A girl from a single farmstead near Schmölz went to Häusles on a beautiful winter evening to the spinning room. In a large farmer's room, the girls worked diligently and sang to it. After the spinning, people danced and during funny games time flew by. When the girl finally thought about going home, it was already very late and the full moon lit up the clear winter night. The old farmer from the farm spoke warningly to the girl: "Stay with us, do not go home until tomorrow morning, the wolves are going about their business again!" The girl laughed with rapture and replied: "The wolves will not come this very night - and if they do, I will fight with my spinning-wheel!" With that she wished a good night and went singing into the winter night. Shaking his head, the old farmer returned to his house and put out the light. When morning dawned and work on the farmstead near Schmölz began, the farmer's wife knocked on the door of the girls chamber. Her knocking went unheard.

She called for her husband, who immediately went to Häusles to find the girl. Evil suspicions haunted him in this corridor. When he had covered half the distance, he came to a place where the snow was crumbled and soaked with blood. In addition to the traces of girls' shoes, he saw many wolf marks. Terrified, he murmured: "The wolves, the wretched wolves!" His evil premonitions had come true. As he ran after the wolf tracks, he found in the woods still a few pieces of clothing, one arm of the girl and the battered spinning wheel. To commemorate the terrible death of the young girl, people put a memorial stone in which a cross is carved. The place where the stone is still standing today is popularly known as "Wolf the Maid".

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Benson

February 27, 2025

A really beautiful story, like most legends created by popular belief. However, the origin and purpose of these cross stones (also called atonement crosses, wayside crosses, stone crosses, etc.) were usually less bloodthirsty. Such stones decorated with a cross from the 15th to 17th centuries are relatively common in Franconia and were usually used as boundary stones to mark the ecclesiastical sovereign areas (immunity boundaries), the bailiwick boundaries (Fraisch boundaries) or the lordly hunting and forestry ban (hunting and wood usage rights). This stone, popularly known as "Wolf die Mad" (colloquially shortened for "The Wolf and the Maid", or Maid - not Magd), probably belongs in this category. However, if you look at the old maps, you will see that there are no historical boundaries dating back to modern times in the area where this stone is located. In fact, there is a written record that a "maiden" fell into a game pit (wolf pit) near this stone around St. John's Day 1527 and drowned. In a letter dated July 22, 1528, the Saxon Elector John the Steadfast therefore admonished the Coburg bailiff to remove the "game pit on the hill near Heusles" (cf.: Rainer Hambrecht: Blätter zur Geschichte des Coburger Lands, Issue 1, 1991).

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Benson

February 27, 2025

However, it is more likely that the stone existed in its function as a border marker before the event described above. The forest around Häusles originally belonged to the Cistercian monastery of Sonnefeld and only came into the possession of the Electorate of Saxony after 1525 through secularization. In a treatise in the 1968 yearbook of the Coburg State Foundation, the stone is therefore assumed to be a former marker of the state forestry ban. The symbols of a wheel and a severed hand, which are said to have been on the back of the stone, were seen as a threat of possible punishment for violating this ban. This original stone from the 15th or 16th century unfortunately no longer exists. Curiously, over time it fell victim to the superstition of the local population, who are said to have chipped off parts of it, ground them up and given them to livestock (mainly geese) as a medicine. At the end of the 19th century, only fragments were said to have remained, which is why the Leutendorf forester Lipps erected a new stone in the old place, where it can still be admired today (the latter from a newspaper article in "Bayerische Ostmark" dated February 28, 1936). So much for what we know today about the history of the stone "Wolf the Mad". But of course the story of the wolf that is said to have killed a young girl at this spot sounds much more exciting.

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Location: Mitwitz, Kronach, Upper Franconia, Bavaria, Germany

Wolf die Mad Memorial Stone

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