The Wolf of Ansbach was a

man-eating A man-eater is an animal that preys on humans as a pattern of hunting behavior. This does not include the scavenging of corpses, a single attack born of opportunity or desperate hunger, or the incidental eating of a human that the animal has kil ...

wolf The wolf (''Canis lupus''; : wolves), also known as the gray wolf or grey wolf, is a large canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of ''Canis lupus'' have been recognized, and gray wolves, as popularly u ...

that attacked and killed an unknown number of people in the

Principality of Ansbach The Principality or Margraviate of (Brandenburg-)Ansbach (german: Fürstentum Ansbach or ) was a principality in the Holy Roman Empire centered on the Franconian city of Ansbach. The ruling Hohenzollern princes of the land were known as margrave ...

in 1685, then a part of the

Holy Roman Empire The Holy Roman Empire was a Polity, political entity in Western Europe, Western, Central Europe, Central, and Southern Europe that developed during the Early Middle Ages and continued until its Dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, dissolution i ...

History

Initially a nuisance preying on livestock, the wolf soon began attacking children. The citizens of

Ansbach Ansbach (; ; East Franconian: ''Anschba'') is a city in the German state of Bavaria. It is the capital of the administrative region of Middle Franconia. Ansbach is southwest of Nuremberg and north of Munich, on the river Fränkische Rezat, a ...

believed the animal to be a

werewolf In folklore, a werewolf (), or occasionally lycanthrope (; ; uk, Вовкулака, Vovkulaka), is an individual that can shapeshift into a wolf (or, especially in modern film, a therianthropic hybrid wolf-like creature), either purposely or ...

, a reincarnation of their late and cruel

Bürgermeister Burgomaster (alternatively spelled burgermeister, literally "master of the town, master of the borough, master of the fortress, master of the citizens") is the English form of various terms in or derived from Germanic languages for the chief m ...

, whose recent death had gone unlamented. During an organized hunt, the locals succeeded in driving the wolf from a nearby forest and chasing it down with dogs until it leaped into an uncovered well for protection. Trapped, the wolf was slain, and its carcass paraded through the city marketplace. It was dressed in a man's clothing and, after severing its muzzle, the crowd placed a mask, wig, and beard upon its head, giving it the appearance of the former Bürgermeister. The wolf's body was then hanged from a

gibbet A gibbet is any instrument of public execution (including guillotine, decapitation, executioner's block, Impalement, impalement stake, gallows, hanging gallows, or related Scaffold (execution site), scaffold). Gibbeting is the use of a gallows- ...

for all to see until it underwent preservation for permanent display at a local museum. Franz Ritter von Kobell and other writers also wrote poems about the wolf and its actions.

History

See also

References

Further reading