Religion: Witches Abroad

On the bleak heathland of Schleswig-Holstein, since the war, witches have been abroad. In one village a woman has been accused of bewitching her neighbors' cows; schoolchildren in another village created a problem by ostracizing one of their classmates, whose mother, they insisted, was a witch.

Clergymen of the area tend to blame such doings on religious apathy. "Church customs have mostly become hardened forms of hollow traditions," says Pastor Wolfgang Baader of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. "He who does not believe in God must fear the Devil." But though authorities shake their...

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