toward other cities and Prince Bishoprics and resulted in recurring waves of persecutions with high points in 1593–1598, 1601–1605, 1611–1618 and 1627–1631. Among them were the infamous Fulda witch trials (1603–1606) with 250 deaths, the Alzenau witch trials (1605–1605) witch 139 deaths, the Ellwangen witch trials (1611–18) with 430 deaths, the Mainz witch trials (1626–1631), and the Bamberg witch trials (1626–1631) with 1000 deaths, before this massive persecutions finally ended with the Cologne witch trial in 1639. These mass trials resulted in the executions of all genders and ages, and while the majority were female, the male minority was by no means small and men were referred to as "witches" as well, which was used as a gender-neutral expression. These mass trials could also show a great number of wealthy, clerical and aristocratic number of people among the condemned, when the rest of Europe had a majority of poor people among their executed. The mass witch trials of the Catholic Prince Bishoprics in South Germany were exceptional and without contest the largest in Germany, but witch trials existed in all Germany, although in smaller scale in comparison. Protestant North Germany While witch trials were fewer and less extensive in the Protestant parts of Germany in comparison with the big mass persecutions of the Catholic South, they did occur in Protestant North Germany as well. In the Northern Protestant Electorate of Brandeburg (later Prussia), only about 200 people were executed for witchcraft between 1505 and Dorothee Elisabeth Tretschlaff in 1698, with the most extensive persecution being that of 20 executions in 1606. In 1721, the King of Prussia stated that no death sentences for witchcraft would longer be confirmed by him. The end The persecutions became fewer in the second half of the 17th century, but a few isolated cases are known to have occurred in the 18th century. Traditionally, the last executions for witchcraft in Germany have been said to be those of Helene Curtens and Agnes Olmanns in 1738. Since then other executions have been found by later research, such as that of Maria Renata Saenger von Mossau in Bavaria in 1749 and Anna Schnidenwind in Endingen am Kaiserstuhl in 1751. Maria Anna Schwegelin was likely the last person to be sentenced to death of witchcraft in 1775, but the sentence was never carried out, and she died in prison in 1781. Switzerland Switzerland bordered to North Western France