Friday 18 March 2011

Aribert Schroeder

I recently noticed the above copy of Aribert Schroeder's study Vampirismus: Seine Entwicklung vom Thema zum Motiv from 1973 on German ebay and decided to buy it. I was a bit surprised on receiving it to find that the introduction and most of the chapter on the vampire superstition as a problem of folklore and semantics are full of writing as well as various crosses and deletions. To me it looks as if someone has been editing the text for some purpose, maybe even the author himself. See the photo below for an example.

As for Schroeder, I have only seen one other book containing a text written by him: Der Krieg der Bilder: Ausgewählte Dokumentarfilme zum Zweiten Weltkrieg und zum Vietnamkrieg edited by Barchet, Diedrich and Hölbling and published by WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier in in 1993. It contains a paper by Schroeder called The Burden of the War in Vietnam Was on the Grasshoppers and Not the Elephants: David Bradbury's Front Line (1979). I.e. the paper concerns a documentary about a cameraman and journalist who had worked in Vietnam (if you are curious, watch this video).

The book has this to say about Schroeder:

'Aribert Schroeder, Dr.phil., M.A., Oberstudienrat am Anglistischen Institut der Universität Düsseldorf, studierte Anglistik und Geschichtswissenschaft an den Universitäten Köln und Bonn sowie an der Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA; 1985/86 Austauschprofessor am English Department der San José State University, San José, CA. Forschungsschwerpunkte: Die Literatur U.S.-amerikanischer ethnischer Minderheiten; die Verstehensproblematik bezogen auf fremdsprachliche Texte; Medienwissenschaft. Veröffentlichungen und Rezensionen in den Schwerpunkten.'

Obviously Schroeder moved on to other subjects after rummaging archives and libraries in search of vampires.

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