Legendary Creatures of Germany - Documentary

In this video, we take a look at some of the most famous legendary creatures and cryptids of Germany, and consider whether or not some of them may have a basis in reality...

The following music performed by Kevin Macleod Available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

Night of Chaos
Shadowlands 5 - Antechamber
Deep Noise
Gathering Darkness
The Dread
Long Note One
Cryptic Sorrow
Echoes of Time V2
Anguish

These songs provided by the YouTube audio library:

Maestro Tlakaelel - Jesse Gallagher
Sinister Cathedral - Asher Fulero
Forest Lullaby - Asher Fuler

Picture attributions:

[Fireoflearning]

You may enjoy the music in this video more by turning off YouTube's "Stable Volume" setting, located by pressing the cog symbol (The circle with notches around it) in the video options.

[speev]

As a german, i can confirm we have to deal with most of these on a daily basis

[satan]

I'm not sure if you've heard of the following creature, but it's been said to haunt some parts of Germany, especially Bavaria, its name is Markus Söder but beware of looking it up, you might not be prepared for what you see.

[Argacyan]

The term "Wiedergänger" can also be translated as "revenant" for simplicity.

[genosho]

German Mortician here, it's funny to me that Nachzehrer are described to hold one of their thumbs in the grave since it's quite the common practice in our field to make one hand hold the others thumb to make sure they stay in a rested position atop the stomach.

[derschauspielerdenichengag]

In my home village in Swabia the young men would go out in groups on christmas eve to banish ghosts. We would wear white robes, black masks with hemp beards, high pointy paper hats and large leather belts with heavy bells attached around the shoulder and run through the village screaming. We also had flour sacks in which we collected candy and money for charity. It always felt so eerie and important. The older folks would often say that they felt at ease with the sound of the bells and screaming in the distance

[Jestnarr]

Until this video, as a german, i knew little of these entities. But i recognized atleast two "Wiedergänger" and "die Klagemutter". The latter is something my grandma told me about in a way. Since everytime we heard an owl outside their house at night, she said "Heard that? I'll be dead soon." then she laughed, always gave me the creeps when i was a child.

[lugenkresse]

In my region (Thuringia) we call the Tatzelwurm the Lindwurm. It was said to have lived in my neighbouring village of Lindig, and demanded a virgin sacrifice once every fall. That was until a girl named Margarethe was supposed to be fed to the Lindwurm. She grabbed a spear from one of her guards and stabbed it through the mouth right into the throat, killing it (the Lindwurm is a species of dragon, and a dragon's heart is in the throat, duh!). She was henceforth known as Saint Margarethe and can still be seen on the coat of arms of the city of Kahla. A nearby city called Jena copied the legend and changed Margarethe to the Archangel Micheal, which I still think is kind of lame and defeats the purpose of the legend. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

[vorgeschichte]

You missed the infamous 'Passierschein A38'.

[georgnitsche]

'The Russians and the French held the land,
The British rule the seas,
But our (german) sway is uncontested
In the airy realm of dreams.'
-> Heinrich Heine 'Germany. A Winter’s Tale'

[zarriuss]

Die Klagefrau reminds me a bit of my childhood in north germany. We had a very old stone house near our village. My dad and i drove past it once, and he told me the story of a woman and her husband who once lived there. One night, the husband came home drunk, and killed her in cold blood. He told everyone that a man broke in and killed her, though not many belived him. The last time someone saw him alife, was when he was leaving the local pub to go home. He was found three days later, in the well outside the stone house. After that, people claimed they saw a transparent figure at night outside the house. A woman in a long white dress, accompanied by a large white dog with long flowing fur. She would cry and scream if people looked at her and the dog would growl. This story really used to scare me as a kid, because we lived really close to that house. This story is so old, no one knows how it started. There is even a small old ''shrine'' for her at the village entrance. It's pretty cool to have legends like this in your own hometown! :D

[geno]

Im German and didnt know many of these. Great research and pronounciation. I love the pictures used and the music.

[lugenkresse]

German here. My parents used to scare my older brother into going to bed on time by telling him that the nightraven would come to harvest his eyeballs if he didn't close his eyes early enough. They seemed to have underestimated how much they frightened him and came clean, so they never told me the story when I was little. He said that he often had a hard time falling asleep after hearing these tales, concentrating on clenching his eyes shut, so it was pretty counterproductive.

[colleenkirkpatrick]

One of the most frightening thing I've ever done was riding on the back of a motorbike through the Black Forest in the middle of the night. The whole time I felt like I was going to be ripped right off the back of the bike by some predator, but I knew there are no predators left. I couldn't see anything and almost upset the bike attempting to look behind me/us. It's crazy weird because I used to be the biggest adrenaline junkie. Cliff jumping, spelunking, mountain climbing with pack, whatever, my favorite thing is White Water Rafting, so I am kind of fearless, but I felt something in the thick darkness in the Black Forest that night, and it scared the crap out of me.

[THATGuy]

So you get on a weird horse, it takes off on a crazy, high speed sprint around the countryside, you quickly realize you can't fall off, and then it stops, throwing you into some water.
Dude, I would pay good money for that experience.

[crazyavocado]

you missed the most terrifying one - the Finanzamt...

[rampage_]

Might just be my personal experience, but there is nothing like growing up in an area on the countryside near the forest. You hear all these stories of fairies and kobolds, devils, trolls, werewolfes and ghosts. And every evening you see the trees in the distance, a dark wall of mystery and danger.
Best thing is when you drive through the forest every now and then, at least at night. The high halls of space between the trees, the shadows everywhere, i have not the words for it.

[BakaLaVie]

I feel like it would be helpful to point out that Irrlicht translated to wandering light is fine, but the German name puts more emphasis on it being a lost wandering, not just being on the move. It relates more to the Irrlicht leading people astray of course, so I guess a more direct translation could be a misleading light?

[kingaxolotl]

You have no idea how happy I am to see this in my notifications. Thanks a million.

[Sotoben_]

A little folk tale from my german hometown: The three-legged dog

During a time where city walls were still in use, there was a secret among the city guards. Every year on christmas eve, a dog appears with pitch dark fur and red glowing eyes like burning coal, limping on only three legs. It walks the exact same route through town every year, then past the city gates, vanishes and returns a couple hours later, walks the same route back and vanishes into the city for a whole nother year. The dog wasn't hostile as long as his path was uninterrupted, so it became a secret tradition for these city guards, to unlock the gates for a couple hours during christmas eve.

One very young guard was on his first shift that night and upon hearing this story from his older colleagues, he thought they were just trying to tease him. He went outside, locked the gate and waited there with rifle in hand, to show how brave he his. It was a stormy, unpleasent night, so the rest of the guards stayed indoors, trying to warm up around an oven. Around midnight the guards suddenly heard loud rumbling, but just for a couple seconds and then nothing. Silence.

They went outside and found the young man knocked out and his rifle next to him, with the barrel twisted and bent beyond repair. He didn't remember much... except for a dog, with pitch dark fur and burning red eyes. Three weeks later he died.

After that, no one dared to lock the city gates on christmas eve ever again.