Wolfhagen is a hamlet located in the municipality of Schinnen in the south of the Dutch province of Limburg, at the foot of the Putherberg.
The town is characterized by a ribbon development on the street of the same name Wolfhagen, which forms a connecting road with the town of Oirsbeek, which also belongs to the municipality of Schinnen.
The Fabritiushuis (Renaissance house from the seventeenth century) is one of the oldest monuments in the municipality of Schinnen, and now serves as an office building and residence.
Around the seventeenth century, the first Bokkenrijders' gangs were established in Wolfhagen. Driven by poverty, people of all kinds joined forces and formed groups that mainly tried to put pressure on the established order by means of fire letters.
The gang leader of that first gang of goat riders was Geerling Daniëls, who lived in Wolfhagen at the time. Because the established order labeled the Bokkenrijders as criminals, many of them were imprisoned in the dungeons of Terborgh Castle after being captured and executed (hanged) after conviction in the nearby Danikerbos.
Wolfhagen was also the place where the goat riders performed rituals, according to the following statement from a gang member:
'that he took the oath in the forest behind Wolfhagen, when there was lit standing in a dead hand a ketse (candle) and put on a nose cloth on the ground, and next to it a box in which a large and a small consecrated host, that he should promise the detainee not to slap any comrades anywhere that they should be caught and compelled to do so by the torture (torture), to that end abjuring God and the Devil, then showing up the two front fingers and thumb of the right hand, and if they should be caught and had to confess by the torture and be put to death that they would then recant all.'
This text has been automatically translated using an online translation service.
