Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Nineteenth-Century Germany

David Blackbourn used the apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Marpingen in Nineteenth-Century Germany to illustrate the tensions and issues raised by modernity in the interplay between the establishment and locality. The advent of apparitions in late nineteenth century was coterminous with the creation of the modern states and industrialization. Located along the French border and without a history of political continuity, 1870s Marpingen experienced both agricultural crises and political repression in a largely Catholic region. With the steady closing of communal woodland and losing a substantial number of men to working as `miner-peasant,' the region underwent a `social transformation that created anxieties and uncertainty.' `In the majority of the cases, the seers were children or women' due to their `dependent or outsider status, as much as sheer poverty' and susceptibility to `emotional vulnerability resulting from bereavement or fractured family circumstances.' Hence, `the drama of the apparition offered a veiled means of protest against real or imagined ill-treatment' and in `one message the Virgin in fact spoke directly to this material distress.' The popular support of the apparitions revealed a camaraderie, shaped largely by the common experiences of political repression, economic distress and the intense hope to attain `a degree of emancipation from their daily life.' Of the three girls who saw the apparitions in Hartelwald, Margarentha Kunz was singled out as the leader and that state investigation revealed `a remarkably lacking in intensity or a sense of rapture. Drawing on half-remembered fragments from books or catechism classes, prompted by parents and other adults the girls talked conventionally about the beauty of the Blessed Virgin. The overriding impression is one of fragmented descriptions lacking any real center.' Blackbourn found that `that the visionaries' stories were shaped by others, as new suggestions were made, the seers incorporated them into their accounts.' `The community closed ranks, refused to accept the imposition of no-go areas, refused to cooperate with the legal investigation... refusal to accept the moral authority of gendarmes' - another reason for the support of the apparition was the increased commercial activities from pilgrims. State power was limited both in its application and judicial recourse as Blackbourn noted the exceptional degree of force employed by the state against the Marpingen relative to other apparition sites (one reason was that the loyalty of the border population remained a source of anxiety). Application of the kulturkampf at the localities met with stiff opposition: `At the lowest level of the hierarchy, among local communal and village officials such as rural mayors, village Ortsvorsteher, teachers, tax collectors, magistrates, watchmen, etc, such men sided with the clergy and popular Catholic sentiment' and `withheld their co-operation as far as possible.' The collect