The Pappenheimer trial and execution impacted those who did not witness it as well. While it must certainly have been a subject of public and private discussion, the events of the day were also published on widely distributed broadsheets and written about by a number of authorities. Broadsheets of the events not only told of them, but even illustrated the torture and execution. The mastectomy of Anna Pappenheimer is particularly prominent in these woodcut illustrations. Broadsheets of this sort, illustrating witch trials and executions were not uncommon. The illustrations typically included the trial, torture, and execution of the accused. Thus, the political and social message of the witch trials could reach all, regardless of whether or not they attended the execution. The message presented in the broadsheets could also reach the illiterate, particularly the poor and women.
The witchcraze was certainly at times the result of mass hysteria, but at other times we find it, disturbingly, to serve the political and social ends of the (male) nobility. The effects of a mass execution, such as that of the Pappenheimer trial, spread far beyond the actual audience. The political hierarchy achieved a number of results through the witch burnings. They effectively created a scapegoat for the evils and disturbances within their own society, but perhaps more importantly, the trials provided an additional social control upon women and the poor. The impact of the witch trials surely reduced social unrest among these groups, and provided an "appropriate" outlet for anger, even if the groups punished had no social power and could hold no responsibility for the social ills.
Women in particular suffered the devastating effects of the witchcraze. In some villages only one or two women were left alive by the end of the mass burnings and executions. The church and state had succeeded in removing any power or independence women held at the end of the Middle Ages. They feared speaking out, aiding one another, acting as midwives, or even participating in the public realm because any or all of these things were commonly used as evidence of witchcraft.
Witches were, in the early modern period, the greatest evil and greatest threat the male establishment, be it church, state or reformers, could imagine. They were women who were allied with the devil, and who were outside of society's (male) control. In the most sympathetic of views, they were tempted by the devil due to their weak nature, in the least sympathetic, their natural evil drove them to their unnatural alliance with the devil. Older women and midwives, both of whom were often without male authorities in their lives were particularly at risk for accusations.
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