Other German names include Wolfsanker ('wolf anchor', the crescent-shaped bar holding the hook), Wolfshaken ('wolf hook'), and Doppelhaken ('double hook') French names include hameçon ('fish hook'), hameçon de loup ('fish hook for wolves') and fer-a-loup ('wolf iron'), as well as crampon ('iron hook'). Horizontal Wolfsangel as a mason's mark, 15-century church The Anti-Defamation League, and others, list the Ƶ-symbol as a hate and a neo-Nazi symbol. The Ƶ-symbol was later adopted by the Nazi Party, and was used by various German Wehrmacht and SS units such as the Waffen-SS Division Das Reich and the Waffen-SS Division Landstorm Nederland. In pre-war Germany, interest in the Wolfsangel was revived by the popularity of Hermann Löns's 1910 novel Der Wehrwolf, which follows a hero in the Thirty Years war.

It became an early symbol of German liberty and independence after its adoption as an emblem in various 15th-century peasant revolts, and also in the 17th-century Thirty Years War. Įarly medieval pagans believed that the Wolfsangel symbol possessed magical powers, and could ward off wolves. The stylized symbol of the Z-shape (also called the Doppelhaken, meaning the 'double-hook') can include a central horizontal bar to give a Ƶ-symbol, which can be reversed and/or rotated it is sometimes mistaken as being an ancient rune due to its similarity to the ' gibor rune' of the pseudo Armanen runes. Wolfsangel ( German pronunciation:, translation 'wolf's hook') or Crampon ( French pronunciation: ) is a heraldic charge in countries like Germany, the Netherlands and eastern France, which was inspired by medieval European wolf traps that consisted of a Z-shaped metal hook (called the Wolfsangel, or the Crampon in French) that was hung by a chain from a crescent-shaped metal bar (called the Wolfsanker, or the Hameçon in French). In heraldry, the vertical form of the Ƶ-symbol is associated with the Donnerkeil (or 'thunderbolt'), and the horizontal form of the Ƶ-symbol is associated with the Werwolf (or ' Werewolf'). Stylized horizontal (left) and vertical (centre) forms of the Wolfsangel (or Crampon), and a stylized Wolfsanker (or Hameçon) (right).

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