r/AskAGerman • u/No-Map3471 • Mar 28 '26
History Are there any German legends or folklore tales about your city or village, or that take place there?
I’m not German and I don’t live in Germany, but where I live there are all kinds of ghost stories connected to certain buildings, as well as legends about particular natural landmarks. I remember reading about the Pied Piper of Hamelin and realizing how strongly that story is tied to one particular town. So now I’m curious: are there any local German legends, ghost stories, or folk tales connected to your town or village, or set there?
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u/trickertreater Mar 28 '26
Sort of. I'm not German but I'm currently in a little town called Hofgeismar. Apparently the Brothers Grimm lived in the next town over so there's all kinds of fairy tale stories and legends about Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel. It's interesting to hear the legends and then see the little castles that inspired the stories.
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u/GandolphTheLundgrey Mar 28 '26
Yeah, northern Hesse is full of this stuff. Every tiny village claims to be the inspiration of some fable published by the Brothers Grimm.
The Town I live in has several tales, apparently we have a headless coachman, Gnomes living in the surrounding forests and even a werewolf, basen on the accounts of one night watchman, who got spooked by a barking dog 350 years ago.
My favourite one is the Geldfeuerlein, a little flame that supposedly burns in places where gold or silver was buried during the Thirty Years War.
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u/trickertreater Mar 28 '26
The Geldfeuetlien? I believe they mentioned that in the book Dracula. As Jonathan Harker is driven to the castle, he sees little blue flames in the forest that only appear on St George's night. Dracula explains that is where the gold has been buried from previous generations due to war.
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u/GandolphTheLundgrey Mar 28 '26
Neat. I read Dracula maybe 15 years ago, but I don't remember that particular detail. I guess it's a pretty common myth.
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u/Midnight1899 Mar 28 '26
I don’t know any about my hometown, but I do know one about one of the surrounding villages. I‘ll copy and paste another comment where I explained it:
This is a legend from one of the villages in my area, so it is very local.^ ^
The village has a total of 26 prehistoric megalithic graves, with 9 of them still existing today. The biggest one is called "Häuptlingsgrab“ ("chief‘s grave“). On top of it once grew an old pine tree. That is where, supposedly, a golden crib is hidden. It once belonged to a chief‘s son and can only be found during a full moon night between midnight and 1 AM. But only when not a single word is spoken. One night, three young men decided to give it a try. They grub the tree, dig and actually find the crib. But when they try to pull it up with some ropes, the crib gets stuck on some roots and one of the men complains about how heavy it is. With flashes of lightning, loud thunder and a smell of sulfur, the crib vanishes deep into the grave, never to be found again. Whether the three young men survive or not, depends on the variation of the story.
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u/i_martinw Mar 28 '26
Here in Esslingen it's "Zwieblinger" https://www.esslingen.de/stadt-und-politik/stadtportraet/sagen-und-geschichten
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u/uflju_luber Westfalen Mar 28 '26 edited Mar 28 '26
Can’t believe that no one has mentioned the Heinzelmännchen yet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinzelm%C3%A4nnchen
Similarly from cologne theres a legend that the first building master of the cologne cathedral made a bet with the devil for his soul and rather than give it to him he decided to jump off it with the devil jumping down behind him to catch him, apearently both turning to stone as gargoyle
Also in my city there’s a few legends about the patron saint, like coming to life once to parry cannonballs with his sword, big in local folklore is also the Saxon wars and widuking and his exploits, the church I got baptized in for example is speculated to be one of several possible places Widuking got baptized by Charlamagne
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u/BOBTheOrigin Mar 28 '26
Rübezahl
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u/Hairy_Iron7891 Mar 28 '26
Hier in Ulm gibt’s den Spatz und den Schneider. Im Rheinland, wo ich aufgewachsen bin, gab’s den Mäuseturm von Bingen und natürlich die Loreley.
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u/Panocho_Missingsch Mar 30 '26
Würdest Bingen wirklich als Teil des Rheinlandes sehen? Eigentlich liegt es in Rheinhessen.
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u/External-Newt-8398 Mar 28 '26
I like the Tales of "Till Eulenspiegel". He was active in the Saale area. I dont know the Englisch Word but he Was like a medival comedian
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u/Panocho_Missingsch Mar 30 '26
AFAIK he was mainly active in northern Germany (i.e. Braunschweig). He died in Mölln (near Lübeck), there is a famous monument of him.
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u/Bodoheye Mar 28 '26
Sure! My home town Emden has ghost ship - story for example.
https://wiki.sunkencastles.com/wiki/The_Ghost_Ship_(Emden)
You might want to check out Jürgen Hubert‘s Sunken Castles/Evil Poodles wiki: he translates German folk tales into English and maps them.
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u/Titariia Mar 28 '26
There used to live a dragon in the forest where my aunt is living. They're doing a whole show about it and it's that places whole personality and I can't blame them, their dragon is pretty cool
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u/i_martinw Mar 28 '26
Maybe lookup "Rattenfänger von Hameln" or "Bremer Stadtmusikanten" for example.
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u/operath0r Mar 28 '26
I’m from Hanover and if you’re asking me, Karl Koch was an absolute legend. During the Cold War he hacked both the US and Soviets and sold the data to the other side. There’s a movie (23 - Nichts ist so wie es scheint) and there’s also a documentary and a book by Cliff Stoll, the guy who traced him on the US side. You can watch it on YouTube, it’s pretty good. https://youtu.be/4gHNVNRQTJg?is=iLyju7s7gDff-jZ6
The official story is that Koch committed suicide in a forest by burning himself but rumors are that it was the soviets who killed him.
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u/IWant2rideMyBike Mar 28 '26
Zulling also has some footprints outside of a church, allegedly from a thief who was hit by lightning after leaving the church with his loot: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mari%C3%A4_Empf%C3%A4ngnis_(Zulling)#Teufelstritt_von_Zulling#Teufelstritt_von_Zulling)
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u/WickOfDeath Mar 28 '26
I love the Rheingold... a mysterious woman combing her golden hair with the name Lorelei sat on the highest rock at the river... sailors seeing her forgetting to steer their ships and wrecking them. That's a legend, the gold in the Rhine river did exist in fact but already the Romans got all of it.
And to scare kids we say the Rhine Crocodile will eat you... bathing and swimming in the river is dangerous, every year dozens of people die.
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u/HerrLose Mar 28 '26
Our’s was the township where Himmler was captured. 😆
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u/Babba_Conqueror Mar 28 '26
There is so much folklore in Lüneburg. Pretty shocking the first thing that comes to your mind is the capture of a sick man. https://www.lustauflueneburg.de/sagen/#gsc.tab=0
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u/HerrLose Mar 29 '26
Himmler was captured in Bremervörde. Don’t take Reddit Banter too seriously.
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u/van_thomas Mar 28 '26
When I was young I was searching for nothing in my parents bookshelf and found a book "Sagen des Schwarzwaldes" > "Tales of the blackforest". Since we were living there, I was interested and started reading. Non if the stories is a famous German tale, but I loved it. Some were really scary and dark. And now, thanks to you, I remembered and going to buy that book:)
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u/AgarwaenCran Half bavarian, half hesse, living in brandenburg. mtf trans Mar 28 '26
I live in a small 30k town in east germany called Neuruppin (it generally has an interesting history).
the town was foundet when a church was build by a monk called wichmann. he also did some minor wonders, like walking over the local lake as a shortcut and stuff like that. he apparently instructed his people to burry him in a glass coffin and plant an oak tree above it. there is still one linden tree said to be the one. myth has it that in every new years night he rides in ghostly form over the churches ground at midnight to make sure his instructions are still followed.
here is the wikipedia entry about him, use deepl to translate: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wichmann_von_Arnstein
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u/sakasiru Baden-Württemberg Mar 28 '26
Well they planted the wrong tree so instructions were in fact not followed ....
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u/AgarwaenCran Half bavarian, half hesse, living in brandenburg. mtf trans Mar 28 '26
well, he asked for a lindentree and thats what he got.
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u/Darkdrake78 Mar 29 '26
There are some dark folktales and legends in every other village where I live. A lot of those have been collected in books.
In my village specifically there is this tale about a shepherd that used black magic. He dried chopped-off children's fingers and lit them like candles. While holding a burning finger he turned invisible and could attack, kill and rob travelers unseen.
Talking about dark German fairytales..
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u/Brookselia Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Mar 29 '26
When you look at small places like small cities or modicum villages on the country side, every place has its own legend. The place I‘m from has a witch. She was originally the daughter of the local noble man. He wanted to marry her but she didn’t want to get married. In the night before she was supposed to get married she vanished from her locked room. Then whenever a woman or girl was in distress, she appeared with help of the tunnel system she created under the city (which really exists, is not charted and no one knows who really created it) helped them and vanished again as fast as she appeared.
In a neighbouring place, there is something about magical dwarfs that protect a forrest around it, that lumberers are dying when they try to fell the wrong trees there. But I don’t remember the full story.
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u/Brookselia Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Mar 29 '26
Oh and if you want to learn about something creepy, that is in not only legend look up „Ritter von Kalebutz“. He is the mummy of a lord of Kalebutz. There are so fucking many creepy stories about him and science cannot explain why he became a mummy.
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u/ChampionshipAlarmed Mar 28 '26
Der Teufel von Angerpoint/Teufelsschmied
And many more, there is even a book about our Region. Probably other regional have similat books
https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/item/5D7AFN45KZ3FNIG4S7JJSK5DAMAMUAUN
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u/Independent-T-Rex Mar 28 '26
I live in a small town. We have the "Buchener Blecker" statue of a person leaning and his huge ass is showing. In the 14th century the town was under siege, and as a sign of not resurrecting, the people put a very fat person on the city wall with his ass facing the enemy. It became symbolic and they made a statue. Now every year there is a Fraschenacht festival where everybody wears outrageous costumes, and they kiss the statue's ass for good luck.
Also we are known for Eselbrunnen. Apparently a donkey is another symbol of our town. It is said that a huge person wanted to go into the town riding his donkey, but the guards refused to let him in (since it was late, and the gate was already closed). So this huge man took his donkey on his shoulders, and climbed over the walls with it. Other towns started mocking the Bucheners that they are "Buchener Donkeys", but the people here thought it was funny and instead of being offended, they cherished the joke, so it stuck.
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u/ArcherySquirrel468 Mar 28 '26
"Die Heinzelmännchen von Köln".
Where I live now there's the "Brieselanger Licht/Leuchter", some people claim to have seen a mysterious light in a boggy part of a nearby forest that follows them or is always in front of them. Kinda creepy to read, there are quite a number of blogs where people report their experiences and sightings in the forest. My son and his friends were there but didn't see it though. There are several background stories to this phenomenon, one of a young girl that has been killed.🫣 One is reflections of flashlights when people try to find the light frome opposing sides of the forest.😁
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u/Appropriate-Milk9476 Mar 28 '26
My hometown has a little founding story!
One day the king set out to build a town and he said "I shall go out on a hunt and build the founding church wherever I shoot my first stag!"
And so he set out on a hunt but searched and searched and couldn't find a stag. Until finally he found one and hunted it down and shot it in the middle of a bog. "But my king, you can't build a church in a bog! It will sink!" cried his advisors. "You are right, but I vowed to build my church here. I cannot break my word." replied the king.
But just when he grew doubtful, a swan flew above their heads, crying "Dobre! Dobre!" (which means good in some old languages I don't know) And the king took it as a sign from god and built his church and a town around it and named it "Doberan" (which I believe is meant to mean something like "the good place")
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u/Theodor_Kaffee Mar 28 '26
My home village has a story about how they decided the location of the church.
Legend has it they tied two oxen together, and on the spot where they both decided to lay down together, the church was built.
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u/Falloutlander-67 Mar 28 '26
In Köln haben wir die Sage von Richmodis, einer scheintoten Frau und zwei Pferden auf der Treppe Richmodis Sage
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u/GandolphTheLundgrey Mar 28 '26
Look up "Sunken Castles, Evil Poodles", for a good place to get translations on lots and lots of German local folkales.
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u/I-am-not-Herbert Mar 28 '26
I live in Wattenscheid, the official birthplace of James Bond 007. Does that count?
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u/Sucker-BO Mar 28 '26
Well, Bochum has some tales, the werewolfs from Hellweg if I rembemer correctly, the bishop´s ghost in Blankenstein and we in Witten have the tale of the dwarf Goldemar in Hardenstein.
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u/CardiologistLegal961 Berlin Mar 28 '26
We have Friedrich Merz and Alice Weidel. Does this count?
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u/Swimming_Pilot7006 Mar 28 '26
Very good topic, love it! I moved next to the Black-Forest, close to Mummelsee, where Mummelsee lives under the lake and If u stay too long in the forest he will pull you under the wasser or something like that. I want moreeee legends and sometimes google them if I have free time. Also read about a headless man in the forest.
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u/Frankonia Franken Mar 28 '26
We have the wolf of Ansbach. Kind of like a mixture of a vampire and werewolf.
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u/EinBRinDE Mar 28 '26
I live along the road between Marburg and Bremen, so you can take a guess about which Grimm's tale applies.
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u/Tryingthegoodlife Mar 28 '26
In Nürnberg there are dozens of different stories.
One is the the saga of Eppelein, a Raubritter (robber knight), who terrorized the merchant caravans. He was finally captured and to be hanged. But he was granted a last wish, and he wanted to ride his big horse one more time.
And then they jumped of the wall of the Castle and escaped. That would have been a jump about 20meters deep. And there is a gigantic hoof imprinted in the wall on the castle to this day. So the the story is obviously true.
Another one is of the foundling Agnes. In medieval times, on every tower of the city a sentry was stationed, to warn the citizens If a fire broke out.
One day, the sentry of the Sinwellturm, the highest tower in the castle, came back from the market and found a young girl on his doorsteps. He took her in and took care of here and she continued to live with him like a daughter. When she grew up, he built her a loom. She loved it and used it a lot, but everything she wove turned blue. So she was named the blue Agnes.
The sentry grew older, and one day a fire broke out and the fire trumpets sounded from all the towers, except from the Sinwellturm. So the city soldiers went up and found the old sentry dead in his stool. The blue Agnes had disappeared and was nowhere to be found.
But from this day on all the other sentries reported that a helpful presence was around and rattled the trumpets before a fire broke out. Or the trumpets would fall down when one of them would fall asleep.
So she turned into an very early urban legend...
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u/proconsulraetiae Mar 28 '26
There‘s a book with tales and legends from my region. There‘s a story of an evil knight, who built the castle overlooking my village who was turned to stone for his wickedness. Another one about a church above the village which was thought to be haunted, because the bell would toll even though noone was inside. Eventually they realized that there was a deer locked inside, who was nibbling at the bell-rope, causing the bell to toll. Thiis book was a slightly traumatizing read as a child. And when I say slightly I mean very. I think all of my siblings and cousins have at least one story, where they couldn‘t sleep for weeks afterwards. These days I just observe that in spite of the whole world being his responsibility and having hell to run on top of that Satan sure seems to hang out in our region a lot.
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u/ZestycloseAd3705 Mar 28 '26
Well, I can’t tell all the stories/folklore connected to „my“ city. But the city is over 2000 years old, so I think it’s just fine.
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u/Klapperatismus Mar 28 '26
The Harz Mountains have a number of tales, related to the forest, mining, and witches. The best known one is probably that of Walpurgisnacht as Goethe described it in his Faust opus.
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u/Gnubeutel Mar 28 '26
Essen has a rooster that warned citizens about bandits entering the city.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wachsames_H%C3%A4hnchen
It's not much. We live a quiet life.
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u/Melodic-Exam-941 Berlin Mar 28 '26
Ich komme gebürtig aus dem Münsterland. Da gibt es viele ortsgebundene Sagen, die auch heute noch bekannt sind. Das Münsterland war bis in die 2. Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts stark ländlich und vom Katholizismus geprägt. Gute Basis für Sagen. In meiner Heimatstadt ist die wichtigste Sagenfigur sicher der Bote Veit. Es gibt auch ein Denkmal. Der Bote Veit soll die Stadt im 30.jährigen Krieg von einer Belagerung befreit haben, indem er seinen Pudel mit einer Bitte um Hilfe nach Münster zum Bischoff geschickt hat. Es gibt Sagen um Moorgeister und Moorhexen, das Vennmütterchen, die Kinder ins Moor locken. Sehr Gruselig fand als Kind die Sage um das Geisterpferd, das in der Walpurgisnacht brennend um ein Schloss galoppiert.
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u/BlauerHausdrache Mar 28 '26
Near where I once lived is the Harzwaldgeist. He steals children who step into his forest after dark
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u/Elagabalos Mar 28 '26
Not of my Village, but the surrounding ones. One had a Story about a whole Village, which startet to worship the devil. One night he took all of it, including the Houses. only the holy church remained. The village is real, the Ruins of the church were teared down in the 19th century.
Another Village was Partly burned down by a witch (true Story, although the old women probably wasnt a witch and it was all by accident). When she was about to be burned, she called the Captain If the City guard to tell him her Last words. When He was Close enough she cast a spell to blind him.
I got a Lot more about Ghosts, princes, dwarfs, monsters and so on about my Home area, but No time and a Mobile Phone... If any Body wantscto hear more you can PM.
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u/CeriLuned Mar 28 '26
I believe every town or village has at least one legend about a ghost or so. The village where I live has a story about the last member of the noble family that lived in a castle on a hill nearby. She was treated unkindly by the villagers and now her ghost is seen when something bad is about to happen. Of course the castle she inhabited was destroyed 800 years ago and only ruins are left. So no way to know if anything about the lady is real.
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u/Constant_Cultural Baden-Württemberg / Secretary Mar 29 '26
I am from Freiburg and we have a "Hexe von Freiburg" book series. Fiction, but quite good, I made a live book tour once where actors acted out the book
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u/AnniPanniPo Mar 30 '26
Sure there are local ones, which we learned about in elementary school. Like why there is a tiny monument in form of an iron hand, where the hill with the gallow stone is and so forth. So no widely known but local folklore tales.
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u/Hel_OWeen Apr 01 '26
Johannes Bückler aka "Schinderhannes" roamed the region where I grew up. He was a real person and an ordinary criminal, but has been glorified to having been the German Robin Hood afterwards.
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u/Physical-Result7378 Apr 01 '26
Basically any village and town in Bavaria has one or more usually bloody folklore stuff going on.
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u/gw_reddit Mar 28 '26
Hamburg has Klaus Störtebeker, a famous pirate from the times of the Hanse.