Elisabeth Plainacher

Elsa was arrested and taken to Vienna, where her case was overseen by the Jesuit inquisitor Georg Scherer.

Elsa Plainacher was born around 1513 as Elisabeth Holtzgassner in Pielamund, a small settlement near the town of Melk in Lower Austria, at the confluence of the Pielach River and the Danube.

Elsa married a third time, to a cottager named Plainacher, who probably worked a noble estate as a destitute.

Her landlord was Georg Achaz Mattseber zu Goldegg, and she herself was under the jurisdiction of the Volkert, Freiherr von Auersperg court administration.

Even before her death, she made her mother promise to take care of the girl, as Georg Schlutterbauer increasingly turned to drinking and became violent.

Schlutterbauer began by accusing his mother-in-law, who had converted from Catholicism to Protestantism in Catholic Austria, of being a witch.

The mentally disabled, epileptic, and pubescent 15-year-old girl at the time couldn't refute the suspicion herself and was considered possessed by the devil by those questioning her.

He gave a hate speech against witches in general and Elsa Plainacher in particular in front of St. Stephen's Cathedral.

In the cellar of the Malefizspitzbubenhaus on Rauhensteingasse in Vienna, the old and sick Elsa Plainacher was subjected to a terrible torture three times, during which she confessed to everything she was asked.

She was sentenced to death by burning at the stake and on September 27, 1583, was tied to a board attached to a horse's tail and dragged to the place of execution.

Her granddaughter Anna was placed in the Barbara Convent for Secular Women, which was located on Postgasse in Vienna's 1st district.

Georg Scherer died in 1605 when he was struck down by a stroke during a similar hate speech in the church pulpit in Linz.