1. The legend of the “White Lady” of Orlamünde

The name of the countess of Orlamünde  from the legend is not known for certain. One source says it was Katharina, another Mil Agnes (Kunigunde) von Orlamünde .

She was a daughter of the Count of Orlamünde -Laustein. She married her cousin, Count Otto von Orlamünde . He died soon after, leaving behind his beautiful young wife and two children.

She did not want to remain a widow for long. Instead, she sought a quick union with Albrecht von Hozenholeren, the burgrave of Nuremberg. He had let it be known that “four eyes were in the way.”  He was referring to his parents, but the countess believed he meant her two small children.

Driven mad by love, she made the terrible decision to murder her innocent children during the night. The burial of the two small bodies is said to have taken place on the Kemnatenberg near Olramunde.

The place is still called Kind’l-Brunnen (Children’s Well) today. This heinous bloody deed was followed immediately by remorse, and the countess is said to have died in the Himmelsthron monastery, severely afflicted. However, her spirit finds no rest anywhere. We are told that she has often been seen near Kemnate in Orlamünde , and every time before a disaster befalls the House of Hohenzollern or a death occurs, she is said to appear in the royal palace in Berlin.

In Bayreuth (a town north of Nuremberg, about 88.5 km or 55 miles away), it is said that between 1806 and 1812, Napoleon I and his French generals, who were staying in the old castle, saw her as a threatening specter, so that Napoleon left the state as quickly as possible and could not be persuaded to stay there another night.

So, what do we know about this other than what is written on the Notgeld? Well, the Notgeld does a pretty good synopsis of this story, but there are some other details that, probably for the sake of sensitive readers at the time, seem to have been left out.

Weiße Frauen, or White ladies, is a common name that applies to well-known specters that can be found all over the world. As their name suggests, they appear as a white apparition, usually both in garments and flesh. Many times they appear as a white woman of a certain place, such as a manor house or a hillside, river, woods, etc. There are some that are not white, too, such as the famous Brown lady of Raynham Hall in Norfolk, England.

Are White Women to be feared? Well, who wouldn’t be startled to see such an apparition? They are not, however, going to drag you straight to hades. What they can be, disconcertingly, are omens of bad news; especially of an impending death, but rarely has there been report of them being vengeful or mean outright. 

But the details missing from this particular white woman. She was born in 1303; she would become known as the White lady of Hohenzollern. There is some speculation as to her involvement in her husband’s death, but nothing concrete. That she fell in love with Albrecht soon after her husband’s death is widely reported.  What gruesome particular the story above left out is that while Albrecht was indeed referring to his parents and she her children, is the way she is reported to have killed them. Since it was, as Albrecht put it, “four eyes” that stood in the way of their union, Kunigunde is said to have stabbed their eyes out with a golden needle, killing them both. In some stories, it is a silver needle, or even a needle from a spinning wheel. Whatever the implement, it hardly matters, the deed was done.

And here the story takes two paths. In one, Albrecht was so repulsed at her action that he immediately rejected her, plunging Kunigunde into despondency and she killed herself. In the other, more popular story, she became despondent after killing her children and she fled to Rome, seeking audience with the Pope, begging for him to absolve her sins. She then returned and established a convent in Himmelskron, a town just north of Bayreuth, where she spent the rest of her life. 

For hundreds of years now, her spectral form has been reported by many as being seen in various locales in area, many associating her appearance prior to bad news.