Feldgeister

Feldgeister are presented in the sources not as a single origin tale but as a classificatory folk category: non-human powers resident in or emerging from the cultivated landscape. In the agrarian cosmology recorded, the life-cycle of crops is understood as involving crop-spirits that flee, are captured or are transformed at harvest; the final sheaves or a shaped corn doll may represent the trapped or killed corn-spirit after mowing and threshing.

Descriptions are highly variable and regionally fluid. Sources catalogue many named types that may appear as animals (e.g., Roggenwolf/Getreidewolf, Kornkatze, Kornstier/Märzenkalb, Roggensau, Haferbock/Habergeiß, various birds), therioanthropomorphic hybrids (e.g., Katzenmann, Bockmann/Bockelmann), or anthropomorphic corn-spirits (e.g., Roggenmuhme). Individual types carry distinctive, sometimes contradictory local depictions (the Habergeiß is variously three-legged, half-goat/half-bird, or a yellow bird with a goat voice).

Feldgeister are commonly described as tied to weather and field phenomena (often also called wind spirits and credited with causing lightning and rain, or moving grain during storms). Specific named types have hazardous behaviors recorded in the sources: the Roggenwolf is said to steal and feed on children; the Getreidehahn (grain-rooster) is said to peck out children's eyes; the Habergeiß's cry is an omen (announcing spring or predicting a hard winter) and its appearance is credited with causing spoilage and livestock decline. Direct contact with a Feldgeist is reported to cause illness. Seasonal roles include fertilizing actions attributed to some types (e.g., the Kornstier fertilizing a fruit tree at Christmas) and springtime manifestations (Märzenkalb, Haferbock). During harvest the spirits are said to flee deeper into fields and with the final cutting become trapped and either killed by cutting/threshing or brought to the village ceremonially as a corn doll.