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The Wildmannli of Liechtenstein

© James Foster Robinson

The Wildmannli of Liechtenstein were the "Little People" or little wild men that the old peasant women of the Principality told about in tales. These apparently primitive humans lived in mountain caves like the ones near Alp Sareis above Malbun. A cave up on the Ochsenkopf overlooking a church is still called the Wildmannakirchli. Another Wildmannli lived on Profatscheng above the present village of Schaan.

Shy and seldom seen, they were so thickly covered with hair that the people of old Liechtenstein thought they looked much like little bears. The Wildmannli were noted for helping their bigger neighbors with their chores up in the mountain pastures and in the farms around Malbun and Steg. The little wild men would feed the animals and even clean out the stables. They were so reliable that the Liechtenstein peasants could leave work undone and be sure that the little wild men would do it for them. The only time they did not appear was during the Föhn, a hot dry wind, and bad weather.

There is little doubt that the Liechtenstein peasants considered them human and not animals like bears. The Wildmannli some times wore skins as clothing and could apparently speak and understand human speech. Several tales about them tell how they spoke to humans, some times giving warnings of pending disasters. The creatures have now disappeared from the mountains and have not been seen in many years. No one knows for sure why they left. Different legends suggest that for some reason they got tired of humans and simply packed up and disappeared underground. Who were these little people? Were they primitive humans living in the area when Homo sapiens, modern man, about 40,000 years ago, immigrated in Europe and forced them back up into the more inaccessible mountains? It is known that the Neanderthal lived in Europe at that time. Were the Wildmannli the last of the comparatively primitive Neanderthal?

There are stories of a beast or wild man existing in Europe up to as late the 18th century. Research suggests that the more advanced Homo sapiens hunted these wild men as they did the now extinct Cave Bear. The Greeks and Romans knew of the creatures and depicted them as human-like but hairy and having hooves instead of feet. Two wild men were captured in Saxony in the 13th century. Another one captured by soldiers in 1661 in Lithuania sent to the Queen of Poland. The Queen trained him to do simple tasks. Also in the same century a bear man was captured in Poland. In 1784, a wild man was caught in the woods near Kronstadt and studied by scientists of that time. The creature had the sloping forehead, large eyebrow ridges and hairy body that legends say the wild men have.

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