Werewolf as the Slavic and Germanic "Other": Czech Werewolf legends between oral and popular culture
Abstract
Since the days of Romantic Nationalism of the early 19th century, concept of werewolf (in Czech: vlkodlak) enjoyed ambiguous position in Czech culture. This demonic being, although present in Czech verbal folklore, became strongly (and wrongly) perceived as non-Czech (i. e. Germanic) phenomenon, and thus never entered popular consciousness as strongly as other legendary characters such as vodník ("water sprite"), víla ("forest fairy"), hejkal ("leshy") or čert ("devil"). Since the mid-1800s, these characters were reinterpreted by literary and popular culture which put strong ethnic (Slavic) labels on them; these literary and popcultural notions then reversely influenced oral tradition of the times. Werewolves, then labelled as Germanic beings inherently alien to Czech culture, were left out.
The paper surveys werewolf legends collected on the territory of the Czech lands and tries to interpret their relative scarcity (compared to neighbouring countries such as Poland or Slovakia) with special emphasis on complicated relationship between oral and popular culture. Although earliest literary mentions of werevolves in the Czech Lands can be found as early as 13th century (Czech version of Alexandreis), oral legends are very scarce and heavily influenced by literature. Romantic Nationalists of the early 19th century produced several falsified medieval accounts on supposed Czech oral tradition on werewolves which equated these beings with Roman fauns and lupercales. Few narratives collected in oral tradition are very similar, using tropes from contemporary literature and popular press. Typical example is supposedly authentic oldest Czech werewolf legend, published by Josef Virgil Grohmann in his Sagen-Buch von Böhmen und Mähren: Sagen aus Böhmen (1863) where we find love-struck werewolf charmed by forest fairy who also refuses to eat meat and steals snacks of the foresters instead. Most Czech and German folk legends collections of the 19th and early 20th century, however, simply do not record any werewolf legends at all. This situation changes in the mid-1900s.
Werewolves, already perceived as non-Czech phenomenon, enjoyed popularity immediately after the Second World War with contemporary legends and rumours of the times based on atrocities of the Nazi Werwolf secret organization, supposedly wreaking havoc in Czech borderlands. These modern folk narratives not only strenghtened the idea of Czech werewolves as being Germanic, but also helped werewolf legends to finally enter Czech oral tradition (and popular consciousness) in greater numbers. Especially since the early 1980s, werewolf became one of the most important demonic characters of campfire legends, children's folklore, and ghost stories. Along with generic vampires, Bloody Marys and zombies, these modern werewolves - in very similar way as their precessedors in the 19th century - owes much to contemporary popular culture. Many of them still retain their "Germanic" label.