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Paper short abstract

The paper looks at the wolf's symbolism, the value of metaphors, and their historical rootedness in Germany. It traces the journey of wolves from the fictional world of folktales to the nonfictional world of ecology, political discourses, and eco-consciousness to analyse the biopolitics around them.

Paper long abstract

No other animal is as deeply embedded in cultural expression and human thought throughout human history as the wolf. Psychologist C.G. Jung defines the wolf as an archetypal being, an echo of the human collective subconscious (Jung, 2003). Shamanic cultures worship the wolf as a spiritually guiding power animal (Lopez, 1978). In the Palaeolithic, humans admired wolves as dangerous rivals, while Indo-European cultures considered them guardians. Wolf symbolism became a part not only of culture, but politics also had its reflection. Hitler himself was regarded as the pack leader by the Nazis (Arnds, 2021). The wolf symbolised the great German past and a predator for Nazis, but in current times in Germany, there has been a transformation of the image, where far-right activists depict living wolves in a negative light and associate them with “the other,” the reason being rewilding, return of the wild, human–non-human conflicts, and immigrant politics. Through this paper, I analyse how the wolf's image has transformed and been appropriated, from the folktales to the farmlands, and what role the folk narratives play in invoking emotions surrounding human-non-human conflicts. Both fictional and non-fictional narratives and encounters with the non-human have metaphorical value, shaping and reshaping the human psyche. Therefore, this paper will trace the journey of metaphors migrating from oral traditions to ecological and political discourses and analyse the process of political scapegoating of wolves and their bio-politics. This paper will draw upon narrative theory, actor-network theory, and cultural semiotics to examine these entanglements and shifts.