Born: 8 November 1547, Germany
Died: 13 April 1622
Country most active: Germany
Also known as: Katharina Guldenmann
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women creator Allison Tyra’s book Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work.
Katharina Kepler became a side character in her own trial for witchcraft in 1615 when her son, the well-known astronomer Johannes Kepler, famously defended her. She was imprisoned for 14 months and threatened with torture before finally being released and dying six months later, and even her other son, Heinrich, accused that she had “ridden a calf to death and prepared him a roast dish from it, [and] he himself wanted to accuse her before the authorities.” Yet when her story is told, it is with titles like “Johannes Kepler Defended His Mother in a Witchcraft Trial” (Smithsonian Magazine, 2015). Indeed, although she testified in her own defence, only her son’s arguments are preserved verbatim in the trial documents—and he’d been documented as calling the septuagenarian Katharina “the author of her own lamentable misfortune.” A book about the trial, titled The Astronomer and the Witch: Johannes Kepler’s Fight for his Mother, features neither Katharina’s image nor her name on the cover. The official description ends with the line, “even Katharina’s children wondered whether their mother really did have nothing to hide…”