Wollefslach

Symbolic image for a form of the wolf's cave

The Wollefslach was a wolf cave , a trapping facility for wolves . The Wolfskuhle is located near the village of Schweich ( Luxembourgish Schweech , French Schweich ) in the municipality of Beckerich in the canton of Redingen in Luxembourg . This is the last known surviving wolf fishing facility in Luxembourg and is protected as a registered archaeologically interesting site in the application of the Luxembourg Ministry of Culture.

Surname

Woolf means 'wolf' in the Luxembourgish language . Laughter means 'hole'. Wollefslach thus 'Wolfsloch'. The existence of Wolfskuhlen is reflected even in today's local and field names in Luxembourg resist. The Center national de recherche archéologique in Luxembourg has found around 140 place names with the root word “Wolf” in Luxembourg (e.g., Wollefslach, Wollefskaul or Wollefsgräecht).

Function, location, size

It is no longer known today who created this wolf cave. The wolf's hole was covered and camouflaged with branches, brushwood or similar, loose natural material ( pitfall ) into which the animal was supposed to fall. The pitfall could be used both to catch live and to kill the animal directly by means of sharpened stakes. In another variant, a sacrificial animal, for example a sheep , was used as bait to attract the predators. It has not yet been researched which variant was used for the wolf cave presented here.

The Wolfskuhle is about five by seven meters and is located in the middle of a forest.

literature

Ilse Haseder , Gerhard Stinglwagner : Knaur's large hunting dictionary . Augsburg 2000, ISBN 3-8289-1579-5 , p. 946

Web links

Commons : Bilder von Wolfsgruben - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

^ Wolfskaule and Wolfskuhle. In: Jacob Grimm , Wilhelm Grimm (Hrsg.): German dictionary . tape 30 : Wilb – Hyssop - (XIV, 2nd section). S. Hirzel, Leipzig 1960 ( woerterbuchnetz.de ).

↑ The Beckerich community in figures ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2
^ ^A ^b ^c John Lamberty: Who digs a pit for wolves . In: Luxemburger Wort , March 10, 2018.

[1] Wolfskaule and Wolfskuhle. In: Jacob Grimm , Wilhelm Grimm (Hrsg.): German dictionary . tape 30 : Wilb – Hyssop - (XIV, 2nd section). S. Hirzel, Leipzig 1960 ( woerterbuchnetz.de ).