Tradition: German Mythology
Alternative Names: Drack, Drache, Flying Dragon
Category: Dragon
The Myth
The dragons of old Bavarian stories were terrifying, fire-breathing creatures that flew through the night sky. Although belief in such monsters had largely faded, their memory survived in the regional insult “Drack,” used for someone who had behaved maliciously or played a nasty trick.
Yet people in the region continued to tell stories of having actually seen dragons. One woman recalled that around forty years earlier, when she was six years old, she had been sitting on a table one evening and looking out of the window. Suddenly the sky became illuminated, and something resembling a burning Wiesbaum—a long wooden pole or beam used in the countryside—flew over the village. Its front portion, however, was completely black.
The fiery object crossed the road near her family’s house while her mother watched it as well and called out that something was flying outside. The strange creature then disappeared into a neighbour’s chimney. From inside the neighbouring house came only a brief crashing noise, after which everything became quiet again.
The dragon was also repeatedly seen at Fahrnbach near Bischofsmais. During flax-breaking work, people reportedly saw it after eleven o’clock at night. There it appeared as a burning Wiesbaum with a black, spherical head, rushing through the darkness before disappearing over the forest.
Greising was another place where the dragon was said to appear repeatedly. Its final reported appearance occurred around the time the schoolhouse burned down, around 1904.
In Viechtach, the creature was given an even darker interpretation. People said that the Devil himself had flown through the air in the form of a Wiesbaum before disappearing down a chimney.
The Bavarian dragon therefore survives in these stories not as a single clearly defined monster, but as a strange fiery apparition racing through the night sky: sometimes a burning wooden beam with a black head, sometimes an object entering a chimney, and sometimes understood as the Devil himself.
Sources
“Von den Drachen.” SAGEN.at – Traditionelle Sagen aus Deutschland (Bayern). Reproduced by SAGEN.at.
https://www.sagen.at/texte/sagen/deutschland/bayern/waltinger/vondendrachen.html