Moving from the bustling metropolis of Munich to a far more rural area of Bavaria, my fortean heart was gladdened when I saw the coat of arms for my new home.
Naila is a small town on the edge of the Frankenwald, a few miles from the old internal German border, and the coat of arms (Wappen in German) is dominated on the right hand side by a Wilder Mann. The more formal description is “Shield parted per pale; at dexter quartered of Sable and Argent; at sinister Gules, a savage Argent with apron and coronet of leaves Vert, standing on a mount Vert between two trees of the same and holding a mace by his right hand.”1 Although the current version is quite well groomed, the Wild Man shown on the earliest example of the Naila coat of arms is far more hirsute, much like the Woodwose of England (see FT318:28-33).2
The residents of Naila seem particularly proud of their Wilder Mann, and he can be found as a full scale carving in the train station, in abstract form on local bridges, and memorialised in graffiti on a container on the edge of town. Up until 2019, the Wilder Mann was portrayed at events by local man Alex Rauh, who died in 2021.3 But why was this figure adopted by the town for its coat of arms?
WILD IN THE COUNTRY
The study of Wild Men is always complex, especially as they occur all over the world. Even when looking only at Western Europe, it can
