Hans Fuchs and the Two Tatzelwürmer of Unken

Unken sits in the Saalach valley, in the Pinzgau district of Salzburg, Austria. In these mountains people spoke of the Tatzelwurm. Local lore gave it a small head like a cat or a child, two front feet, sometimes many small feet like giant millipedes. It was said to favour hazel thickets, hazelnuts and berries.

1779. No day or month survives. Hans Fuchs, usually remembered as a hunter, sometimes as a farmer, was on his way home. One telling places him on the scree above Unken. Another has him coming from the Glemmerich or the Heutal. A third has him picking berries in the so called Möserer Leitstube.

Then the creatures came. Two of them, in every version. They came down off the scree running and pursued him. The locals called them Springwürmer. Jumping worms.

Fuchs fled. Where he fell depends on who tells it. One version says he collapsed in front of his own farm, the house still called the Fuchsbauer. Another says he died at the Thalbruck pass leading into the Heuthal. Another says he barely reached his family. Modern retellings say he died of a heart attack after telling them about the encounter.

His story survives only as a painting. A Marterl, a small wayside votive picture, was set up near Unken. A newer version of its inscription reads: "In sudden terror died here, pursued by jumping worms, Hans Fuchs from Unken 1779."

Luis Schoenherr found three different reproductions. The allegedly oldest shows two creatures with tails, two pairs of feet, speckled skin and forked tongues, "or is it fire?", coming out of their mouths. Fuchs holds his nose, apparently against their breath. He lies half on his belly. A small cross above his head shows he is already gone. If the perspective is accurate, Schoenherr wrote, the creatures were "in the order of meters". Modern summaries give them a serpent-like body 5 to 7 feet in length, two clawed front legs and a large feline-like head.

By the mid-1800s the panel was known beyond the valley. Ludwig Steub, in Alpenreisen, recorded that Franz von Kobell had published the remarkable tablet from a wayside shrine near Unken in his book Wildanger. Today a reproduction stands at the Fuchsbauer farm. Local sources say the original is in the Haus der Natur in Salzburg. Schoenherr believed it is either lost or has been painted over.

Doubts followed the picture. Flucher, cited by Schoenherr, considered the surviving versions of the tablet unreliable and even the victim's name questionable. Schoenherr doubted that an artist relying on hearsay and tradition could paint the creatures true to nature. The beasts on the panel look very much like the dragon Saint George is busy with on the right-hand side altar of the village church.

Eduard Paul Tratz proposed otters. In rut, in May and June, they travelled up the streams to the source and over the mountain. Hofrat Arno Watteck supports the idea today. Others have suggested ordinary lizards and snakes, giant salamanders, as Ulrich Magin did, or the Gila monster.

The Unken case is often called the earliest named and dated Tatzelwurm encounter. Later reports came from the Aareschlucht in 1935, Sacile in 1963, Goro in 1975 and Aosta in 1984. No verified photograph or physical evidence has ever emerged. In Unken, a painted man still lies in the grass beneath two rearing worms, beside the farm that bears his name.