The Marpingen Apparitions of 1999

Marpingen had been here before. On 3 July 1876, three eight-year-old girls reported a "white woman with a child on her arm" in the Härtelwald. The next day, they said, she called herself the "Immaculately Conceived." It was the time of the Kulturkampf, and an army company from Saarlouis cleared the praying crowds with fixed bayonets. Priests were arrested and the children were sent to a reformatory.

In 1889 Margaretha Kunz, one of the three, called the apparitions "one big lie." Believers held on to the last message of 1876 instead: "I will come again in a time of great distress." A chapel went up on the spot in 1932. Some called Marpingen the German Lourdes.

May 1999. Three women, none of them from Marpingen, began to report that the Mother of God was appearing to them at the old site. Marion Guthmann, 30, a housewife from Neunkirchen/Saar, said she saw Mary. Christine Ney-Nidercorn, 24, a music education student from Ensdorf, said she heard her. Judith Hiber, 35, from Hierscheid, reported only a faint hearing and a faint sight.

There were 13 apparitions, on weekends. The fifth, on 13 June 1999, was the first with a publicly announced date. About 4,000 people came. On 8 August more than 20,000 pilgrims filled the forest. The thirteenth and last, the farewell, came on 17 October. The municipality counted about 40,000. Other accounts describe 170 buses and 6,000 private cars.

No account describes lights, moving objects or signs in the sky. The perceptions were the visionaries' own. They recorded the messages, and afterwards a cassette was played to the crowd.

"Pray the Rosary!" "Listen to the Pope!" "Pray much so that your country stops killing the many children," a line read as a reference to abortion. And, in English translation: "It is all in my plan for this place to grow together."

Bishop Hermann Josef Spital of Trier banned the words "apparitions" and "seers." People were to speak of "the events in the Härtelwald." In September 1999 he set up a commission of priests, canon lawyers and church historians. For six years it visited the site, interviewed the seers, reviewed healing reports and worked through the archives.

13 December 2005. Bishop Reinhard Marx and Chancellor Werner Rössel issued the decree: "It cannot be confirmed that the events of Marpingen during the years 1876 and 1999 were of supernatural character." The finding was unanimous. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had been consulted. The chapel stayed open as a place of prayer, and pastor Leo Hoffmann was asked to care for the pilgrims.

The decree did not allege fraud. It found the supernatural not established. Fr Jörg Müller, a Pallottine priest and psychotherapist who advised the seers, found "no neurosis, manipulation, or bluff," and said Trier ignored his report. In the village, opinion split. Some believed the events were staged and suspected the Marian Movement of Priests. Others stayed convinced that Mary had come.

Historian David Blackbourn had told the 1876 story in a 1993 book. In 2024 the broadcaster SR returned to the Härtelwald with the documentary Als Maria ins Dorf kam, recalling pilgrims from all over Europe, the USA and even South Korea. The prayer site is still there, east of the village.