The Haberfeld excercise is considered to be a traditional Bavarian tradition. Masked men went out at night to denounce the violations of individuals. Harmless jokes or menacing popular justice? In a book, the lawyer Elmar Schieder does away with romanticizing ideas.
The book that Elmar Schieder, who was born in Regensburg, published in 1982 is called “The Haberfeld Trial. Origin, Nature, Interpretation”. It arose from his doctoral thesis at the Institute for Legal History at the University of Freiburg. The title at the time sounded quite academic on the one hand, but on the other hand it was quite promising. The title of Schieder’s current second examination of the subject in book form sounds even more promising: “As if hell were left out” is the name of the recently published work by the now 73-year-old. In it and in an interview with the SZ he tells the story and the many stories about a Bavarian myth.