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Everybody has heard of the Oberammergau Passion Play that has been performed almost continuously every ten years since 1634. But there is a lesser-known, even older German folk play: the Drachenstich, or “spearing of the dragon,” in Furth im Wald, a small Bavarian town located near the Czech border.

The Drachenstich goes back at least 500 years and began as a simple reenactment of Saint George slaying the dragon during the Catholic Church’s Corpus Christi procession. Bavarians and Bohemians flocked each year to attend the play and see the dragon — little more than burlap and leather at that point — die on the end of the hero’s lance. According to legend, the spilled dragon’s blood had healing properties, and audience members would rush to soak their handkerchiefs in it.

As the performance became more elaborate and rowdy, it threatened to take the focus off the religious rite and instead take center stage as secular entertainment. Small wonder that the Bishop of Regensburg finally banned its performance. That, however, did not go over so well with the people of Furth. At first, they simply ignored the ban. When the priest stepped out of the church with the Blessed Sacrament on Corpus Christi Day, he was confronted by the dragon ensemble, ready to join the procession as it always had. The priest turned on his heel and moved the entire procession into the confines of the church. (The dragon was nevertheless speared in the town square, regardless.)

The ban imposed by the Bishop of Regensburg led to fierce resistance from the people of Furth, who smashed the windows of the vicarage and refused to let go of their dragon. A sensible compromise was agreed on by all sides: from 1879 on, the Drachenstich became an independent festival, held each year in August.

Today, it draws an audience of more than 1,600 people nightly and has turned into a three-hour spectacle with a cast of 300. The play’s undisputed star is a four-and-a-half meters tall, more than 15 meters long, and almost four meters wide dragon robot. Its official name is “Tradinno,” but it is affectionately known to the people of Furth as “Fanny.” Fanny weighs 11 tons and has a wingspan of 12 meters, making her the world’s biggest walking robot, according to Guinness World Records. And yes, she actually walks — very slowly. But the best thing about her? She was financed with European Union funds. That’s a use of my tax money that I can get behind.

The first modern dragon had appeared in the Drachenstich in 1913. The star of Richard Wagner’s Siegfried, it had been purchased from the Royal Bavarian Court Opera for 30 gold marks. The town blacksmith crafted another model in 1947 that took four men inside to operate, and was motorized and equipped with special effects over time. The 1974-2009 model had a length of almost 19 meters, a height of almost four meters, and weighed nine tons. It was moved by a forklift hidden within and was fitted with exterior cameras so that the driver could safely pilot it.

Following a long hiatus during the Second World War, the play returned with not only a new dragon, but a new script that was heavily influenced by the Cold War. The setting was the Hussite War of 1431, when followers of the Bohemian reformer Jan Hus battled knights leading a crusade against them along the Bavarian border. Here, the dragon unambiguously came to symbolize the Communist threat from the East. The new play was performed for more than five decades and became a kind of classic that the people of Furth were reluctant to let go of after the fall of Communism.

In 2006, the Drachenstich’s plot was once more amended to reflect Europe’s geopolitical evolution. In this latest incarnation, the play is still set during the Hussite conflict, but the enemy is now behavior rather than peoples — fanaticism, warmongering, hate, bigotry. You know the drill. To quote, in a slightly abridged translation, from an older publicity video:

In 1431, the armies of the German imperial knights gather on the Bohemian border. Under the leadership of the powerful Cardinal Cesarini, they want to crush the renegade followers of the preacher Jan Hus. But in the shadow of war, an ancient prophecy becomes a terrible reality. A beast that has been banished to the depths of the Earth since time immemorial is brought back to life through war and murder. Every injustice, every outrage, every drop of blood brings it back to life: the dragon. There are only two people who can stop its deadly triumphal march: a young noblewoman who is prepared to sacrifice her life to save thousands from certain destruction, and a knight who puts his love on the line to fight the monster. Thus ensues the oldest battle of mankind, the eternal fight of good against evil.

The dragon itself is seen more as a victim than as an enemy, however. Once, it had been sympathetic to the people of the land it roamed until war, violence, and brutality drove it insane. Perhaps this is a modern reflection of the fondness the people of Furth have for their dragon. According to Drachenstich’s website, the dragon “has always been the pride and joy of the people of Furth, so it is hardly surprising that when half the town was reduced to ash in the great town fire of 1863, the dragon’s head was saved from the burning castle.”

It is both a great honor and a great family tradition to be cast as the Ritterpaar, the dragon-slayer, as well as his lady, who is colloquially known as the Ritterin: It translates as female knight, but just stands for the female half of the knightly couple.

For the Ritter, the knight, the most nerve-racking moment is, unsurprisingly, the slaying of the dragon: He has to keep his horse under control while riding toward a giant fire-breathing robot and put his lance where it is supposed to go. If he misses the mark, he’ll never hear the end of it. Ten years later, people will still remind him that he missed. Life in a small town can be brutal.

If you search on YouTube for Drachenstich, Furth im Wald, or variations thereof, you’ll find a ton of videos. Most of them are in German, but there is one by the Chinese network CGTN Europe that fatally mistranslates Schreitroboter (walking robot) as Schreiroboter (screaming robot); and Tom Scott gives a presentation of the robotics behind the Furth dragon. The comments on the latter video are hilarious, but quite a number of them praise the fact that this is a case of technology actually enhancing and preserving ancient traditions instead of destroying them.

The 2024 Drachenstich will be held from August 2 through 18, so if you haven’t got any plans yet and are in the vicinity, go check it out. While there, you can also visit the dragon’s cave, watch the pageant, enjoy the children’s festival complete with its own mini-Drachenstich (the next generation of dragon-slayers has to be trained, after all), or wander about the renaissance fair.