The Heroldsbach Apparitions and the Warning About the Russians

Autumn 1949. Upper Franconia, four years after the war. Heroldsbach was a village in the Archdiocese of Bamberg, and the Czechoslovak border lay close by. One scholar would later place the site some 100 kilometers from the "Iron Curtain". At the edge of the Schloss Thurn park, in Thurn, stood a grove of birches.

9 October 1949. A group of girls aged about 10 to 11 were together at the edge of the wood. Erika Müller believed she saw greenish glowing letters between two birches. J S H. One account says the sign was about half a metre high, with one letter higher in the center.

Then Maria Heilmann saw something else. A white-clad figure, floating between the tops of the birches. She took it to be the Virgin Mary. One account calls the woman in white "like transparent". Asked what she wished, the figure answered simply. "Die Leute sollen fest beten!" People should pray devoutly.

Within days, tens of thousands came. The parish priest, Johann Gailer, was sceptical at first. By 12 October he was comparing the site to Fátima and Lourdes.

8 December 1949. About 10,000 pilgrims were present. Around 2 p.m. the girls saw the figure again. Then thousands reported the sun itself in motion. Golden rays. It turned right, then left, then faster, through a shifting range of colours. It seemed to approach the crowd, and the crowd feared a disaster. One account says it stopped about 50 m away. Gailer, in a translated account, said it "came closer and went back again," approaching "up to about 4 meters." Seer Antonie Saam saw the Madonna and Child inside the sun. The crowd cried out. "Dies ist das Zeichen!" This is the sign.

The visions multiplied. In February 1950 a "light miracle" was reported before about 70,000 people, and with it, in one devotional account, a threat of the Russians. Only prayer could avert the disaster. Days later the message asked for prayer for unbelievers and for Russia. Viewers claimed that disobeying her wishes would lead to Russia invading Germany, bringing starvation with them. Another message ran: "There will come a great famine, and misfortune." The disaster could still be stopped, it was said, "if most believers truly repented".

From 17 October 1949 a commission under Archbishop Joseph Otto Kolb questioned the children. Psychologists saw no ecstasy, only "growing pride". The commission judged the sun phenomenon natural. On 6 October 1950 a Holy Office decree found a supernatural origin not established. A second decree of 18 July 1951, approved by Pius XII, declared the events not supernatural. In August 1951 the seers, their parents and many followers were excommunicated for refusing to sign a statement that they had seen no apparitions. The visions went on regardless, until a farewell on 31 October 1952. Historian Michael E. O'Sullivan counts about 1.5 million pilgrims and about 3,000 apparitions.

Historians read the movement through war trauma and Cold War fear of a Soviet invasion. It was the prospect of another Russian invasion, O'Sullivan writes, that "frightened Heroldsbach activists". Similar visions were reported in the same years at Fehrbach. Physicist Auguste Meessen has offered optical explanations for sun-dance reports in general. The last excommunications were lifted in 1997. On 1 May 1998 the hill was recognised "als Gebetsstätte, nicht aber als Erscheinungsort". A place of prayer. Not a place of apparitions.