Footnotes

• "Friederike Hauffe, the daughter of a game warden, was brought into the world in Prevost, Württemberg. She was an uneducated woman, who had read only the Bible and one songbook. Already as a child she experienced visions and presentiments. When she was 19, she was engaged by her parents to a man she didn't love. On the same day, a preacher who she had greatly admired was buried. During the burial service, "she died before the tangible world" and her "inner life" began. Shortly after her wedding, she became ill; she imagined that she lay in bed with the corpse of the preacher. She became involved with a succession of different "magnetism circles", during which time her physical illness became worse and worse. She suffered from spasms, catalepsy, bleeding, and fever, for which neither doctors nor alternative healers could find a cure. Eventually she was brought to Kerner, emaciated, deathly pale, with glazed eyes, her head wrapped in white cloth like a nun. Kerner tried at first to treat her with conventional medical methods, but noticed that each medicament, in the weakest possible dose, produced exactly the opposite of the intended effect. He next resorted to his "magnetic refuge", and the condition of the patient improved remarkably" (Ellenberger, 1973, p.128f) 2).
  
  Friedericke Hauffe impressed the local world with her various abilities. She received messages from ghosts, saw into the future, could move objects without contacting them and could speak strange languages fluently. The publication of her case study by Kerner provoked an exceptionally strong interest in Germany. Many people visited Weinsberg, among them such prominent philosophers as Görres, Schelling, and Eschenmayer, and were deeply impressed by the patient.

---

Category: Fine Art / Pictures

---

Auction terms and conditions