Page 59 - All About History - Issue 186-19

The History Of Werewolves
Villagers chase a werewolf
in this German illustration
from around 1800
© Getty Images Werewolf births (1865)
and Germany. In fact, it’s the opinion of some that
as many as 30,000 men and women were accused
during this age (although that number has never
been confirmed and seems based more in belief
than in fact). The most recent and comprehensive
list of confirmed cases contains only 280 names,
compiled by writer and scholar Elmar Lorey.
Nevertheless, there were a significant number
of werewolf trials, the accounts of which have
survived. One of the most famous cases of a
werewolf within the legal system is Peter Stubbe,
a young man convicted of the murder and
mutilation of an undetermined number of people
in a small town in Germany in 1589. Stubbe’s trial
was highly publicised and reinforced the tenet that
lycanthropy could be criminally prosecuted. It’s
far from the only criminal case to have a lasting
impact on cultural memory: the case of feral child
Jean Grenier, discovered in 1603, had claimed that
he was given a wolfskin by the Devil and used it
to transform into a wolf and attack young girls,
killing and eating them.
After this legal case had concluded with
Grenier’s imprisonment (as there was no evidence
to suggest that he had actually killed anyone),
and his death seven years later, the charges of
LOST LORE
Every culture adds their own new piece to the werewolf legend
Werewolf Festival (First century CE)
Marcellus Sidetes, a physician born around
the end of the 1st century CE in Asia Minor,
wrote a medical poem that spanned 42 books.
Nearly the entire corpus was lost, with only two
fragments surviving. One fragment, preserved
by Aetius of Amida, is called De Lycanthropia
and describes a werewolf festival in which men
lose their minds to the ‘wolf-madness’.
In The Book Of Werewolves, Reverend Sabine
Baring-Gould recounts an uncommon method
of creating werewolves that originated in
Denmark: “If a female at midnight stretches
between four sticks the membrane which
envelopes the foal when it is brought forth,
and creeps through it, naked, she will bear
children without pain; but all the boys will be
werewolves.”
Nazi Werewolves (1939-45)
During World War II a small group of
‘underground’ Nazi ground troops were known
as werewolves. The extensive German folklore
behind the creature, and common folk belief
in ‘Germanic legends of man-eating wolves’,
helped to spread fear among the Allies of the
werewolf soldiers.
God’s Police Force (1691)
In 1691 Latvian peasant Old Thiess, an 86-year-
old man, was accused of being a werewolf.
He pled guilty to the charges immediately but
claimed that he and his fellow werewolves were
in fact agents of God who fought the Devil and
his sorcerers called the ‘Hounds of God’.
White Wolf Dream (1910)
In 1910, Sigmund Freud, the famous
psychoanalyst, treated a young patient known
as Wolf Man. A member of a wealthy Russian
family, Wolf Man had delusions that he could
transform into a wolf and would run through
the woods during the night. Freud traced his
patient’s obsession with wolves to a dream he
had as a young boy about seven white wolves
in the tree that stood outside his bedroom.
Karl Dietz, 15, was
convicted of war
© Getty Images the youngest Nazi
crimes and was
Werewolf group
a member of the
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