Matthias Klostermayr
Encyclopedia
Matthias Klostermayr, known as Bavarian Hiasl (in German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
Bayerische Hiasl, in Austro-Bavarian
Austro-Bavarian
Bavarian , also Austro-Bavarian, is a major group of Upper German varieties spoken in the south east of the German language area.-History and origin:...
Boarische Hiasl) (3 September 1736—6 September 1771) was a renowned German outlaw, poacher
Poacher
Poacher may refer to:*One who engages in poaching, the theft or illegal killing of animals or plants*A device used for poaching *Poacher , a family of fish...
and social rebel who had come to be described, particularly in accounts written in the English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
-speaking world, as the Bavaria
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
n Robin Hood
Robin Hood
Robin Hood was a heroic outlaw in English folklore. A highly skilled archer and swordsman, he is known for "robbing from the rich and giving to the poor", assisted by a group of fellow outlaws known as his "Merry Men". Traditionally, Robin Hood and his men are depicted wearing Lincoln green clothes....
.
A native of the municipality of Kissing
Kissing, Bavaria
Kissing is a municipality in the Aichach-Friedberg district, in Bavaria, Germany. It is located just 10 km south of Augsburg and has about 11,200 inhabitants ....
near Augsburg
Augsburg
Augsburg is a city in the south-west of Bavaria, Germany. It is a university town and home of the Regierungsbezirk Schwaben and the Bezirk Schwaben. Augsburg is an urban district and home to the institutions of the Landkreis Augsburg. It is, as of 2008, the third-largest city in Bavaria with a...
(his name, in Austro-Bavarian, on the baptism
Baptism
In Christianity, baptism is for the majority the rite of admission , almost invariably with the use of water, into the Christian Church generally and also membership of a particular church tradition...
al register is Mattheus Klostermair), Bavarian Hiasl became an outlaw, first as a poacher and ultimately as the Robin Hood-like leader of a gang of robbers who, during the 1760s, plundered, sacked and robbed in the region between Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
, Augsburg and Swabia
Swabia
Swabia is a cultural, historic and linguistic region in southwestern Germany.-Geography:Like many cultural regions of Europe, Swabia's borders are not clearly defined...
. Although, by 1771, he was captured and put to death by breaking wheel
Breaking wheel
The breaking wheel, also known as the Catherine wheel or simply the wheel, was a torture device used for capital punishment in the Middle Ages and early modern times for public execution by bludgeoning to death...
, his mythical accumulated treasure was never found, and legends surrounding its purported whereabouts have placed it somewhere near one of his hideouts, an old cave in Kuchelschlag Wood or on Jexhof Farm.
In Bavaria he has been a folk hero, with books, songs, musicals and a modern multimedia museum in Kissing ("Hiasl Erlebniswelt", or "the World of Hiasl"), which recreates for visitors the life and times of the "German prince of forests", the "Bavarian Robin Hood", whose gruesome execution took place in Dillingen an der Donau. Ten years later, in 1781, Friedrich Schiller
Friedrich Schiller
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life , Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe...
is presumed to have based Karl Moor
Karl Moor
Karl Moor was a Swiss Communist, and a channel for German financing of the 19th century European Bolshevik movement....
, the tragic protagonist of his first play, The Robbers, on the Bavarian Hiasl who, in the 2000s, nearly 250 years after his death, still captures the imagination.