Matthias Klostermayr

Matthias Klostermayr, also known as Bavarian Hiasl, was a German outlaw, poacher and social rebel who has come to be described, particularly in accounts written in the English-speaking world, as the Bavarian Robin Hood. A native of the municipality of Kissing near Augsburg, 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 around Munich, Augsburg and Swabia. Although he was captured and put to death by being broken on the wheel in 1771, his mythical accumulated treasure has never been found, and legends surrounding its purported whereabouts have placed it somewhere near one of his hideouts, in an old cave in Kuchelschlag Wood or on Jexhof Farm.

In Bavaria and elsewhere, he has become a folk hero, with books, songs, musicals and a modern multimedia museum in Kissing dedicated to him.