The little known German card game “Höllfahren” or “Hölle” has a forgotten history that stretches back into the 16th century, when it was called “Untreue”, “untreuer Nachbar”, “in die Hölle (fahren)” and similar names. Several images and textual references indicate the game’s popularity in the 17th century. Unusual for a card game, Höllfahren employs a game board on which players move their token along a track leading into the circles of hell. There are, however, similar games (Cuccu, Hexenspiel, Vogelspiel) that are played without a board.
Apart from describing the game and its sources, this article also points out the difficulties in identifying games by their names alone, since many of the names of “Höllfahren” were also used for different games.

This preprint shows the full version of the article. Due to a mistake, a much shorter draft was published in Das Blatt 64 (2021), pp. 51-69.