Anna-Maria Göbel

Date of content

04-11-1921

Author

Tine Van Osselaer

Rights owner

Original filename

Anna-Marra Göbel

Archive date

24-03-2016

Formatted

54636 Bickendorf, Duitsland

Name

Anna-Maria Göbel

Keywords

apparition, bio, Catholic, diagnosis, diocesan investigation, female, figurative stigmata, imitative stigmata, inedia, lay, local, virgin, visible stigmata, vision

Description

Anna Maria Göbl was born on 22 March 1886, in Bickendorf (Eifel), as the youngest of six children. Her parents, Bartholomeus Göbl and Katharina Tölkels were pious and well-off peasants who gave their three boys and three girls a Christian education and sent Anna Maria to school for eight years. After the death of her father from pneumonia in 1901, she became ill (according to the physicians because she had been scared by her father’s death) and remained sick for 20 years (she suffered from a liver disease, rheumatism, paralysis, blindness and deafness, among other ailments). Several doctors were consulted, including a Dr Lenz (from the city of Prüm), but they could not help. In 1917, a liver disease accompanied by the formation of gall stones (‘Gallensteinbindung’) made an operation in the Heart of Jesus cloister in Bonn necessary. After the removal of 22 stones, she no longer had any appetite. Her physical condition worsened after her return to her parents’ house and from 1920 onwards she vomited blood. The physicians diagnosed the first signs of stomach cancer. She was paralysed on her left side for three weeks, but this was cured after a vision of Mary on 21 August 1921. According to the doctors, no signs of hysteria were ever detected.
On 24 July 1921, she had her first vision of a crown of thorns. Two years later, she was stigmatized (as her biographers emphasize, thus prior to Therese Neumann, so she could not have been inspired by her), first with the crown of thorns and later receiving a head wound in the shape of a cross. She had ‘blood marks’ (Blutzeichnen) in various shapes on her forehead, at the places of the Five Holy Wounds and on other places on her body.
From 1926 onwards, her spiritual father, A. Faber, had to stop his visits to her house as the diocesan authorities of Trier started an examination: two theologians and two physicians were to study her in the hospital of the Borromean sisters in Trier. During the examination (between 1 April and 20 May 1926), no supernatural phenomena were reported. She was sent home and her confessor was assigned a new job. Anna Maria continued to have visions of Mary and Jesus, who encouraged her not to give up on her reparatory suffering, and she continued to have significant religious influence in the following years. She died on 19 January 1941.

Georg Priller seems to have published a book on her during her lifetime: Anna Maria Goebel. Die stigmatisierte van Bickendorf, Eifel, 1928, Tischenreuth: Kohl.
Trier. Bistumsarchiv Trier/BIII.12, 10 Bd.3a/ Causa Göbl-Faber.
München. Archiv des Erzbistums München und Freising, Nachlass Faulhaber.
5945 (1926-32): Therese Neumann von Konnersreuth, Anna Nassl (Korrespondenzen: Bischof von Regensburg, Erzbischof von Prag, Prozesprotokoll Ritter von Lama gegen Dr. Aigner, Dr. Gerlich u.a.)