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What this episode is about
Every year on the first weekend after Ash Wednesday, tall wooden towers burn in Vorarlberg, and at the top a witch dummy packed with gunpowder explodes. The usual explanation is ancient paganism, driving out the demons of winter. The deeper I dug, the more surprising the story got.
The fire is old
Funken fires burn all over the Swabian-Alemannic region, from Liechtenstein and Switzerland to the Allgäu. The oldest record dates from 1090, when a burning wooden disc set the monastery of Lorsch on fire. The Germanic interpretation can’t be backed up. The date is tied to the end of carnival and to a shift in the start of Lent. The folklorist Matthias Zender traced the fire back to the Roman New Year’s fire on March 1, when the fire of Vesta was relit.
The witch is young
The witch dummy is not a leftover from the early modern witch burnings. According to the historian Manfred Tschaikner, it was only added in the 19th century, modeled on the witch from Hansel and Gretel, to breathe new life into a custom that was dying out.
The real witches of Vorarlberg
Between 1528 and 1677, more than two hundred people in what is now Vorarlberg were tried for witchcraft, and at least 122 were executed, most of them women. Tschaikner documented these trials in Damit das Böse ausgerottet werde (“So That Evil May Be Rooted Out”).
Related customs
The Böögg at Zurich’s Sechseläuten, the disc throwing in the Montafon and the fire wheels all show the same pattern: the figures are usually younger than the festivals, and mythological readings like the sun wheel should be taken with a grain of salt.
The invention of a tradition
The ethnologist Reinhard Johler has shown how the Funken was reshaped again and again: co-opted politically by the corporate state (Ständestaat) of the 1930s, and from 1987 even burned in Vienna as a “Vorarlberg Funken.” Since 2010 the custom has been listed as intangible cultural heritage. Vorarlberg’s office for women’s affairs and Tschaikner himself criticize the witch burning precisely because it is an invention that turns real violence against real women into a game.
Frequently asked questions
How old is the Funken witch?
She probably dates from the 19th century. The fire itself is much older and is documented as far back as 1090.
Is Funkenbrennen a pagan tradition?
There is no evidence of a Germanic origin. Researchers connect the date with the end of carnival and possibly with a Roman New Year’s fire.
More in the lexicon: Funken witch.
About this episode
Every year on the first weekend after Ash Wednesday, thirty-metre wooden towers are erected across Vorarlberg, Austria — and set ablaze along with a gunpowder-filled witch doll. The custom is called “Funken,” it’s UNESCO-listed, and the standard explanation is: ancient paganism, driving out winter demons. But is that really true?
In this episode, I follow up on a viewer suggestion and uncover a story far more surprising than any myth. The fire may trace back to Roman antiquity — to the Vestal Virgins and the sacred flame rekindled on 1 March, the old Roman New Year. The witch, however, is barely 200 years old: a nineteenth-century invention inspired by the Brothers Grimm, designed to revive a dying tradition. And she stands in sharp contrast to the real witch persecutions in Vorarlberg, where more than 120 people — ninety per cent of them women — were executed.
An episode about fire, myth, political identity, and the question of who actually has the right to tell a story.
Sources & Further Reading:
— Manfred Tschaikner: “Damit das Böse ausgerottet werde.” Hexenverfolgungen in Vorarlberg im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert. Bregenz, 1992.
— Manfred Tschaikner: “Die Lust, Hexen zu verbrennen.” In: Der Bludenzer, 1996.
— Manfred Tschaikner: “Wohin mit den Funkenhexen?” In: Vorarlberger Nachrichten, 3/4 February 2024.
— Reinhard Johler: Die Formierung eines Brauches. Der Funken- und Holepfannsonntag. Vienna, 2000.
— Matthias Zender: Die Termine der Jahresfeuer in Europa. Göttingen, 1980.
— Franz Josef Fischer: Der Funken- und Küachlesonntag in Vorarlberg und Liechtenstein. 1921.
— Hermann Bausinger: Zur Kritik der Folklorismuskritik, 1969.