Hans von Hackelnberg

Somewhere over the Hakel, the wooded ridge near Halberstadt, the wind changes its sound. It stops moaning and starts baying. Horns come down out of the rain, then the splash of hooves crossing a bog, then a hoarse cry of hu, hu from somewhere above the treetops. A carter on the road below lets go of the reins and drops face down in the mud, arms over his head, and stays there until the noise has gone over him and on toward the Dummburg. He does not look up. Nobody who knows the stories looks up.

That is Hans von Hackelnberg, and he is late for nothing. He has until Judgement Day.

In life, the legend says, he was chief master of the hunt to the Duke of Brunswick, a man for whom the chase was the one real pleasure in the world. The Brothers Grimm printed the tale of his death in their German Legends of 1816, drawing on a collection of regional folk tales published in 1800 by the writer Johann Nachtigal under the pen name Otmar. One night, sleeping at the Harzburg, Hackelnberg dreamed that a monstrous boar fought him and, after a long struggle, beat him. He could not shake the dream. Some time later, hunting in the foothills of the Harz, he came on a boar that looked like the one he had seen in his sleep. This time he won. The animal went down on his spear after a long and even fight.

Then came the mistake. Delighted, he kicked at the dead boar’s tusks and told the beast it would not be getting him yet. The kick was harder than he meant. A tusk went through the leather of his boot and into his foot. He laughed it off and kept hunting, but by evening the foot had swollen so badly that the boot had to be cut away. He set off for Wolfenbüttel by carriage, and every jolt of the road made it worse. He got as far as the hospital at Wülperode and died there. The stone over his grave, the Grimms reported, showed a knight in armour riding a mule.

The older version of what happened next is darker, and it is older on paper too. Around 1558 the writer Hans Wilhelm Kirchhof lost his way riding across the Solling, the forest between Einbeck and Uslar, and stumbled on what he was told was Hackelberg’s grave: a long clearing like a meadow, with a reddish stone at one end. He wrote it up in his story collection Wendunmuth, and the Grimms took it from there. In that telling the huntsman, dying, could not bear to give up the chase. He asked God to let him hunt the Solling until the Day of Judgement instead of going to heaven, and to be buried out there in the wilds. Both wishes were granted. The first became his sentence. Later Lower Saxon tellings recorded by Jacob Grimm add that his priest, hearing the request, simply told him to go and hunt until the end of the world, and that his other offence was hunting on Sundays.

So he rides. In some accounts he goes out only in the twelve nights between Christmas and Twelfth Night, in others whenever a storm wind howls. He ranges over the Harz, the Thuringian Forest and the Solling, and his favourite ground is the Hakel, whose name he seems to carry. He hunts the shadows of animals he killed long ago. Kirchhof was told that hounds lie guarding the grave for anyone who finds it by accident. He saw none. He said so.

Ahead of the hunt flies an owl. The Harz people called her the Tut-Osel, and the Grimms explain the name with a tale of a nun called Ursula in a Thuringian convent whose howling voice wrecked the choir for years. After her death she kept it up, wailing from a hole in the church tower at eleven each night and joining the dawn office uninvited, until the nuns abandoned their church. A Capuchin exorcist finally banished her, in the shape of an eagle owl, to the Dummburg in the Harz. There she met Hackelnberg. Each liked the other’s noise, and they have hunted together through the air ever since. When the owl calls, the hunt is close behind.

What the riders do to those they meet is uneven. Two young men who laughed at his halloo were taken by his hounds and never seen again. A shepherd who cheered the pack on found a half-eaten haunch of horse flung into his cart as his share of the kill. Grimm also heard that Hackelberg once left one of his hounds behind in a barn at Isenstadt, where it lay for a full year without stirring, then leapt up and rejoined the hunt when it came by again.

Whether there was ever a real Hans von Hackelnberg is open. A Brunswick master of the hunt named Hans von Hackelberg, said to have lived from 1521 to 1581 and died at Wülperode, is put forward by regional historians as the model, but the identification is not secure, and Kirchhof was already standing at a Hackelberg grave in the Solling in the 1550s, while that man was still alive. Jacob Grimm, in his Teutonic Mythology of 1835, thought the legend was far older than any huntsman. The name turned up in too many unconnected places, under too many forms, to belong to one man. He traced it to an old Saxon word for a cloak or armour and read Hackelberend as the cloaked or armoured one, a by-name of the god Wodan worn down into a surname. He admitted that the second half of the word was uncertain. The reading is his, not the folk’s.

Hackelnberg’s power is the power of the storm itself. He cannot be stopped, cannot be bargained with and cannot be outrun, and anyone who meets him standing up risks being swept away. His limits are just as plain. He cannot rest, cannot reach heaven and cannot stop, because he asked for a hunt without end and got one. A traveller who lies face down and keeps quiet lets him pass. A hunter who hears him at night has only to stay home the next day.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Hans von Hackelnberg?

Hans von Hackelnberg is the Wild Huntsman of North German folklore, told of in Brunswick, the Harz, the Solling and Westphalia. In legend he was chief master of the hunt to the Duke of Brunswick who, after his death, was condemned to ride the night sky with horses and hounds until Judgement Day.

How did Hans von Hackelnberg die?

In the legend printed by the Brothers Grimm, Hans von Hackelnberg dreamed that a huge boar defeated him, then later killed a similar boar in the Harz foothills. When he kicked the dead animal, a tusk pierced his boot and wounded his foot, which swelled so badly that he died at the hospital at Wülperode on the way to Wolfenbüttel.

Why does Hans von Hackelnberg hunt forever?

In the oldest recorded version, written down by Hans Wilhelm Kirchhof around 1558, the dying Hackelberg asked God to let him hunt the Solling forest until the Day of Judgement instead of going to heaven. The wish was granted as a punishment. Later tellings add that he also sinned by hunting on Sundays.

What is the Tut-Osel?

The Tut-Osel is an owl that flies ahead of Hans von Hackelnberg’s hunt in Harz folklore. The Grimms explain her as the ghost of a nun named Ursula whose howling voice disrupted her convent’s choir, and who was banished by an exorcist to the Dummburg in the Harz, where she joined Hackelnberg.

Was Hans von Hackelnberg a real person?

It is uncertain. Regional historians point to a Brunswick master of the hunt named Hans von Hackelberg, said to have lived from 1521 to 1581, but the legend was already attached to a grave in the Solling in the 1550s. Jacob Grimm thought the name was older still, a worn-down by-name of the god Wodan.

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