What is a werewolf?
The word combines the Old High German wer, man, with wolf. It means a person who turns into a wolf, either willingly through magic or unwillingly through a curse. In many stories, the transformation requires a belt or a pelt made of wolfskin.
Werewolves on trial
In the 16th and 17th centuries, people were accused not only of being witches but also of being werewolves, and most of them were men. The historian Rolf Schulte describes the werewolf as the male counterpart of the witch. Elmar Lorey has studied the werewolf trials of this period and shown how the accusation could be used in court.
The case of Peter Stubbe
In 1589, the wealthy farmer Peter Stubbe was executed as a werewolf near Bedburg in the Rhineland. According to a pamphlet published in English in London in 1590, he had received a belt from the devil that let him turn into a wolf, and he had killed people for years. The original German print is lost. Independently of it, the Cologne city councilor Hermann von Weinsberg mentions the execution in his diary.
The closer you look, the more questions arise. The case falls in the period immediately after the Cologne War of 1583 to 1588, which was fought over the religious future of the Archbishopric of Cologne. That casts a different light on the question of who benefited from this execution.
Episode on this topic
Further reading
- The Damnable Life and Death of one Stubbe Peeter, London 1590.
- Diary of Hermann von Weinsberg.
- Montague Summers: The Werewolf, 1933.
- Rolf Schulte: studies on men in the witch trials.
- Elmar Lorey: research on the werewolf trials of the early modern period.