Plündert, vergewaltigt! Hungert und friert! Und wenn

ihr dazu nicht bereit seid, gebt Ruhe. Ihr konnt euch feige nennen oder vernünftig. Haltet

euch für Privatmanner, für Mitlaufer oder Anhanger des Systems. Für unpolitisch oder

individuell. Für Verrater an der Menschheit oder treue Beschützer des Menschlichen. Es

macht keinen Unterschied. Totet oder schweigt. Alles andere ist Theater.” (Zeh 244)

This monologue calls for a direct upset to the current power balance in a way that seems highly

anachronistic for her sanitized and orderly society. It calls out the bystanders and enablers of the

system that killed her brother and, more importantly, it encapsulates Mia’s desire to enact change

in a lasting way. To a society that avoids pain and bloodshed at all cost, she calls to “holt die

Guillotine aus,” an object inextricably tied with the act of revolution, and to use it to enact

violence against hundreds of thousands. She closes her monologue with an ultimatum, namely,

that everyone under Die Methode must choose between silence, however they rationalize it, or

murder—complete overthrow of the system. With callbacks to plundering, violence, and general

unrest, this is Mia’s witchiest moment, and shows her rivals just how dangerous of a figure she’s

become.

While the oppression taking place in these stories has been previously mentioned, both

novels take it even further and actively persecute the witch protagonists. Both Medea and Mia

are put on trial, and in addition Medea is chased by a literal mob through the streets after her

good deeds are willfully misinterpreted to the people by Akamas and Mia is sentenced to

indefinite suspended animation (Einfrieren) for evidence planted in her apartment by Kramer,

only to have this decision reversed when it comes to light that this would fulfill her final wish of

martyrdom, undermining what little agency over her life she had left.

Leukon describes seeing Medea’s arrest for the crime of participating in the rabid

penectomy of one of her adversaries, Turon, of which she is innocent, proclaiming, “Wie könnte

ich diesen letzten Blick vergessen…nachdem man sie, wie bei einem Sündenbock üblich, durch

die Straßen meiner Stadt Korinth geführt hatte, die von einer haßschäumenden, schreienden,

speienden, fäusteschüttelnden Menge gesäumt waren” (Wolf 224). Fist-shaking, screaming, and

spitting, the mob’s hatred for Medea is physically manifested in their bodily actions,

demonstrating how deep-seated their prejudice has become. This riled-up crowd has been slowly

poisoned over the course of the narrative, convinced by the regime, and by their own hatred for

Medea, that she is responsible for the plague and famine in the city, despite working diligently to

both solve the food crisis and heal the sick. Leukon seems to be the only one who can recognize

the unjust nature of the mob’s hatred, not calling Medea a witch or a fool, but a scapegoat,

placing the blame for her persecution on the political strategies happening behind the curtain for

making her the target of the Corinthians’ fear.

Leukon goes on to remark, “diesen armseligen Mißgeleiteten, die ihre Angst vor der Pest

und vor den bedrohlichen Himmelserscheinungen und vor dem Hunger und vor den Übergriffen

des Palastes nicht anders loswerden konnten, als sie auf diese Frau abzuwälzen,” attributing the

mob’s hatred of Medea to a misplacement of their fears and anxieties, which had been

purposefully directed towards her by Akamas and Agameda (225). Worries about the plague and

famine in the city of Corinth were turned into an active and quite literal witch hunt by the

invisible political hand of those in positions of power, which turned the people of Corinth into

pawns in this scheme against Medea; in a way, this can be viewed as ironic, as the Corinthians

are seeking to free themselves from the influence of Medea rather than the politicians who are

the ones actually controlling them. Not only is Medea arrested in front of this foaming mob, she

is put on trial and found guilty, sentenced to banishment, and forbidden from taking her twin

sons with her. To make matters worse, her sons are killed by the very same mob that turned

against her before her arrest in order to fully cleanse the city of her presence.

Mia’s persecution arguably starts with the unjust imprisonment of her brother but comes

to a head after she is arrested based on false evidence and tortured in prison by Heinrich Kramer.

Rosentreter, Mia’s lawyer who initially proved Moritz’ posthumous innocence and is one of her

earliest followers, describes to her while she sits in prison how, “‘In [ihrer] Wohnung wurden

Bakterienkulturen gefunden. In Nahrungsmitteltuben…innen fünfzig Gramm Botulinum,’” (Zeh

209). This, as well as plans of the city’s water system, are enough to sentence her to indefinite

suspended animation. Quite opposite of Medea, Mia had built considerable public support up

until the point of this critical mass in the smear campaign against her. Through these actions of

persecution, Kramer not only turns the law against her, but the perception of the people as well,

leaving Mia completely alone in an attempt to fight injustice. Thus, in both of these witch

narratives, persecution goes beyond the abstractly political and becomes an activate rooting out

of opposition by nefarious means.

To turn to a more recognizable aspect of these witches as the witch of our cultural

imagination, both Mia and Medea are masters of the in-between and liminal, with Medea even

going so far as to cross into the mystical in her capacity as a healer and wise-woman—or in

Atwood’s words, “One step away from sinister witch” (xiv). While there are no wands or

cauldrons, Medea is a healer, and uses potions, such as the one she kept “In dem Beutel, den ich

immer bei mir trage, hatte ich blutstillende Pflanzenextrakte, die die Wundheilung befordern” to

heal Turon’s wound after his penectomy by some of her fellow Colchian women (Wolf 209). She

also worships goddesses of old with connection to the moon, and while attending a festival of

Demeter, she runs barefoot over coals and dances wildly while chewing on laurel (207). Through

these actions the modern reader is able to recognize the perhaps more well-known aspects of

witchcraft and subsequent ritual that marks witches throughout history. While Mia doesn’t deal

in potions or healing, it is noteworthy that she is a biologist, and therefore has a certain

relationship with both nature and the manipulation of materials to achieve an outcome in other

humans.

On the other hand, Mia’s relationship to the in-between and liminal is stated explicitly by

the Ideale Geliebte in a moment where Mia is still choosing whether to believe in her brother’s

innocence of the infallibility of Die Methode. Beginning by asking her, “Weißt du, was eine

Hexe ist, Mia?,” she continues:

“Das Wort kommt von Hagazussa. Die Hexe ist ein Heckengeist. Ein Wesen, das auf

Zaunen lebt. Der Besen war ursprünglich eine gegabelte Zaunstange.” “Was hat das mit

mir zu tun?” “Zaune und Hecken sind Grenzen, Mia. Die Zaunreiterin befindet sich auf

der Grenze zwischen Zivilisation und Wildnis. Zwischen Diesseits und Jenseits, Leben

und Tod, Korper und Geist. Zwischen Ja und Nein, Glaube und Atheismus. Sie weiß

nicht, zu welcher Seite sie gehort. Ihr Reich ist das Dazwischen. Erinnert dich das an

jemanden?” (Zeh 130)

In a way that denotes the depth of research Zeh went to in writing her witch allegory, the Ideale

Geliebte cites nearly word for word Madej-Stang’s scholarship on the origins of the word

“witch,” as referenced in the opening paragraphs of this essay. In this passage, the Ideale

Geliebte not only describes Mia’s indecisiveness in choosing whether to believe in her brother’s

innocence, she foreshadows Mia’s role as the individual, the witch, caught between life and

death, body and ghost. As well as tracking historically, keeping in line with and referencing what

Madej-Stang describes as myths of “mares who were believed to attack people at night and use

them as their horses riding them often to near death or death…perceived as souls of living or

deceased witches, and so their lore enriched that of witches,” the Ideale Geliebte deftly ties in

Mia’s inhabitance of the in-between spaces of her life and the historical significance of

“‘Zaunreiterinnen,’ in English ‘fence riders,’ witches who ride on people across the fenced

properties” (4). The realm of the witch is the realm Mia comes to inhabit when she is sitting in a

bare prison cell, ascribing her brother’s spirit unto herself, releasing ownership of her body, or

when she is sentenced to death in all but name, then is ultimately released so as not to make a

true martyr of her. Mia walks the lines of belief and skepticism, agency and powerlessness, and

in this way proves to be the master of the in-between and liminal.

Medea’s in-betweenness is not so direct, and yet she too has a moment marked by not

fitting in any sphere correctly. She is neither a Corinthian, nor is she a lost, wild, and bewildered

refugee from her own country of Colchis. As Turon cuts down a tree in the Colchian women’s

sacred grove, as he believes they’re responsible for the ills befalling the city, Medea attempts to

cover the sound of his axe, as she fears what the women will do to him. Medea is met by force,

Die Frauen zischten mich an, hielten mir den Mund zu, ich sah ihre verzerrten Gesichter,

sie haßten mich, ich haßte sie. In einem Pulk jagten sie zum Hain, rissen mich mit, an

Oistros vorbei, der zurückwich, den sie nicht wahrnahmen, er packte mich, hielt mich

fest, ich machte mich frei, sah nicht, aber hörte. Hörte das Geheul der Weiber, meiner

Kolcherinnen, hörte den tierischen Schrei eines Mannes, dessen Stimme ich kannte.

Turon, das war Turon. Wußte, was geschah. Sie schnitten ihm sein Geschlecht ab. Sie

spießten es auf und trugen es vor sich her, während sie, besinnungslos, immer weiter

heulend, sich der Stadt zu wälzten. (Wolf 208)

Medea does not represent the Corinthians, as Turon does, in that she doesn’t help him to cut

down the tree. But she neither fully represents the Colchian women, whom she attempts to stop

from mutilating Turon, and with whom she has a true moment of alienation, describing how they

hated her, and she hated them in return. With her in this moment of the in-between is her lover

Oistros, who is also an outsider, as he comes from Crete. His presence and his actions of holding

her back from the fray of the Colchian women versus the Corinthian Turon underscores her

inability to conform to either culture, much in the way that he himself exists outside of Crete, but

also outside of greater Corinthian society. Medea is the in-between character, a noble, like those

from Corinth, but a Colchian, nonetheless. She fits perfectly in neither sphere, elevating her

witchiness from healer and potion maker to the more complex social misfit, reviled by both sides

of the aisle.

The literature on the historic duality and in-betweenness of the witch is extensive,3

marking it as an integral part of any definition of witch. In connecting the essence of the witch to

both nature and religion, Bovenschen writes:

In folk medicine, both black and white magic had their place: here both the wise and the

evil woman had her social function. This polarity did not yet correspond to the moral

duality of good and evil, a duality whose function was changed by Christianity. It

corresponded to the ambivalence of nature's effects on agrarian life: the good harvest and

the destructive drought, the healing herbs and the lethal mushroom. (102)

The witch, being at once a wise and evil woman rules both the “black” and “white” magic,4

capable of using her healing and relationship with nature to both heal and curse, bless and

condemn. Rather than being painted as wholly evil, in the era before organized religion began its

3 Scholarship on this duality starts as early as the 19th century. See Michelet, Jules. La Sorcière: The Witch of the

Middle Ages. United Kingdom, Simpkin, Marshall. and Company, 1863. 4 Bovenschen, writing in 1978, uses these racially coded terms to refer to the different uses of a witch’s magic.

However, as this itself is a type of othering, I will be adopting the terms “positive” and “negative” to refer to these

opposite principles.

incessant persecution of the powerful witch, witches simply embodied the ebb and flow of

nature, encompassing the principles of both life and death. It is from this historical fount that Mia

and Medea derive their middleness.

While both Mia and Medea use their positive magic gratuitously in order to heal,

convince, or otherwise positively change the society around them, they use their negative magic

in the form of cursing, embodying the mystical in their relationship to sickness, and fulfilling

their roles as witches by existing between the principles of both health and illness.

Mia’s relationship to sickness is undoubtedly more consequential, as her entire society

revolves around maintaining the utmost health at every level. Returning to her apartment after

the trial proving her brother’s innocence, Mia shouts at her housemates, “‘Schaut mich nicht

an…Wer mich anschaut, kriegt die Pest! Tuberkulose! Cholera! Leukamie!’” (Zeh 156). Here,

she ties in a recognizably witchy characteristic, cursing someone, with more specific and named

diseases, tying in modern science with the essence of a witch’s spell. She continues with this

blending of disease and witchcraft a few pages later, proclaiming to herself, “‘Ich habe die Pest,’

sagt Mia lachend. ‘Lepra. Cholera. Ich bin krank. Ich bin frei. Krank. Frei’” (Zeh 161). Mia is

now the metaphorical victim of the same illnesses she wished to impart on her housemates

earlier, but complicates this “sickness,” perhaps sickness of the mind, to mean that she is truly

free. In a society where the radical terrorist group is called Recht auf Krankheit, this connection

is not a difficult one to draw. While witches might have a connection with sickness, it is usually

portrayed in the way Medea’s relationship is, and Mia’s combining of witchy mysticism and

illness seems to embody the setting of her Gesundheitsdiktatur society.

Medea’s relationship as a witch to health and sickness is much more “traditional.”

Glauce, the frail Princess of Corinth and new bride-to-be of Jason, describes a relationship

between the presence of a witch and the outbreak of a plague in society that makes a more

recognizable connection between witches and sickness. “Hörte ich Stimmen, die ihren Namen

zusammen mit der Pest nannten, die unten in den Armenvierteln der Stadt ihre ersten Opfer

gefordert hat,” she says, referring to Medea’s perceived relationship with illness by the people in

the poorer sections of Corinth (Wolf 152). Mia’s presence, it can be argued, causes a

psychological plague among the people, but Medea’s is suspected of causing actual death,

whether through deliberate curses or simple ill-will. However, Glauce also makes an observation

that deepens Medea’s relationship with sickness in the novel.

“Es war unglaublich, aber sie schien sich beinahe zu freuen, als dieser graßliche

Hautausschlag wiederkam, ich geriet außer mir, als er anfing, zuerst in den Hautfalten,

dann sich ausbreitete über große Teile des Körpers, ekelhaft, nässend und juckend, das

sei, behauptete sie, ein Zeichen von Heilung…sie zeigte mir die Stellen meines Korpers,

von denen der Ausschlag sich zurückzog, die neue Haut, die zum Vorschein kam, du

häutest dich, Glauke, sagte sie heiter, wie eine Schlange. Sie sprach von Wiedergeburt.”

(Wolf 152)

Instead of reviling a supposed sickness, Medea once again has opinions that run against the grain

of Corinth, referring to the shedding of Glauce’s skin (as caused by one of her poultices) as a

rebirth instead of something to be feared. This is a dangerous opinion, while, “As early as pagan

times, if a woman was found guilty of one of the crimes considered characteristic of witchcraft

such as…spoiling crops or blighting people and animals, she would have been sentenced to

death” (Madej-Stang 4). The usage of the word “snake” also seems worthy of attention, as this

ancient symbol, relating back to the rod of Asclepius in the same Grecian canon, is one of

healing that has been appropriated by Christianity as an emblem of satanic malice. Seemingly

“celebrating” sickness, Medea’s views on the effects of illness denote a relationship to it that

extends beyond being the harbinger of bodily ill will. Though representative of the classic witch

who curses those around her, she also has a positive perspective of illness and genuinely believes

it can enact change in a way positive to people and the community.

In examining depictions of contemporary witches, this connection to illness and plagues

seems increasingly relevant as the COVID-19 pandemic looms large, and the same conspiratorial

thinking that draws connections between women and witchcraft has reached a fever pitch in

varying aspects of modern political culture. It is in this type of complicated relationship seen

today between sickness and healing, fence-sitting and identity, and their intersections with

politics that Mia and Medea express their undoubted witchiness, existing in a realm disdained by

one side and rejected by the other. They are singular in their powers, pursuit of truth, and ability

to frighten and corral the public.

Lastly, both Mia and Medea push the boundaries of gendered expectations and rebuke

efforts to be silenced. The best perspective with which to examine Medea’s pushing of gendered

boundaries is through the eyes of her husband, Jason. After landing in Corinth and attempting to

assimilate, Jason finds himself embarrassed by Medea’s behavior and perceived arrogance,

remarking to himself how she, “bindet ihren wilden Haarbusch nicht ein, wie die Frauen von

Korinth es nach der Hochzeit tun…Die Unverschamte…Und lauft durch die Straßen wie ein

Ungewitter und schreit, wenn sie zornig ist, und lacht laut, wenn sie froh ist” (Wolf 67). Evoking

a culturally familiar image of a wild-haired woman, Jason connects the unkempt freedom of

Medea’s hair to her unrestrained personality, noting how her inner personality is boldly reflected

in her outer physicality. Similarly, he equates her with a thunderstorm, which is also an

unstoppable natural force that upends the plans of mankind. Once again, Medea has the audacity

to be herself—by laughing, screaming, and otherwise expressing powerful and genuine

emotion—in a country that wishes for anything but. She is the unashamed one, refusing to tie

back her hair or hide her emotions as other women are called to do.

Even at the end of the novel, Medea refuses to concede her fiery temper, refusing to be

silenced even in exile. In the mountains, she curses her adversaries, saying “Fluch über euch

alle…Akamas. Kreon…Ein graßliches Leben komme über euch und ein elender Tod. Euer

Geheul soll zum Himmel aufsteigen und soll ihn nicht rühren. Ich, Medea, verfluche euch”

(Wolf 236). Invoking the power of her own name at the end of her story lends a certain amount

of agency to her actions, as she claims personal and clear ownership over her decision to curse

her enemies. She becomes the evil witch the people of Corinth have accused her of being on her

own terms, reclaiming her negative magic and identity as a witch. To the last, she continues to

fight against those who have wronged her, caused the death of her children, and the dissolution

of her marriage. She is never broken, never fully repressed.

Similarly, even in her darkest hour Mia continues to represent the unbroken spirit of the

witch. Sitting in prison awaiting trial for alleged terroristic activities, she takes a needle,

smuggled in by her lawyer, Rosentreter, and gruesomely digs out the government mandated

health-monitoring chip implanted in her upper arm—where a modern day birth control implant

would be, seeming to reflect the intimate level of control under Die Methode. Giving the chip to

Kramer, she dryly quips, “‘Hier, Kramer. Ein Geschenk für Sie’” (Zeh 234). Her motivations for

ripping her chip out are to deny ownership of her body to the state, stating, “‘Der Rest bleibt hier

und gehort niemandem mehr…Vollkommen ausgeliefert, also vollkommen frei’” (Zeh 234).

Even locked in a prison cell she is able to find freedom and engage in an act of dissent,

producing the opposite effect Kramer had hoped for when imprisoning her.

And yet, as Bovenschen argues in “The Contemporary Witch,” “To elevate the historical

witch post festum to an archetypical image of female freedom and vigor would be unimaginably

cynical, considering the magnitude of her suffering” (Bovenschen 87). While it might be

tempting to paint these strong, assertive, seemingly unbreakable women as such, and only as

such, it is vital to remember the persecution of witches, and the deep accompanying trauma that

marks such experiences. Though both women escape with their lives at the end of their novels

(something neither of them wish for and which only serves to further rob them of agency), they

do not escape unscathed, and represent so much more than simple figures of noble strength and

righteous constancy.

The way Mia rebukes gendered expectation reflects the unique qualities of her world. A

future Germany, one where female characters are judges and scientists and active members of

society in their own right, seems to have fewer gendered boundaries than the ancient world of

Corinth. However, the rigid policing of bodies, the sexual assault and murder of Sibylle Meier,

and the laws requiring sexual partners be immunologically matched solely for the sake of

potential procreation are all aspects of this world that point to a deeply ingrained and institutional

sense of misogyny.

Kramer indirectly reveals the expectation of women to conform to male ideas and deny

their inherent femininity when he mocks Mia: “‘Da sind wir ja ganz das gefühlige Weibchen

geworden’” (Zeh 169). Noteworthy is his word choice to emphasize his derisive views of Mia

embracing a more “feminine” way of thinking when she denounces Die Methode, utilizing words

like wir as one might with children as opposed to the singular or plural formal Sie, as well as the

derogatory Weibchen.5 Ending with the diminutive suffix -chen, which serves to lessen a noun,

5Weib itself is considered a pejorative in referring to a woman in the modern era, much in the way the English

“wench” is.

Kramer utilizes a single word to strike effectively at Mia’s opinions and thought processes in

relation to her sex—she is not only a woman in a negative sense, she is a woman in a trivial and

infantilized sense as well. This implies the change Mia exhibits to a more feminine way of

thinking (“mit dem Herzen”) is in his eyes a reversion to a less enlightened, less objective way of

thinking, with inherent and negative connections to the “emotionality” of womanhood. His views

also mirror the values and opinions of their society at large, the same society that reveres Kramer

and Die Methode while condemning “free thinkers” like Mia and her brother to the category of

rabble-rousing. It is in this way that Mia rebukes the expectation of denying her own femininity

in her male-centered society.

Another commonality in the way both of these witches push back against gendered

expectation is through mourning the loss of their younger brothers, Moritz and Apsyrtus. Though

the loss of a brother, or indeed, sibling, isn’t a necessity to fit the label of witch, the act of

mourning a brother is the impetus for Medea and Mia’s witchy undertakings. Mourning a brother

can be considered a radical departure from gender roles, as it falls outside of the feminine grief

archetypes of widows and mothers, who mourn something that either came from their body or

was attached to their body; it also exists outside a power dynamic of spouses/parents, or at least

within a comparatively smaller one. Whereas “the ideology of motherhood, specifically in its

reference to matriarchal roots, reduces woman to her biological functions,” siblinghood allows

for a much less gendered exploration of personhood (Bovenschen 89). An oppressed woman’s

world is not typically radically changed when her brother dies as opposed to her husband or

child, and yet these witches push back against that notion, letting their grief for their brothers

take center stage in their stories. It is through this shared act of mourning their brothers that Mia

and Medea expand upon pushing gendered expectations, despite loss of a sibling not itself being

a specific stipulation to being a witch.

Medea, usually brazen and self-assured, is described by Agameda after she hears of her

brother’s murder at the hands of a religious Colchian cult (spurred on by her power-jealous

father). “Sie hockte in einer düsteren Kammer und schien nicht mehr dieselbe Frau zu sein,”

Agameda remarks, noting the change that has taken over Medea due to grief; continuing, “Sie

hatte geweint, jetzt war sie reglos, steif, sehr bleich. Sie umklammerte mit den Händen ihre

Arme, als müsse sie sich an sich selber festhalten” (Wolf 61-62). Highlighting Medea’s reaction

through her body language, this description shows just how deeply the death of her younger

brother, Apsyrtus, affected her, and continues to affect her and drive her actions throughout the

course of the novel.

Mia has a similar reaction to the death of her younger brother, Mortiz, though she

grapples with it outright for the duration of the novel as opposed to Medea’s grief, which is only

occasionally referenced when providing backstory. After her torture in prison, Mia is lying on

the floor in a bare cell, and speaks seemingly to the ghost of her brother, saying, “Deine Knie

seien mein einziger Stuhl. Dein Rücken mein Tisch…Dein Herz meine Nahrung, dein Puls

meine Uhr, dein Leben meine Zeit…Deine Stimme sei mein einziges Gerausch…Dein Tod sei

meiner” (Zeh 226). By repeating the back and forth from “dein” to “mein,” Mia emphasizes the

transformational nature of Moritz’ body and identity into her own, signaling a desire to be close

to her brother even after his death. Here, at the peak of Mia’s grief, she declares that his memory

will fulfill all her needs, his body will provide the information by which she will steer her life,

his death will be her death, thereby finally bringing them together beyond death. Both Mia and

Medea express intense emotion by mourning their brothers as emphasized by the physicality of

their reactions, engage in a radical act that puts their personhood before their womanhood, and

emphasize their countercultural nature and rebuff of gender roles as witches, thereby shaping the

last part of the definition of a witch in the contemporary German novel through this shared

characteristic.

3. Complicating and Expanding the Definition of a Witch

As stated earlier, it would be impossible to make one definition of what it means to be a

witch. Even in the subset of the contemporary German novel there are aspects of these characters

that complicate the definition, necessitating abridgments or explanations for their omission from

the overarching definition presented above. Mia and Medea are incredibly different figures, and

though they are functionally similar in their narrative roles, they diverge in unique ways from the

recognizable witch figures in our culture and possess traits that might not even be viewed as

“witchy” as at all.

Mia, for instance, is less affiliated with more “traditional” or stereotypical elements of the

witch, such as magic and weaponized sexuality, due to being a witch of the future. The closest

she gets to either of these is her career, a biologist, who might be viewed as a modern-day

magician, and a brief conversation in flashback she has with Moritz mentioning sexuality.

However, while she doesn’t weaponize her sexuality through embracing an identity as a sexual

being, she does exist outside the prescribed role of women; she has neither settled into a

heteronormative relationship nor seems interested in pursuing one, which seems striking for a

woman in her mid-30s. This “sexlessness” is in and of itself a radical act and can be considered

weaponizing sexuality against a regime that legislates based on the assumption that its citizens

will couple themselves with different-sex partners long term. There is no romantic partner or

love interest over which Mia can utilize stereotypical feminine wiles, giving her a more “sterile”

feeling (befitting, perhaps, of her Gesundheitsdiktatur setting) than Medea, who has both a lover

and husband. And yet, the choices she makes concerning her own sexuality are so outside the

norm of her society that they can be seen as radical actions of weaponization related to the more

recognizable ones of witches like Medea.

In a stark departure from traditional conceptions of a witch, Mia has frequent connections

to religious iconography, taking on the persona of a saintly, martyr figure to further her cause. In

prison she is described as looking like “ein gekreuzigter Engel,” as well using religious diction to

describe her position after tearing out her arm chip, stating “‘Vollkommen ausgeliefert, also

vollkommen frei. Ein heiliger Zustand’” (Zeh 190, 234). Not only do words like angel, holy, and

delivered denote a very Christian notion of selfless and sacrificial femininity, by associating

herself with them, Mia adopts a relationship to an institution that is usually associated with

intense persecution of people such as herself. Although seemingly opposite from the assumed

relationship with religion, Mia is able to decentralize the vestigial power of a religious institution

by co-opting its iconography and take ownership of symbols previously used to oppress. This

diction is then not contrary to her identity as a witch, but a part of the process of reclamation.

She finds an aspect of the witch within an oppressive structure and exists in the in-between of

religious association and her loss of faith in Die Methode, navigating the space between belief

and skepticism.

Although Medea exists in a pre-Christian world and can therefore have no relationship

with the church or Christianity, she too has an interesting relationship with religion, belonging to

the worshippers of the old moon-goddesses, like Artemis and Demeter, and sacrificing animals

in her role as a priestess. This aspect of Medea ends up being tied in with her sexuality, as Jason

finds her irresistible shortly after meeting her and observing this ritual, declaring to himself,

““Die Weiber aber fingen das Blut auf und tranken davon, und Medea als erste…ich begehrte

sie, wie ich noch nie eine Frau begehrt hatte…Ich mußte sie haben” (Wolf 65). This clearly

stated connection between religion and sexual desire serves to draw a parallel between the role of

women within a religious context and the role of women as conceived by men. In both cases,

there seems to exist strict rules and rituals as designated by a patriarchal society which intersect

in this scene with Jason. Though both Mia and Medea have connections with religion (and

indeed, many witches had a certain connection with religion, though usually ending on a stake),

their specific relationships are unique enough to warrant individual examination outside the

framework of the shared definition in order to come to any sort of conclusion on how these

relationships complicate their identities as witches.

With reference to the ever-present stake in the witch narrative, neither Mia nor Medea are

murdered by the end of their respective novels. Mia, originally sentenced to Einfrieren, is spared

at the end of her story, not out of pity, but as a calculated move on the part of Kramer to avoid

successfully turning her into a martyr in the eyes of the people. Medea is banished from Corinth

and not allowed to bring her sons with her, eventually retreating into the mountains surrounding

the city. Neither of the women are happy with this outcome, both preferring to have been killed

than served their respective fates. In this way, they are stripped of their agency both as people

and as political figures, having been denied the choice of choosing when and how their own lives

should end. Without becoming a sacrificial victim of the system, Mia’s transformation into a

witchly martyr is sabotaged and she is unable to assume the kind of death her brother had, further

separating her from him. Medea is equally denied death by the governing body, with Oistros

noting, “‘Sie muß es darauf angelegt haben, getotet zu werden, aber die Wachen hatten den

Befehl, sie lebend aus der Stadt zu bringen’” (Wolf 227). Medea is dragged from the city to live

out a punishment she doesn’t deserve, tortured by the weight of her own existence.

Setting a witch free after a hunt and trial seems counterintuitive to completing the

sequence of persecution, and yet these two novels, with their emphasis on witches as full

characters rather than simple archetypes, complicate this expectation. For Mia and Medea, the

greatest tragedy would not be dying as innocent victims, but rather living as innocent victims,

cursed by the governing bodies to live out their lives in the knowledge that they were

unsuccessful in bringing about lasting change. This is a rather contemporary notion, as it requires

access into the interiority of the witch figure’s thoughts to effectively communicate why this

denial of death is the final injustice, transforming the trope of ending on the stake to adapt to the

modern fears of social ostracization in increasingly connected global world.

One final way to explore the similarities and differences in these two literary witches

through the framework of the derivative definition is to pose the same question to both that

Atwood notes in the intro to the English language translation of Medea: “The question [Medea]

asks the reader, through many voices and in many different ways, is: What would you be willing

to believe, to accept, to conceal, to do, to save your own skin, or simply to stay close to power?

Who would you be willing to sacrifice?” (xv-xvi). To the latter question, Mia would answer

simply, herself. As the saintly witch, the martyr witch, she is more than willing to sacrifice

herself not only to honor her brother, but to bring down the system of oppression that murdered

him. For Medea, the question is more complicated; she would answer the society around her. As

the vilified witch attempting to bring truth to the masses, she is willing to sacrifice monarchy,

societal stability, and her marriage to expose the lies of Corinth. Though neither woman acts

with the motivation of staying close to power—rather, with the motivation of escaping and

collapsing the oppressive power structures altogether—they nonetheless act on something else

shared: a refusal to stay silent when they know there to be wrong in the world. How they go

about doing this, and their victimization and persecution for doing so, is different, but these

witches share the same inspirational spark and necessary traits to enact change.

4. Analyzing the Roles of the Secondary Characters

While both Mia and Medea are central to discussing depictions of the witch, so too are

the rest of the characters in their novels. Written in the recent past but fictionally set thousands of

years apart in vastly different societal settings, each novel provides representations of the

persecutor, defender, past victims, and confessor, in ways that reflect the societies they take

place in as well as the recurring and recognizable witch narrative. Zeh and Wolf use this

common cast of characters and tailor them not only to their fictional setting, but to mirror the ills

and anxieties of their real-life society as well. The German historical landscape, as well as the

current involvement on the world stage, makes it a country well-suited for the creation of witches

in its communities as well as its literature, and in both Corpus Delicti and Medea, the figure of

the witch, and her eternal recurrence, finds the intersection between history and modern day that

marks her as an inescapable symbol of resistance to oppression and injustice.

In a witch story, there is always a persecutor, whether it take the form of the Church, the

executioner, or, in the case of both Corpus Delicti and Medea, the representatives of government.

Both Akamas and Heinrich Kramer act as the victimizing forces in their novels, by way of their

disdain for “feminine thinking,” fabricating their enemies’ offenses for political gain, and their

lust for power. Notably, in monologues to the witch protagonists, they both make the claim that

what is useful is right and good. In an early meeting with Medea to establish his presence as her

opposing force, Akamas states, “Denn alles kommt darauf an, was man wirklich will und was

man für nützlich, also für gut und richtig hält” (Wolf 122). Medea pushes back against this

notion, the narrator remarking, “Diesen Satz bestritt Medea nicht ganz und gar, nur das wichtige

‘also’ in seiner Mitte lehnte sie ab. Was nützlich sei, müsse nicht unbedingt gut sein” (122). This

exchange shows ‘the differences in mindset between the persecutor and the witch. While

Akamas believes that something useful is good and right, and more importantly, that something

good and right must also be useful, Medea takes issue with this corollary, observing that what is

useful does not necessarily have to be good. Her contrary stance shows her skepticism for

utilitarianism in general as well as a value system that doesn’t equate utility with inherent

positive qualities.

Similar to Akamas, Kramer declares the subjectivity of the truth and states that clever

people judge things based on their usefulness rather than their objective validity. He tells Mia,

“Selbst vor Gericht ist Wahrheit eine subjektive Angelegenheit. Glauben und Wissen sehen

einander zum Verwechseln ahnlich. Man kann mit Recht fragen, ob sie nicht dasselbe sind.

Kluge Leute beurteilen die Wahrheit in Grenzfallen deshalb nicht nach ihrer Gültigkeit, sondern

nach ihrer Nützlichkeit“ (Zeh 107). This shared utilitarianism between Akamas and Kramer

depicts a performative shedding of emotions indicative of the patriarchal nature of their society

and their efforts to construct a flawless upholding of “masculine” ideals. The spartan practicality

is noteworthy in that it is found to be one of the values driving and rationalizing this attempt at

erasing Mia and Medea’s way of thinking. Though in possession of more commonalities than

just this dismissal of complex human emotion, the direct echo of Nützlichkeit between Akamas

and Kramer is the most emblematic of their maliciousness towards the more “feminine thinking”

witches, as it encompasses both the rationale behind their actions and the core of their

characterization.

Wolf further complicates the role of the persecutor by adding Agameda to Medea,

Medea’s former and embittered student who joins forces with Akamas in an attempt to

dispossess Medea of her power and status. Even though she herself is a woman, and even more

damnatory, trained in healing arts that could be construed as witchcraft, Agameda becomes a

persecutor and is instrumental in Medea’s downfall. Compared with the male-driven persecution

of Corpus Delicti, it seems unusual to include the betrayal of the female protagonist by another

woman, however, historical scholarship states that “comforting as it would be to think that

women did not adopt the beliefs about witchcraft, too many of them testified against their

neighbors for that to be true. Many more women were ready to point the finger at others than

were ever accused of witchcraft…” (Roper 10). By adding a female persecutor to her story, Wolf

challenges the stereotypical notion that men were the sole purveyors of harm in witch narratives,

and disrupts the oversimplified male versus female connotation that witch stories carry with

them, all the while pulling from historical precedent.

The defenders or supporters in these novels, Leukon and Rosentreter, are both well-

educated men with positions close to the nexus of government that prevent them from fully

speaking out against the persecution they witness. Leukon, King Creon’s second astronomer, and

Rosentreter, Mia’s lawyer, also have in common the loss of their lovers because of problems

related to illness. Leukon, whose lover was Arethusa, a Cretan and friend of Medea’s lover

Oistros, finds the body of Arethusa after she was struck down by the plague—the same plague

that Akamas convinces the people has been spread by Medea (Wolf 206). Though he doesn’t

believe this lie and maintains his support of Medea, Leukon cries over Arethusa’s body and is

inconsolable for a time thereafter.

Rosentreter also loses his lover, though not directly to disease. In explaining his

motivations for legally defending Mia, he tells her how he’s in the wrong immunological group

to be in a state-approved relationship with the woman he loves, as the offspring of the two of

them might contribute to the spread of disease (Zeh 98). Later, his lover takes moral issue with

his defense of Mia and so she breaks the relationship with him off fully. Like Akamas and

Kramer, Leukon and Rosentreter reflect each other in many noteworthy ways that are familiar to

the modern reader in the context of their role as the defender in the witch story—and yet, this

astounding similarity in their vastly different novels seems the most remarkable. As I’ve

previously discussed, Mia and Medea have a certain relationship to sickness in their stories that

is associated with their powers as a witch. By extending the effects of this power to their closest

allies, both authors test the loyalty of Mia and Medea’s supporters and deepen the personhood of

traditionally peripheral characters. Though Leukon stays true to the last, Rosentreter ultimately

decides to drop Mia’s case, and publicly states in court that he believes in Die Methode as a

system of governance. By emphasizing Leukon’s and Rosentreter’s losses, the victimization of

witches is explored through their defenders as well, expanding the range of persecution and

elaborating on the ripple effects of a witch hunt.

An additional counterpart to the defenders’ peripheral persecution is the figure of the past

victim. The younger brothers of Mia and Medea, Moritz and Apsyrtus respectively, are male

characters similar to the defenders in that they have also been caught in the far-reaching web of

persecution that surrounds the witch figures and those closest to them. They are the previous

victims of persecution, murdered by the same systems currently at play against Mia and Medea.

Their role serves to highlight the extended nature of injustice present in their patriarchal

societies, even towards men, as well as the same range of persecution that also impacts the

defenders.

Turning to focus on two female characters, Lyssa and the Ideale Geliebte (hereafter IG)

play the role of the confessor; both are figures used as foils to the witches as well as to carve out

a space for Mia and Medea to explain their thoughts and stresses. The existence of the IG allows

Mia to speak about her brother in a candid way, and just before the IG disappears permanently,

as she has fulfilled Moritz’s last wish for her of convincing Mia of the wrongs of Die Methode,

Mia instructs her to tell Moritz that, “Baumhaus ist, wenn man die Leiter hochzieht,

Bauchschmerzen kriegt von Kirschenessen, Vogeldreck im Haar trägt und trotzdem nie wieder

runterkommen will” (Zeh 176). Childlike in sentiment and reflecting rediscovery of life in a way

that mimics the wonder of childhood, Mia’s final statement to the IG focuses not on their own

relationship, but on demonstrating just how much her perspective on life has changed since

Moritz’s death. In this way the IG’s role as a confessional plot device becomes apparent, as the

larger part of her role in the novel exists in a capacity related to Mia’s relationship to Moritz.

As for being a foil to Mia’s witchiness, the IG admonishes Mia in an earlier chapter for

being a Zaunreiterin and encourages her to get off the proverbial fence. The IG is itself a

construct of male ideals for performance of femininity, and though spirited and defiant in her

own way, she is in essence an extension of Moritz himself. Although a rebel against the system

and perhaps a witch in his own right, Moritz was nonetheless influenced in her creation by the

patriarchal society he grew up in and his prevailing view of women as sexual partners. This

perspective is furthered by the fact that the IG is acting here in a traditionally feminine role of

caregiver and confidante and not as a co-conspirator in Mia’s witchiness.

Lyssa is Medea’s version of the IG. A Colchian woman who travels with Medea to

Corinth, she is Medea’s close friend and occasional caretaker of her children who functions in a

similar way to the IG as a confidante and caregiver. Not only does Lyssa draw baths of milk and

make barley cakes for Medea, she left behind the man she loved in Colchis to follow Medea to

Corinth (Wolf 31). The departure of men from the confessors’ lives not only serves to highlight

their devotion to Mia and Medea but also to place them in a more traditional context when it

comes to their relationship as women to men. The fact that they were a part of an accepted,

heterosexual relationship strengthens the juxtaposition to Mia, who in her mid-30s never marries

nor had children, and Medea, who though married with children has a separate lover and whose

spouse turns on her for political gain.

To recognize the roles and similarities of these supporting characters in Medea and

Corpus Delicti is to recognize the recurring nature of the witch story and these characters’ part in

continuing that tradition in a contemporary setting. While more implicitly rather than explicitly

definitional of the genre, both of these novels share in the centuries long heritage of using a

similar set of figures and themes to convey a story of oppression, outcasts, societal worries, and

social distrust. But why does the witch story continue to endure, and why do we see examples of

this recurrence in the contemporary German novel?

5. Examining the Authors and Their Use of the Witch

As a cultural landscape, Germany has been an ideal location for the creation of witch

stories for over a century. Witch stories, which are essentially stories of fear, distrust, and social

turmoil, “often erupt in response to abrupt social change and unrest …Fears of witches—and

thus witchcraft accusations—are more likely to surface in moments of instability, insecurity, and

malaise, moments very much like the ones that followed World War II in Germany” (Black 175).

To pull from the most notable example of recent German history, the aftermath of World War II

in Germany created a climate conducive to seeing witches in both culture and literature, due to

the radical changes taking place during that time. Summarizing the cause for this cultural

malaise, Black describes how, “The unprocessed past—not just the Nazi past, but also the period

of denazification—left behind a climate of bitterness and insecurity in places where witchcraft

was an available logic of social relations, a way of working out who was whose ally in a shifting

landscape of loyalties” (184). Though not unique to Germany, the world-shattering changes

brought on by war and societal restructuring created an atmosphere that fostered witch

accusations in communities through the 1950s.

This post-World War II era lays the groundwork for viewing the post-Wende era or even

the post-9/11 era in which Wolf and Zeh wrote their novels in a similar light. All the previously

listed periods have the distinction of being “post-something”: times defined more by their

relationship to the events of the preceding years than the ones at hand and by having to reckon

with the unexorcised ghosts of a certain cultural trauma. In what could be described a “return of

the repressed,” the witch appears as figure in these times due to an underlying sense of

unresolvedness and injustice (Bovenschen 85). Wolf and Zeh capitalize on these poignant

moments in modern German history when writing their witch stories, following in the footsteps

of early modern Europe in which, “Reformation and Counterreformation…famine…a huge

surplus of women, the pauperization and brutalization of large segments of society…resulted in

the highly explosive combination of circumstances in which…the campaign against the female

sex became possible” (95). The authors’ own explosive circumstances, governmental overreach

following the attacks of 9/11 for Zeh, who is both a judge and academic jurist, and the

dissolution of the G.D.R. and public backlash for being an “unofficial collaborator”

(“inoffizieller Mitarbeiter”) for the East German secret police for Wolf, led them to create these

contemporary witches to reflect the times in which they were written.

Though chiefly an American tragedy, the terrorist attacks of September 1st, 2001 had a

global ripple effect, imparting fear and insecurity to countries far beyond the borders of North

America. It follows that “9/11 literature should not be read exclusively in relation to US

literature but from international and transnational perspectives, and that its analysis should take

into consideration geopolitical issues associated with the ‘War on Terror,’” such as international

discussions on the reach of surveillance, domestic espionage, and privacy (Araújo 1). It is under

this shadow of instability that Juli Zeh wrote Corpus Delicti, which was originally published and

performed as a play for the Kunstfestival Ruhrtriennale in 2007. Although eerily prophetic in its

descriptions of increased worry about health and disease, especially from the perspective of a

post-COVID world, Zeh “hatte…keine Pandemie, sondern die Folgen der Anschläge vom 11.

September im Hinterkopf” (Zahner). Her focus within the pages of the novel isn’t the

restructuring of a society through illness, but questions of freedom, security, and governmental

power, which she weaves into the framework of a tyrannical witch hunt in order to use the story

of the witch to further her opinion that choosing security over freedom would lead down a path

of persecution.

9/11 was an incredibly traumatic historic event that created the ideal blend of fear and

mistrust for reinstating the relevancy of the witch. The terrorist attacks of 2001 “resurrected fears

and anxieties that were dormant but not dead,” lighting a cultural match and turning individuals

into the mob of their forebearers (Araújo 13). Capitalizing on the uncertainty of this cultural

moment for the majority of the world, Zeh revived the figure of the witch to critical acclaim,

using Mia’s fight against Heinrich Kramer to reflect and echo the fight against the perceived

curbing of freedoms— and tied it, via intertextuality, directly to German history, providing a

kind of precedent for her argument in this specific cultural context.

In highlighting another type of contemporary oppression, Zeh also finds fault in the

modern notion of the so-called “Fitness-Diktatur,” which through social and state pressure to

maintain a certain standard of health inspired the circumstances of Corpus Delicti (Gernert).

Undoubtedly a secondary concern, Zeh nonetheless uses the backdrop of obsession with health

and fitness to underscore her point about post-9/11 surveillance worries, relaying in an interview

how, “Es ist ja auch schon so, dass das Amt vor der Tür steht, wenn man zu den

Vorsorgeuntersuchungen für seine Kinder nicht geht. Ich wollte eigentlich sagen: Leute, stellt

mal diese Mentalität infrage! Überlegt euch mal, was für ein Weltbild dahinter steht!” (Gernert).

Combining medical and social governmental intervention in her novel (which simultaneously

undermines the authority of the witch as an agent of healing and independent social critic), Zeh

utilizes these parallel problems to further an agenda of questioning governmental authority and

motives in proclaiming that what they do is for the safety of the people. While noble in

sentiment, this line of thinking has unfortunately led to Zeh criticizing Germany’s lockdowns6 in

response to the Coronavirus pandemic and therefore problematizes looking at a work that was

meant to address the privacy concerns of a post-9/11 world and applying it to the questions a

global pandemic presents over a decade later. As a work in the context of the mid to late 2000s

however, it remains relevant in security and witch discourse.

Christa Wolf’s historical backdrop to her witch novel, though similar in instability,

relates more to problems with the German border and the small-scale aftermath of the Cold War

6 https://www.zeit.de/2020/46/corona-lockdown-massnahmen-pandemie-demokratie-perspektiven

rather than its wider and more general international concerns. Born in 1929 and living out the

majority of her adult life in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Wolf uses her

reimaging of Euripides’ classical witch to bemoan the dissolution of her socialist state,

confronting within the text of Medea “a clearly unjust postunification society with a vision of

what socialism in the East could have been” (Eckhart 592). Echoing the thoughts of many East

Germans absorbed into the larger German state after the reunification period in the early 1990s,

Wolf felt a deep sense of displacement and otherness brought on by the disappearance of a

country she had considered home. One explanation and interpretation by Georgia Paul in The

Novel in German since 1990 even goes so far as to say:

The novel appears to tell an allegorical tale of the arrogant disposal by the powerful

members of a capitalist and class-oriented Western society of the alien and more

primitive Easterners living in their midst. Furthermore, the tendency to read Wolf’s

fictional protagonists as self-identificatory meant that her Medea figure was read within

the East–West allegory as a representation of the author herself as the victim of a

concerted media hate-campaign in the post-unification period. (Paul 66)

Claiming Medea to be a thinly veiled allegory for the real-life situation with which Wolf took

issue in a reunified Germany, this interpretation paints the Corinthians as representing those of

the former West and the Colchian refugees representing those of the former East. If the East and

West are the warring communities, then Paul reasons that Medea is Wolf herself. Though I don’t

entirely agree with the explanation that Medea is a thinly veiled nonfiction, there is some merit

to the self-identificatory nature of the novel. The concerted hate-campaign the passage refers to

that reflects the hate-campaign in the novel is the public revelation and subsequent backlash in

1993 that Wolf was an inoffizieller Mitarbeiter for the East German Staatssicherheit, or Stasi, for

a period of years in the late 1950s and early 60s (Paul 64). The timing of publication in 1996,

after nearly three years of isolation from the public eye, lends credence to this interpretation of

Wolf using the witch story of Medea as a form of political protest, both against the ills of a

reunified society and the “witch hunt” she herself endured at the hands of the press.

However, I believe that Medea is more than just a self-insertive grievance with personal

treatment and strikes a larger chord within the anxieties of a post-Wende society. Dealing with

the chaos of assimilation both literally and fictively, Medea “both reflects and echoes” the

radical growing pains Germany was going through in the 1990s (Atwood xv-xvi). The liminal

geographic space of the German border lent itself well to the liminal mastery of the witch, and in

the same way Zeh chooses the story of the witch to speak to greater themes of the struggles of

humanity, Wolf paints a larger story than one country’s challenge with reunifying their society.

By turning to the framework the witch story allows, Wolf is not only able to convey her and her

former countrymen’s anxieties about the future and mistrust of their new neighbors, but tap into

a larger well of human nature—one filled with persecution, disbelief, and the struggle for power.

6. Implications of the Witch’s Eternal Return

Speaking beyond the page, the witches and characters in these novels make remarks that

undeniably tie their fictional world to reality. Medea makes an overarching observation on the

gullibility of human nature, stating, “Ich lernte viel an diesem Fall. Ich lernte, daß keine Lüge zu

plump ist, als daß die Leute sie nicht glauben würden, wenn sie ihrem geheimen Wunsch, sie zu

glauben, entgegenkommt” (Wolf 132). Similarly, Heinrich Kramer, in a monologue to Mia,

speaks about the path that led to the creation of Die Methode, as well as the post-9/11 political

climate when he says, “Man hatte jede Selbstsicherheit verloren und fing an, einander wieder zu

fürchten. Angst regierte das Leben…Was waren die konkreten Folgen?...Terrorismus…Chaos.

Krankheit. Verunsicherung” (Zeh 74). There is therefore evidence in both Medea and Corpus

Delicti that Wolf and Zeh use the witch story to reflect the historical backdrops, these “post-

something” moments, of their respective eras. The importance of the figures of the witch

narrative in this context is not so much what they say as it is that they’re the ones saying it.

Rather than invent a new story or utilize unknown, everyday characters, having a well-

recognized archetype of a persecutor deliver a monologue on the state’s justification for

increased surveillance codes the words in a way that subconsciously positions the reader to

oppose them. Playing off established roles of these characters in the modern cultural

imagination, and especially that of the witch, Zeh and Wolf are able to craft lasting and impactful

stories representing much more than the sum of their parts.

The witch figure and the witch story are chosen in particular to convey this literary and

societal duality, rather than the plethora of other mythological and magical templates available

such as the gorgon or siren, due to the perceived summation of human nature through the

contemporary perception of the Middle Ages—the time period we most strongly associate with

the figure of the witch. In some capacity throughout history, there is always a witch, and there is

always a church, paving the way to write a narrative on power struggles in any era. Similarly, the

female witch is better connected to this type of story (there were indeed many men also executed

for the crime of witchcraft) as her struggle against gender oppression is just as eternal as the

witch’s struggle against annihilation by the ruling body.

The story of eternal gendered oppression runs concurrent to the story of the witch and is

in large part the reason for its continued relevancy. Proponents of feminism have long found

identification with the persecuted witch, a usually female figure who is scorned by society for

propagating uncomfortable truths. Addressing gendered oppression’s part in the recurring witch

narrative, Bovenschen writes, “The past can still seem so close only because the structures of

gender-specific suppression appear to have remained so constant” (85). What lends believability

to the endless relatability of the witch are her unchanging circumstances rather than any one

quality. The oppressive past continues as the oppressive present, whether expressed through the

tribulations of gender, politics, or religion.

Referring to both her contemporary world and the futuristic world of the novel, Zeh

comments that “Ein religiöses Zwangssystem hat sich in ein areligiöses Zwangssystem

verwandelt,” recognizing the changing face but eternal essence of the symbolic power of the

Church, in this case, taking the form of a Fitness-Diktatur (Gernert). Kramer also directly echoes

this statement in Corpus Delicti when he explains to Mia that: “Erst nannten wir es Christentum,

dann Demokratie. Heute nennen wir es METHODE. Immer absolute Wahrheit, immer das reine

Gute, immer das zwingende Bedürfnis, die ganze Welt damit zu beglücken. Alles Religion” (Zeh

167). Religion, and its iterations, is the structure through which oppression is enacted,

contributing to the success of patriarchal rule due to a strict code of rules aimed at maintaining

and promoting an unjust status quo. Religion, Kramer claims, always exists under a different

name and plays the same role it did in our conception of the European Middle Ages. Someone is

always the witch and someone or something is always the Church; the invariable constant is the

struggle for truth and justice.

Medea also recognizes this eternal recurrence of the same, though in a more subtle

manner. In the opening pages of the novel, an unnamed speaker states, “Wir besitzen den

Schlüssel, der alle Epochen aufschließt” (Wolf 9). In explication of this sentence, the “wir” here

refers to a collective “we” emblematic of humanity. I choose to interpret the “key” as the

essential elements of human nature that lend themselves to all periods of history, thereby stating

in reading Medea, the reader becomes privy to this glimpse into classic and recurring elements of

the individual and collective psyche. The epoch in particular that is opened by this book (that the

book itself is the “key” to) is the Middle Ages, or the post-something epochs marked by the same

quintessentially medieval struggles of changing power dynamics, scapegoating, and frenzied

suspicion.

Summatively, and in a theatrical sounding exclamation that recalls the stage play origins

of Corpus Delicti, Mia declares to Kramer, “‘Es hat sich nichts geandert. Es andert sich niemals

etwas. Ein System ist so gut wie das andere. Das Mittelalter ist keine Epoche. Mittelalter ist der

Name der menschlichen Natur’” (Zeh 221). In these few sentences, Mia explains both the

inspiration for the eternally recurring figure of the witch and her reason for staying so relevant.

The Middle Ages represent the endless struggles of humanity as we keep cycling back to systems

of fear and violence, blame and oppression after times of deep social upset, markers of this era in

Germany as well as greater Europe. In stories like the ones Wolf and Zeh wrote, under the

shadow of social upset and communal finger pointing, there is always a witch and there is always

a Church; therefore, it is always the Middle Ages. The depictions of the witch in the

contemporary German novel are many-sided and complicated figures, encompassing ancestral

woes, present-day politics, and future anxieties. The fact that these two German authors could

reach both into the past and future, respectively, using the same cast of characters and a central

witch figure, is testament to the adaptability of the witch, as well as her unending nature, and the

eternal power of her story.

I don’t consider this claim to be a sweeping generalization of human nature—rather a

centuries-long fascination with witches, what they represent, and how they represent it. If

anything, it is a generalization of key aspects of the tumultuous nature of the ever-changing

periods of history rather than the individuals that inhabit them. I therefore disagree with the

claim made by Bovenschen that “the reference to myth is dangerous when it is used as proof of

the eternal recurrence of the same, thereby obscuring the difference between myth, history and

reality” (87). The line between myth, history, and reality is already blurred, as we are the creators

of our own myths, inventing stories that shape the world and later come back to shape us.

Witches exist as figures of history; they also exist as figures of folklore, legend, and literature.

These witches, especially the contemporary witches of German literature, problematize the

notion of binary thinking and highlight the presence of oppression even outside the literary

sphere, letting us tease apart the problems in our real-world society in a way that extends beyond

these particular characters. Mia and Medea straddle the line of myth and reality, as they are

characters of fantasy, but due to the social and political intentions of Wolf and Zeh, also

characters that reflect reality. As Margaret Atwood states in her introduction to Medea, “This tale

is about Medea, yes; but it is also about us” (xv).

It is easy to forget the historical legacy that led to the creation of pop culture icons like

Wanda Maximoff and the traditions of Walpurgisnacht, but to do so would be a disservice to the

personal and political gravity of the figure of the witch. Figures like Mia and Medea represent so

much more than simple fictional tales or didactic allegories; they represent a reckoning with

cultural trauma and stir up uneasy resonances with the modern day. Through the brutal view of

human nature exemplified by the Middle Ages, the witch remains a relevant figure in literature

and culture as a symbol of political resistance to systemic injustice, applicable to any world-

changing event that divides a populace into an us and a them.

Whether it’s looking through the lens of her gendered oppression that ties the witch so

closely to contemporary society, her actions as a whistle-blower, or the eternal era of turmoil that

she represents, the figure of the witch remains relevant, powerful, and unable to be dismissed.

She, and her accompanying cast of characters, provide the framework necessary to discuss

historical and social upsets in the German context, allowing for the witch to be constructed as the

voice for causes as far apart as rejection of post-9/11 surveillance and more just integration of the

dissolved state of the G.D.R.

But even more than mirroring and echoing the ills of society and the essence of the

Middle Ages, Mia Holl and Medea reflect what it means to be a woman who knows too much,

and what it means to be human in search of the truth. Analyzing these novels in parallel reveals

the constant and unending struggle of an actively oppressed individual that speaks in the form of

a shared cultural phenomenon but about the specific and tailored worries of the modern age. It is

vital to read these texts in a post-COVID world as catalysts for introspection on why division

happens in society, and who to hold accountable for the fractures. The figure of the witch will

continue to remain relevant for as long as injustice and disunion endure, undoubtedly making her

a cultural and literary mainstay for millennia to come.

Works Cited

Araújo, Susana. Transatlantic Fictions of 9/11 and the War on Terror: Images of Insecurity,

Narratives of Captivity. Bloomsbury Academic, 2015. EBSCOhost,

search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=1058171&site=ehost-

live&scope=site.

Atwood, Margaret. “Introduction.” Medea, Doubleday, 1998.

Black, Monica. A Demon-Haunted Land: Witches, Wonder Doctors, and the Ghosts of the Past

in Post-WWII Germany. Metropolitan Books, 2021.

Bovenschen, Silvia, et al. “The Contemporary Witch, the Historical Witch and the Witch Myth:

The Witch, Subject of the Appropriation of Nature and Object of the Domination of

Nature.” New German Critique, no. 15, 1978, pp. 83–119. JSTOR,

www.jstor.org/stable/487908. Accessed 10 Feb. 2021.

Burghartz, Susanna. “The Equation of Women and Witches: A Case Study of Witchcraft Trials

in Lucerne and Lausanne in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries.” The German

Underworld: Deviants and Outcasts in German History, edited by Richard J. Evans,

1988, pp. 57-74

Eckart, Gabriele. "Post-Wall Literary Reflections on the Concept of Utopia." Seminar: A Journal

of Germanic Studies, vol. 47 no. 5, 2011, p. 591-603. Project

MUSE, doi:10.1353/smr.2011.0053.

Gernert, Johannes. “Interview Mit Juli Zeh: Pladoyer Gegen Die Fitness-Diktatur.” Stern, 24

Mar. 2009, www.stern.de/kultur/buecher/interview-mit-juli-zeh-plaedoyer-gegen-die-

fitness-diktatur-3432820.html. Accessed 16 Mar. 2021.

Madej-Stang, Adriana. Which Face of Witch: Self-Representations of Women As Witches in

Works of Contemporary British Women Writers. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015.

EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e000xna&AN=1014759

&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Lyndal Roper. The Witch in the Western Imagination. University of Virginia Press,

2012. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=

484954&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Paul, Georgina. “Christa Wolf’s Medea. Stimmen (Medea. A Modern Retelling).” The Novel in

German since 1990, edited by Stuart Taberner, Cambridge University Press, 2014, pp.

Seeber, Hans Ulrich. “The Tyranny of Health: Juli Zeh's ‘Body Utopia’ Corpus Delicti: Ein

Prozess (2009).” Utopian Studies, vol. 31, no. 2, 2020, pp. 377–387. JSTOR,

www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/utopianstudies.31.2.0377. Accessed 26 Nov. 2020.

Wolf, Christa. Medea: Stimmen. Luchterhand Literaturverlag GmbH, 1996.

Zahner, Jana. “Lektürehilfe Für Die Corona-Krise.” Schwäbisches Tagblatt, 5 June 2020,

www.tagblatt.de/Nachrichten/Lektuerehilfe-fuer-die-Corona-Krise-459904.html.

Zeh, Juli. Corpus Delicti: Ein Prozess. Kindle. btb Verlag, 2018.

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