Marpingen

In July 1876 three eight-year-old girls from Marpingen, a village in the west German border region of Saarland, claimed to have seen an apparition of the Virgin Mary. Their visions attracted thousands of pilgrims and led to many claims of miraculous cures, but led also to military intervention, parliamentary debate, and a dramatic trial. Blackbourn casts unfamiliar light on Bismarkian Germany in his gripping study of the background and repercussions of the episode dubbed the `German Lourdes'.