Werewolf Facts

Famous Werewolves: Thiess of Kaltenbrun

Thiess of Kaltenbrun, also called Thies and very often known as the Livonian werewolf, belonged to Swedish Livonia and was put on a trial for his beliefs in Jurgensburg in 1692. He was in his 80s at the time of the trial.

The cause of the trial was his proclamation that he was a werewolf and that he had visited hell to fight the devil and his companions in order to recover the livestock and grain stolen from the Earth. He claimed that he was the Hound of God, but the court found him guilty of misleading the people and keeping them away from Christianity. He was punished with flogging and was banished for life.

Thiess of Kaltenbrun, also spelled Thies, and commonly referred to as the Livonian werewolf, was a Livonian man who was put on trial for heresy in Jurgensburg, Swesish Livonia, in 1692. At the time in his eighties, Thiess openly proclaimed himself to be a werewolf (wahrwolff), claiming that he ventured into Hell with other werewolves in order to do battle with the Devil and his witches. Although claiming that as a werewolf he was a "hound of God", the judges deemed him guilty of trying to turn people away from Christianity, and he was sentenced to be both flogged and banished for life.

According to Thiess' account, he and the other werewolves transformed on three nights a year, and then traveled down to Hell. Once there, they fought with the Devil and his witches in order to rescue the grain and livestock which the witches had stolen from the Earth.

Various historians have turned their attention towards the case of Thiess, interpreting his werewolf beliefs in a variety of different ways. In his book The Night Battles (1966), the Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg compared Thiess' practices to those of the benandanti of northeastern Italy, and argued that they represented a survival of pre-Christian shamanic beliefs. Ginzburg's ideas were later critiqued by the Dutch historian Willem de Blecourt.

Origins:

In 1691, the judges of Jürgensburg, a town in Swedish Livonia, brought before them an octogenarian known as Thiess of Kaltenbrun, believing him to be a witness in a case regarding a church robbery. They were aware of the fact that local people considered him to be a werewolf who had consorted with the Devil, but they initially had little interest in such allegations, which were unrelated to the case at hand. Nonetheless, although it had no bearing on the case, Thiess freely admitted to the judges that he had once been a werewolf, but claimed to have given it up ten years previously. Thiess proceeded to offer them an account of lycanthropy that differed significantly from the traditional view of the werewolf then prevalent in northern Germany and the Baltic countries.

Thiess told the judges of how ten years previously, in 1681, he had also appeared in court, when he had accused a farmer from Lemburg of breaking his nose. According to the story that he had then told, he had traveled down to Hell as a wolf, where the farmer, who was a practicing Satanic witch, had beat him on the nose with a broomstick decorated with horses' tails. At the time, the judges refused to believe his story and laughed him out of court, but one of the judges did verify that his nose had indeed been broken.

This time, the judges of Jürgensburg decided to take his claims more seriously, and trying to establish if he was mad or sane, they asked several individuals in the court who knew Thiess if he was of sound mind. They related that as far as they knew, his common sense had never failed him. These individuals also related that Thiess' status in the local community had actually increased since his run in with the law back in 1681.

Theiss' Account:

Thiess claimed that on the night of , and usually also on the nights of and , he and the other werewolves transformed from their human bodies into wolves. When questioned further on how this occurred, Thiess initially claimed that they did so by putting on wolves' pelts, claiming that he had originally obtained his from a farmer, but that several years before he had passed it on to someone else.