A Phenomenon of Fear

Anneliese Michel seemed to build her life around an old-fashioned kind of Roman Catholic devotion. In her dormitory room at West Germany's University of Wuerzburg, the pretty, pious young education student covered her walls with pictures of saints, kept a holy-water font near the door, regularly prayed the Rosary. Timid and intense, she seemed somehow afraid of life; even in her thesis, which she finished this spring, she focused on the phenomenon of fear. Then, one month later, Anneliese died at home in Klingenberg at the age of 23, wasted to skin and bones. Cause of death, according to an autopsy: "malnutrition and dehydration."

The local prosecutor immediately launched an investigation. Anneliese, it seems, was a case straight out of The Exorcist. Ever since high school she had been subject to convulsive seizures, attacks that a neurologist diagnosed as epilepsy. Doctors had little success in treating her. Her devout parents, in desperation, began consulting priests. Finally, with permission from Bishop Josef Stangl of Wurzburg, they brought in two exorcists--Father Arnold Renz, a former missionary in China, and Father Ernst Alt, a pastor in a nearby community. For ten months, beginning last September and continuing until shortly before her death, the two priests conducted an intermittent series of exorcisms to rid Anneliese of six demons they believed possessed her. The efforts were of no avail. About Easter time, her convulsions returned with renewed ferocity, and she began to refuse food and drink. No doctors were called.

In an extraordinary 45-minute television feature a month after Anneliese's death, Father Renz claimed that the six evil spirits attacking her included Lucifer, Nero, Judas, Cain and Adolf Hitler --who used to shout "Heil!" through Anneliese's voice. Renz even played one of the 43 tapes made during the exorcisms so that listeners could hear Anneliese growling obscenities, screaming guttural curses and raving wildly. Only death finally released her. Said Renz: "The devil does not reside in a dead body."

So far, the investigation has not determined whether the exorcists, Anneliese's parents or Bishop Stangl might have negligently contributed to Anneliese's death. The bishop himself, in a thoughtful and somewhat apologetic supplement to the Wuerzburg diocesan paper, explained that exorcism was meant to be nothing more than a prayer for a "person who feels at the mercy [of other forces] and cannot pray for himself." Any necessary medical help must accompany it, he insisted.

The bishop also warned that any talk of the devil that is intended to "strike terror into the hearts of people instead of arousing confidence in God" is contrary to the spirit of the New Testament. Misconceptions about "demoniacal possession," he reminded them, had played a "disastrous role" over the centuries. So they had. In Wurzburg alone, in one grim year in the 17th century, some 300 witches had been burned for trafficking with the devil.

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