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"Depraved by nature, harmful while alive, useless after death"

Under torture in 1600, the cowherd Bestgen Rotgers from Emmerichenhain in the Palatinate confessed what his accusers wanted to hear: he was a werewolf.

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"Depraved by nature, harmful while alive, useless after death"

Under torture in 1600, the cowherd Bestgen Rotgers from Emmerichenhain in the Palatinate confessed what his accusers wanted to hear: he was a werewolf. The devil equipped him with a powerful, serpentine belt made of wolf skin.

In order to transform, he had to recite the following saying: "Sathan, you good man, that you want to transform me into a wolf's form, so that I no longer have the form of a human being. Alone I please you day and night.” According to the defendant, this magic works for 24 hours, who also testified that as a wolf man he could not help but bite to death all cattle that he encountered. The man was executed a little later.

Rotger's trial was one of around 250 documented trials against alleged werewolves that took place between the 16th and early 18th centuries, mainly in France, especially Burgundy, and large parts of Germany. They formed the climax of a veritable wolf hysteria in the early modern period.

The relationship between humans and wolves has always been emotionally charged, as the heated debates about the return of Canis lupus in Germany show. After all, for centuries people in Central Europe considered the wolf the worst enemy in the animal kingdom. "It is disagreeable in every way, vile-minded, wild-looking, terrifying in voice, intolerable in odor, depraved by nature, cruel in bearing, harmful in life, and useless after death," said the French naturalist Georges -Louis Leclerc 1758.

Especially in times of war, wolves multiplied so much that they became a deadly danger, as they "preyed on the bodies of the dead as scavengers and thus took a liking to human flesh," writes Rainer Schöller, formerly in a managerial position at the Bavarian State Library Munich active, in his "cultural history of the wolf". However, contrary to all clichés, there have never been any attacks by entire wolf packs on people in German-speaking countries, only isolated cases in which mostly old wolves attacked people, preferably children or women.

However, wolves do threaten the economic existence – and thus also the survival – of farmers and pastoralists. Towards the end of the Thirty Years' War, packs of 20 to 30 animals roamed the villages in the Lüneburg area and attacked the livestock. This is one of the reasons why people systematically hunted wolves.

The influence of the church probably had a more dramatic effect on the image of the wolf than the actual attacks. "Bible quotations, theological tracts and Christian illustrations identify the wolf as a deadly beast, as a spawn of evil and the dark adversary of Jesus Christ," writes Schöller. This contributed decisively to the development of a "human wolf psychosis".

The fantasy of man turning into a wolf dates back to antiquity, and the term "werewolf" appeared no later than the 10th century ("who" probably stands for Old High German "man"). But it wasn't until the transition between the Middle Ages and early modern times that the church declared animal transformations to be an expression of demonic powers that the belief in werewolves spread widely in this country. They were humans who can temporarily transform into a wolf and commit atrocities in that form but with human consciousness.

The papal bull "Summis desiderantes" published in 1484 set the course for werewolf assumptions, which created the relevant ideological and legal basis to fight supposed witches, wizards and werewolves. Since this decree, alleged animal transformations were considered an alliance with the devil - an offense punishable by death. The famous "Hexenhammer" of 1486 also postulated the existence of werewolves. "The fear that people are involved as accomplices of Satan in letting him win world domination seems to have been omnipresent," Schöller writes. And the wolf man, possessed by the devil, was considered an indication of this.

This misconception fueled the panic of wolf attacks, especially among farmers and shepherds. They finally explained the heavy losses among their animal stocks by saying that the attackers could not be natural wolves, but supernatural ones, i.e. wolf people. Suspicious people were quickly identified. In addition to people who persisted, shepherds who were denounced by neighbors who had to complain about particularly great damage were particularly often hit. Many of the accused were tortured into admitting they were werewolves.

Like the shepherd Johann Frank, who explained in the Nassau area in 1654 that “15 or 16 years ago the devil handed him a belt made of black leather”. "If he did the same, even if he kept all his clothes on, he would have become a real wolff." In the proceedings it was customary to ask about other criminals, and often enough the accused counted out alleged werewolves from the village community. It could happen to anyone.

The wolves themselves could also hang on the gallows, like the "Werewolf of Ansbach" in 1685. The animal in question had killed three children and attacked several women. When it finally fell into a well, a farmer killed it. "A wig was put on the head, the muzzle covered with a bearded mask," says Schöller. Then the wolf was hung on a gallows. Apparently, as the residents explained the animal's aggressiveness, the spirit of the extremely disreputable mayor Michael Leicht, who had died shortly before, had gotten into the wolf.

The "Werewolf of Ansbach" achieved dubious fame and was immortalized in numerous poems: "See: you cursed spirit / drove into the Wolff; you are now hanging here on the gallows / adorned with hair from a mask." Or: "I wolff a cruel animal / a eater of many children / I respect them much more / than fat sheep and cattle (...) / now I hang on the gallows / to everyone's derision .”

The Ansbach wolf was by no means the only one who ended up on the gallows. In large parts of Germany there were wolf gallows where killed animals were presented. In this way, the idea that the display of agonizingly executed people would deter others from breaking the law was transferred to Canis lupus. "The predators were granted a certain amount of common sense, free will, moral responsibility and culpability," explains Schöller. To a certain extent, the animal had been granted a human legal status.

Probably the last wolf-man trial in German-speaking countries took place in Tamsweg, Austria, in 1720. This ended the pursuit of alleged man wolves. But not the relentless hunt for the wolf itself.

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