Sold ...

So what are the old books from the vampire debate of 1732 worth these days? It is probably fair to say that they - unlike copies of Calmet's work - are very scarce, so it would take some time to find just one for sale. On the internet you can see that a volume containing two of these books was sold in 2011 for almost four thousand Euro, more than ten times the estimate of 350 Euros. So not only are these books scarce, people (or, hopefully, libraries or other institutions) are willing to pay a lot for them!

Then in this instance, one of them, the anonymous Visum & Repertum published in Nürnberg in 1732 is no doubt one of the rarer books of this kind, so that may account for the result.

Fortunately, both books are available online, cf. my list on the right-hand side of the blog.

'Lot: 51
Fritsche, J. C.
[Fritsche, Joh. Chr.], Eines Weimarischen Medici Muthmaßliche Gedancken von denen Vampyren, oder sogenannten Blut-Saugern. Leipzig, M. Blochberger 1732. Pgt. d. Zt. mit hs. RTitel. 8vo. 80 S.

Angeb.: [Anon.], Visum & Repertum. Über die so genannten Vampirs, oder Blut-Aussauger, so zu Medvegia in Servien, an der Türckischen Granitz, den 7. Januarii 1732 geschehen. Nebst einem Anhang, von dem Kauen und Schmatzen der Todten in Gräbern. Nürnberg, J. A. Schmidt 1732. 45 S. - Sturm/Völker S. 596. - Nicht bei Graesse, Magica sowie Rosenthal, Ackermann etc. - Erste Ausgabe, sehr rar. - Das erste zeitgenössische Druckwerk, das den Bericht über die Vampire im serbischen Medvyga einem größeren Publikum zugänglich machte. Das in Nürnberg erschienene Werk enthält zunächst das sogenannte Flückinger-Gutachten , benannt nach dem 'Regiments-Feldscherer' Johann Flückinger, der zusammen mit den Offizieren und Militärärzten Sigel, Baumgarten, Büttener und von Lindenfels einen Bericht über die Vorkommnisse in Medvyga verfaßte. Es folgt ein Bericht über das Auftauchen des Vampirs Peter Plogojovitz im Dorf Kisolova, datiert vom 6. April 1725, sowie eine Art Nachwort des bis heute anonym gebliebenen Herausgebers über das 'Kauen und Schmatzen der Toten'. - Gebräunt und tlw. leicht stockfleckig. - Zwei ausgesprochen seltene Hauptschriften der Leipziger Vampirismusdebatte zu Beginn des 18. Jahrhunderts.

First edition, rare. - Last 6 pages with 'Gutachten der Königl. Preußischen Societät derer Wissenschafften, von denen Vampyren, oder Blut-Aussaugern', dated 11 March 1732. Contemp. vellum with lettering. 8vo. 80 pp. - Another manuscript by an anonymous author on the same topic bound in. First edition, very rare. - Browned and slightlöy foxed in places. - Two extremely rare works on the Leipzig Vampirism debate from the early 18th century.

Fritsche, J. C.
Von denen Vampyren. 1732
Result (incl. 20% surcharge): 3,960 EUR / 5,385 $
Estimate: 350 EUR / 476 $'

Harenberg: Vampire icon

It is highly unlikely that Johann Christoph Harenberg imagined that, 280 years after he originally wrote it, the title page of one his books would be sold as a poster in Italy. That, however, is what happened at the Dracula e il mito dei vampiri exhibition in Milan, and the book was, of course, Harenberg's Vernünftige und Christliche Gedancken über die Vampirs oder Bluhtsaugende Todten, published in Wolffenbüttel in 1733.

Source: Europeana

Harenberg was born on April 28 1696 in the village Langenholzen close to Alfeld in present day Lower Saxony. His parents were farmers and traders of cloth. Having given birth to four daughters, his mother prayed to God that, if God would grant her a son, she would devote him to the service of God. Besides, the young Johann Christoph was a delicate child, so he was allowed to devote his energy on learning to read, write and calculate in German as well as in Latin. At eight years of age he was sent to school in Alfeld, and at thirteen he went to Hildesheim to continue his education in various subjects and languages.

As he was walking from Alfeld to Langenholzen one Saturday in the Spring of 1708, he saw a well-dressed, old man nearby whom he recognized as a man he knew. Harenberg approached him, but he suddenly noticed that the man was transparent, and the closer he got to the man, the more transparent he became. Terrified, Harenberg retreated to his village, where he next day learned that the old man had died from consumption at about the time that he had seen the vision. This was only Harenberg's first of three encounters with apparitions in connection with the death of locals.

In 1715, at the age of nineteen he went to the University in Helmstedt to study the sciences as well as further languages. In 1719 he visited the universities in Jena and Halle, and the following year he was asked by the abbess and duchess of Gandersheim, Elisabeth Ernestine Antonie von Sachsen-Meiningen, to become headmaster of school belonging to the diocese. Besides teaching, he researched not only the Holy Writ, but also the history of the diocese. Several of his theological articles were published in the so-called Bremische Sammlungen published by Theodor Hase.

Merian's view of Gandersheim from Wikimedia

1734 was marked by ups and downs for Harenberg. He finished his voluminous history of the Gandersheim diocese, but fell into disgrace with the abbess and, although he accepted to become a parson at Bornhausen, he was finally appointed chief caretaker of the schools in the duchy of Wolfenbüttel. While there, he was in 1738 appointed a member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin. Incidentally, in 1732 this academy had been asked to write a memorandum on the Serbian vampires.

In 1745 Harenberg became Honorary Professor at the newly established Carolina collegium in Braunschweig and dean of the St. Lorenz convent in Schöningen. He died in Braunschweig on November 12 1774.

Göttingische Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen November 26 1774, p. 1224
(He must have been 78 years of age, not 74).

Harenberg's multiple writings were mostly concerned with historical and theological topics, and particularly include a two volume book on the history of the Jesuit Order published in 1760. He was, however, also interested in other matters, like the fossil encrinus that was relatively common in Lower Saxony and also became the subject of one his shorter writings. In fact, at his death he left behind a large collection of these fossils, cf. Journal für die Liebhaber des Steinreichs und Konchyliologie Vol. II, pp. 524-7 (Weimar, 1775).

It was while he was Headmaster in Gandersheim that he wrote his book on vampires on the request of a high-ranking individual, no doubt the abbess herself. It must have been aimed at a wider audience, as it was not written in Latin like most of his other writings at the time, but in German. Postponing the publication in the hope that more examples would be published, he finished it on September 24 1732, and was consequently able to comment on a number of books on the subject that were published in the first half of that year. He also drew on his own experiences, including the above mentioned vision from his youth.

In Harenberg's view, the Serbs who claimed to be victims of vampires, probably suffered from angina (pectoris) that was caused by a) eating contaminated animal flesh, b) visiting other ill persons, and c) coming into contact with contaminated corpses. The illness then caused the blood to thicken, and as the blood began to stand still in the small vessels in the head, depression set in and the imagination malfunctioned. As the beliefs in harmful revenants were so impressed upon their imagination, the ill and their relations explained the illness, the chest pains and suffocation in terms of such vampires.

Ranft on Harenberg

Harenberg not only commented on a variety of theories that had been proposed since the publication of the Visum et Repertum, but also on subjects like werewolves. His etymology of the word 'vampire' was ridiculed by Michael Ranft in the third edition of his dissertation on the mastication of the dead. Ranft in fact ridiculed Harenberg and his efforts in general, leading to some controversy, when a review of both Harenberg's and Ranft's books were published in the supplements to the Leipzig Nova acta eruditorum, an anonymous review that was actually written by Harenberg himself. Obviously, Ranft felt obliged to vindicate himself, as years later, in 1742, he published a comment on the whole episode.

An in-depth study of Harenberg's book can be found in Anja Lauper's paper published in Begemann, Herrmann and Neumeyer's Dracula unbound: Kulturwissenschaftliche Lektüren des Vampirs (2008) and her subsequent book Die "phantastische Seuche": Episoden des Vampirismus im 18. Jahrhundert (2011).

Although it is, of course, his book and its subject that could be considered a 'vampire icon', one might still imagine a film inspired by Harenberg: His visions of the recently deceased and his considerations on the vampires could be intertwined and combined with machinations at the various courts and universities, perhaps even including some creative use of the controversy with Ranft, so that Hollywood could come up with stories of his own feverish experiences with bloodsuckers...

Geschichte Jetztlebender Gelehrten Vol. V (Zelle, 1732), pp. 94-144

Wanbires on the front page

According to this weekly newspaper from March 1732, the Habsburg Emperor Charles VI found the news of the so-called 'Wanbieren', or Bloodsuckers, so curious and important, that the reports should be sent to the universities for evaluation. As we know, a lot was written on the subject over the next months and years, making the vampire a household name.

De statu quodam peculiari mortuorum

I just came across another book online worth adding to the list of selected works on the right hand of this blog: The 1732 edition of Commericum litterarium ad rei medicae scientiae naturalis published in Nuremberg, which contains the most comprehensive contemporary debate on the Serbian (or Hungarian, if you will) vampires. I referred to the journal and debate in an early blog post on Joh. Frid. Glaser's tale of horror, calling this initial report on the vampires of Medvedja 'a piece of cultural history'.

So now it is no longer necessary to go to some library to follow the journal's accumulation of information about vampires, the speculations and the reviews of books on the subject, it is right here available on Google Books - in Latin, of course, but worth a look anyway. In fact, you might start with the recensio synoptica at the beginning of the book because it contains a lengthy survey of the debate with references to where you can find various contributions. Readers of Hamberger's Mortuus non mordet will recognize the names of contributors like Geelhausen and Segner.

It is also interesting to see the context of this debate. The issue that contains Glaser's letter, from week 11 ('hebdomas undecima') begins with mentioning and commenting on what has been received by mail:  A new medical book: Lexicon medicum universale, Glaser's letter and a short notice on a medical case. Then you find reviews of two medical books, a list of causes of death in Nuremberg during February of that year, and finally a table of meteorological observations in Nuremberg during that same month.

I can recall when I, a few years back, sat in a reading room with this journal from 1732 and 1733, and noted how remarkably much is actually written on the subject of vampires in 1732, and then all of a sudden within less than a year of the publishing of Glaser's letter, the debate stops. Of course, as we know, Calmet and others resurrected the vampire as a learned subject, and corpses were still staked and burned in certain regions of Europe. But the original and fervent debate of 1732 died out relatively fast.

Certain dead Bodies

This Digital Library of 18th and 19th Century Journals contains the March 1732 issue of The Gentleman's Magazine, which on page 681 reports 'That certain dead Bodies called Vampyres, had kill'd several Persons by sucking out all their Blood.' This was not the first British magazine to mention vampires, as The London Journal did that, but that is, I think, not yet available online. The article in that journal, a shortened and corrupted version of the Visum et Repertum, led to a political debate in several journals which was documented in the May issue of The Gentleman's Magazine. Unfortunately, one of the pages of this issue seems to be unavailable at the moment (I have notified the webmaster of this error), but one can still get a flavour of this debate on e.g. 'Political Vampyres'.

'These Vampyres are said to torment and kill the Living by sucking out all their Blood; and a ravenous Minister, in this part of the World, is compared to a Leech or a Blood-sucker, and carries his Oppressions beyond the Grave, by anticipating the publick Revenues, and entailing a Perpetuity of Taxes, which must gradually drain the Body Politick of its Blood and Spirits.'

The article is reprinted in Gothic documents: A sourcebook 1700-1820 edited by E. J. Clery and Robert Miles (Manchester Univ. Press, 2000) which describes it this way:

'This item is from The Craftsman, a journal fiercely opposed to the Prime Minister Robert Walpole (father of the author of The Castle of Otranto). It rehearses the standard changes made against the Whig government, centring on financial corruption. In doing so, it incidentally displaces the opposition of credulity and scepticism with a materialist interpretation of the case reminiscent of Franco Moretti's well-known Marxist reading of Dracula. The piece could be regarded simply as an elaborate joke, but the reading of superstitious fictions as allegories of political oppression remained an option for early readers of Gothic.'

The supposed vampire Pavle of the Visum et Repertum here gets a new life of his own with a new name in a country far away from where he fell off a haywagon and died:

' Paul Arnold, who is call'd a Heyduke, was only a ministerial Tool, because it is said he had kill'd 4 Persons; whereas, if he had been a Vampyreof any Rank, we shou'd probably have heard of his Ten Thousands. It may be objected that his Body, after it had been buried 40 Days, was free from Corruption. It is the Mind, not the Body is the Author of all Wickedness; and a Man can no more carry his bad Qualities, than his Riches with him to the grave. His Corruption and the Fruits of it remains to stinck in the Nostrils of his Posteriority.'

The whole debate and the vampire's entry in English literature is minutely detailed in a chapter in another book on gothic fiction: Markman Ellis' The History of Gothic Fiction (Edinburg University Press, 2005), which I have mentioned here and here.

Medvedja sources

He's been at it again, fellow blogger Nicolaus Equiamicus, this time compiling a number of sources on the Medvedja vampire case on his blog!

Magical company

This has more to do with magia in general than magia posthuma, but one of the places you usually go when visiting Leipzig is the Auerbachs Keller, an underground restaurant that has a history going back to the 16th century. This history is connected with the Faust figure, who is said to have visited the place in the company of Mephistopheles, so the cellar is explicitly mentioned in Goethe's Faust, Goethe himself being a regular guest.

So it's a place every tourist visits, and there's a saying that if you haven't been there, you haven't been in Leipzig. Obviously they are cashing in on all of us who have read Faust and necessarily must go there. In one corner of the Keller there's a souvenir shop with all sorts of souvenirs (see one of the accompanying photos for some examples of the goods), and, well, I ended up spending a few euros there. Happily, the (traditional) food and beer isn't particularly expensive, and it's quite an informal restaurant, so there's no need to bring a tie :-)

Unfortunately, the historical section was closed when I was there, but I have read that you need to reserve a table months ahead if you want to dine in that section, so keep that in mind if you plan to go there.

In the Mädlerpassage of exclusive shops overground, there's a cocktail bar called Mephisto, so you can have another drink or a cup of coffee in the company of Faust and Mephistopheles there afterwards or on another day.

No doubt some of the people involved in debating vampires in the 18th century also went there, so you can consider that when visiting the cellar and the bar.

Perhaps a little too High?

I recently mentioned Peter Haining's Dracula Centenary Book as a disappointment, and I suppose I was disappointed because I have enjoyed many of Haining's anthologies, including e.g. his Dracula Scrapbook, but this one really has the feel of an attempt at an early cash in on the centenary of Stoker's Dracula. Well, as I usually say, this blog definitely isn't about Dracula, but many books about Dracula contain chapters on vampires and magia posthuma, and vice versa, so that's why I mention this particular book.

Old friends will perhaps recall that I wrote about it in an article published in a little magazine back in the Eighties, and here I will more or less reiterate that comment :-) That's because the book contains a so-called Checklist of Vampirism, which is a chronological list of vampire cases, and accompanying this text you will find two of the entries in the checklist.

At first glance, here's a case from Hungary anno 1690, and another one from Moravia in 1731. But to those familiar with the famous Medvedja vampire case of 1731-2, it should be quite obvious that both instances of vampirism are actually based on that case which occurred in Serbia - not in Moravia, and not in Hungary! Furthermore, the 'Arnold Paul' mentioned was not a 'High Duke of Medreiga'. 'Medreiga' is simply another way of writing Medvedja, as is 'Mettwett', and there probably never was any 'High Duke' of that village, but Paul (or perhaps rather Pavle) was a hajduk, certainly a title of less rank and nobility!

Haining lists a number of, ahem, highly reliable sources like Basil Copper, Anthony Masters, Montague Summers, and Dudley Wright, but I'm not quite sure how he transformed a hajduk into a High Duke, and Serbia into Moravia, but obviously that's what can happen when you try to establish that 1987, not 1997, was the 'Dracula centenary'!

Click on the illustrations to better read the text from Haining's book.

The silly season

Earlier this year, I wrote a post about a poll concerning the superstitions of modern day Danes. Now, a few days ago I concluded that 'the silly season' has begun, because another newspaper published yet another poll on the same subject. The above newspaper front page says: Is there anyone out there?, and claims that 1 out of 4 Danes believe in ghosts, and that no less than 1 out of 6 have had an experience with a ghost!

Well, personally I find the text below more interesting. It's a scan of a 1732 letter mentioning the Medvedja vampire case!

Apropos Ranft online

A few other relevant books are also available on the internet, and I have for a long time have intended to write more extensively about these resources, but I simply haven't got round to do so. Particularly, I have wanted to comment on the modern versions of some texts that have surfaced during the later years, i.e. the Ubooks edition of Ranft's Traktat, and the Hexenmond-Verlag edition of two 1732 books, but this will have to await some other occasion.

Non dantur Vampyri

I have found less time for writing posts recently. However, as you will no doubt have noticed, I have added some elements to the blog layout, including a short introduction to the subject of the blog. Accompanying this text is a scan of a portion of the title page of the dissertation on vampires written by Pohl and Hertel and published in Leipzig in 1732, Dissertatio de hominibus post mortem sangvisvgis, vulgo sic dictis Vampyren. As is common in some texts, the word sanguisuga is used as the Latin equivalent of "vampire". "Sanguisuga" is a contraction of "sanguis" and "sugo", meaning "blood-sucker", usually in the sense leech, like e.g. in Proverbs 30, 15 in the Vulgate: "sanguisugae duae sunt filiae dicentes adfer adfer" (King James Bible: The horseleach hath two daughters, crying, Give, give.).

Pohl and Hertel find that the "vampyres" should be explained by natural causes:

"Non dantur Vampyri, sed mortis genuina causa potius morbo epidemico est adscribenda."

That is: There are no vampires, but the genuine cause of death should rather be ascribed to an epidemical disease.

The horseleach or haemopis sanguisuga however certainly exists, and pictures of it can e.g. be seen here.

Strange histories

"In 1723, a team of doctors examined corpses disinterred from a Serbian graveyard, and decided that several of them were vampires. A number of the bodies were swollen and red-faced. The corpse of one woman was 'quite complete and undecayed': her lungs, liver and spleen were as 'fresh as they would be in a healthy person,' and new fingernails had formed on one of her hands. For modern pathologists and eighteenth-century physicians alike, it appears that the facts do not speak for themselves. The physical evidence of death may not change, but what it means depends largely on the intellectual context in which it is placed."

This passage from Darren Oldridge's Strange Histories (Routledge, 2007) obviously concerns the exhumation and autopsy of the 20 year old Stana at Medvedja in 1732 (not 1723). Although it is one of only a few direct references to vampires, the book does contain a lot of material directly or indirectly relevant to anyone interested in Magia Posthuma. It is however very much a book on the role of history and the historian. Oldridge, a lecturer in history from University College Worcester, who is also known as the editor of The Witchcraft Reader, aims to show the reader how history can help to give us another view of our own beliefs and common sense. Our predecessors were, even at their most bizarre, in fact rational and common sensical in their thoughts and views of the world. But their cultural context was unlike ours, and for that reason they interpreted facts unlike we do, they asked other questions, and found their answers using the information they had.

Oldridge underscores this by analysing the arguments and thoughts that led people in the middle ages and in the renaissance to accuse people of witchcraft and to believe in the existence of revenants and werewolves. The book contains numerous examples that show how logical and very concrete the matters were dealt with by the experts of that day and age. In some cases theologians even drew conclusions that the modern day reader will agree on, but for very different reasons and with very different arguments that led to other - 'strange' - conclusions.

The reader interested in vampires and Magia Posthuma will probably enjoy Oldridge's explanation of Catholic and Protestant views on the theology of revenants. In general, the book is well written for the lay reader who has no prior knowledge of the subject. There are notes at the end of the book for anyone interested in looking more into the subject.

It was 275 years ago...

While updating my chronology of events related to Magia Posthuma and vampires, I noticed that yesterday, today, and tomorrow are some of the dates that periodicals around Europe published accounts concerning vampires 275 years ago. Actually, on Monday May 29th 1732 the word vampire (actually a latin plural form: Vampyres) was mentioned for the first time in a Danish magazine. The word is used in a satirical notice concerning a proposed book by Otto von Stein, the infamous vice president of the Royal Prussian Scientific Society, that he could not get printed.

Vampires Unstaked

It is well-known that the vampire became a political metaphor almost immediately after the 1732 Medvedja case was published across Europe. Markman Ellis has described in The History of Gothic Fiction (Edinburgh University Press, 2000) how the vampire played a role in the British political debate as early as that very year, and to this day the vision of the bloodsucker or the living dead vampire still crops up in the media as a potent political metaphor.

An example from academia is the published proceedings of a colloquium on “National stereotypes as Factors of Political Change in East Central Europe” that took place on 18-20 May 1994 in Amsterdam. The title of the book is Vampires Unstaked: National Images, Stereotypes and Myths in East Central Europe and it is edited by André Gerrits and Nanci Adler (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1995). In the introduction the choice of title is explained this way:

“Robert Hayden employed the expression ‘vampires unstaked’ in his discussion on the ‘return’ of the Cetniks and the Ustasas in the Yugoslav war. The term so appropriately characterized the phenomena dealt with here that we did not hesitate to borrow it for the book’s title.”

The Cetniks (Četnici) and Ustasa (Ustaše) were nationalist organizations from respectively Serbia and Croatia, both of which fought the Communist partisans at the end of the Second World War.

In his paper, ‘The Use of National Stereotypes in the Wars in Yugoslavia’, Robert Hayden, associate professor in the Department of Antropology of the University of Pittsburgh, writes:

“The inflammatory nature of the Serb and Croat portrayals of each other as Ustasas and Cetniks received credibility by the adoption of Ustasa and Cetnik images, symbols and uniforms by some political figures in Croatia and Serbia. The fall of communist rule and the end of its suppression of these symbols and images pulled the stakes from the hearts of these fascist vampires.” (p. 213, my emphasis)

The vampire metaphor here both relates to the fascist nature of the Cetniks and Ustatas as well as to the revival of these terms. Hayden talks of “the transformation of Cetniks and Ustasas from horror story to horrible reality” (p. 215) and analyses the “symbolic geography” that plays a central part in this transformation.

We are all no doubt aware of the symbolic geography that e.g. divides Europe into a more privileged and advanced West and a poorer and possibly uncivilized East, and that creates divisions based on religion. Hayden quotes one Eugene Hammel on this subject:

“the emergence of the modern standard classification that identifies Croats with Catholicism and Serbs with Orthodoxy came only with the absolutism of the Habsburgs in the 18th Century. Ethnic classification in the Balkans is thus not strictly an endogenous process but either exogenously imposed or endogenously shaped in response to exogenous pressures.” (p. 208)

More interesting analysis of and background material for the “symbolic geography” of East Central Europe can also be found in three papers on Transylvania: ‘Transylvania: Myth and Reality. Changing Awareness of Transylvanian Identity’, ‘The Politicization of Myths: The Transylvanian Case’, and ‘Transylvania and the Great Powers: 1945-1946’.

So although Vampires Unstaked does not contain information on Magia Posthuma, it is an interesting collection of studies on how images, stereotypes and myths play an important role in shaping political events. No doubt many of us are aware of other political 'vampires' that unfortunately have become or may become unstaked in the near future.

Joh. Frid. Glaser's tale of horror

Mortui nimirum humati illaesis surgentes sepulcris vivos enecant, hique necati et sepulti similiter surgentes alios interficiunt; quod sequenti contingit modo: Mortui nempe dormientes noctu adoriuntur, sanguinemque ex illis exsugunt, ut cuncti tertio exspirent die. Huic autem malo hucusque nulla medela inventa est.

This tale of horror was to be found in the scientific journal, Commercii litterarii ad rei medicae et scientiae naturalis incremementum institute, on March 22nd 1732. Written in a letter from the Viennese doctor Johann Friedrich Glaser to one of the journal’s editors, Johann Christoph Götz (1688-1733), it is so remarkably reminiscent of words found in so many novels and vampire movies ever since. In my translation these lines are:

People that are certainly dead rise from undisturbed graves and kill the living, and these killed and buried people similarly rise and kill others; it happens in the following fashion: At night they attack sleeping people and suck out their blood, so that they all expire on the third day. Against this evil no remedy has been found.

Glaser wished to inform the learned world of a remarkable experience his son had had in a village in the part of Serbia occupied by the Habsburgs, and close to the border to Ottoman territory, namely a case of a kind of magic (magicam aliquam) that Glaser in his letter names Vampyres!

Glaser certainly got the attention of the learned world. The Nürnberg journal which otherwise was mostly interested in more ordinary scientific topics, put in print a large scale debate on vampires throughout the year of 1732.

Personally, I find it fascinating to read those lines from Glaser, because in my view he takes the more diffuse vampire of the official reports one step further and establishes it as something that anyone today will recognize. This in my opinion is a piece of cultural history!