Back to gallery

Berwartstein Castle

The only inhabited castle in the Palatinate Forest.

 

 

The Christmas legend of Hans Trapp, the Cannibal Scarecrow:

 

Hans Trapp (Hans von Trotha), was a knight and the commander of the Palatinate's armed forces.

He took possession of two castles (Berwartstein and Grafendahn) that belonged to the Weissenburg Abbey.

When the Abbot of the Benedictine monks protested, Hans dammed up the nearby river and first deprived the Abbey of any water supply.

But he did not stop there, he released all the water at once and caused a massive flood in Weissenburg.

Because of this war against him, the Abbot turned to the Pope.

The Pope excommunicated the Black Knight because of deals with the Devil and banished him from Alsace.

 

After his death, his inheritance went to the House of Fleckenstein from the nearby Château de Fleckenstein.

 

This is where the legend begins.

 

In the Bavarian Alps, where Hans lived during his exile, he developed a desire to taste human flesh.

Finally he became the feared Christmas scarecrow: Dressed up in straw as a scarecrow, he waited on lonely roads for his victims,

which he then cooked and ate in the dark forests around the Berwartstein.

 

In the local Palatinate/Alsatian folklore, Hans is haunting this region to this day as the Black Knight.

And as the companion of Saint Nicholas, he marks bad children he plans to eat for his Christmas Eve feast.

 

You can really meet Hans Trapp every 4th Sunday of Advent in todays Wissembourg, where he appears accompanied by fire-eaters and sounds of drums and threatens to take bad children with him.

54,428 views
462 faves
31 comments
Uploaded on March 8, 2020
Taken on February 27, 2020