Dracula: Die wahre Geschichte der Vampire

Count Dracula visits the Prunksaal in Vienna

The German documentary series Terra X on channel ZDF launched a new documentary on Dracula and vampires this evening, Dracula: Die wahre Geschichte der Vampire, which is currently available on the ZDF web site along with various information on vampire books a.o. Forensic scientist and vampire expert Mark Benecke as well as Dr. Clare Downham participate in this program that is partially narrated by Count Dracula himself as portrayed by actor Christian Baumann. The Count visits the archives in Vienna to examine the original Visum et Repertum, and we see Flückinger examine 'Arnold Paole' - even the apocryphal journey of Gerard van Swieten to Moravia is dramatized. Still, this is generally one of the best documentaries on the subject so far, including visits to Romania, London, and Vienna, where Dracula studies some of the 18th century literature on vampires in the Prunksaal next to the bust of van Swieten.

The documentary will be released on DVD and Blu-ray in early 2014.

Kiss of the Butterfly

‘Something has torn apart the once-proud Yugoslavia with ease and is feasting on it’s life essence.’

In 1991 when the Yugoslav Wars were beginning to take place, Steven Roberts, a student and teaching assistant of Professor Marko Slatina in San Diego, California, is travelling to Serbia on a mysterious ethnography grant. Steven’s scholarship involves studying a large amount of books and archival material on history, folklore and ethnography. Some of it concerns Societas Draconis, the Order of the Dragon, but most of it turns out be about vampires. Studying at the National Library in Belgrade, he e.g. reads of a vampire case on the Dalmatian island of Pasman in 1403 and of vampire investigations in Dubrovnik in the 18th century.

‘The research was tedious, and his eyes grew tired easily because of the poor lighting. Sometimes he felt he could read no more. Gradually, he uncovered small pieces of what increasingly seemed to be a much larger puzzle. Some came from historical documents, while others came from collections of folk tales recorded by ethnographers… Ducic, Novak, Zovko, Klaic, Liepopili, Karadzic … the names blurred together. Everywhere he turned he found Serbian newspaper accounts of people who were arrested and tried for opening up graves and driving stakes through the hearts of suspected vampires. He had particular problems with one 15th century document written in the Glagolithic alphabet, a precursor to Cyrillic that resembled mangled bicycles, trapezoids and triangles. It took him the better part of three days to read a two page document.’

Steven is astounded by the numerous references to vampires, and their similarities. He notes that ‘these vampires were unlike anything he had ever heard of and bore scant resemblance to film versions of Dracula,’ but the amount of material prompts him to write Professor Slatina that: ‘I suspect there might have once been some phenomenon that led to the establishments of these myths. In fact, there are days when I wonder if vampires might actually have once existed.’

Other threats are, however, more imminent than vampires. In the winter of 1991-92, the secret police in Belgrade is naturally interested in an American staying in Belgrade, and when Steven finds some interesting articles by Tihomir Djordevic on vampires, strange things happen. Apart from the well-known article from 1953, Vampir i druga bica u nasem narodnom verovanju i predanju (Vampires and other beings in our folk beliefs and traditions), ‘a veritable catalogue of vampirism, scientifically organized and categorized with instructions’, Steven discovers a rare article titled The Twelve Mighty Vampires in Legend and Fact. He asks the librarian if she can help photocopy it, but the next day the librarian is ill and replaced by another librarian who refuses to let him see the article. As Steven later learns, only 100 copies were printed, and it had been placed on a restricted list prior to publication by the Yugoslavian secret police, UDBA.

Steven, however, asks a bookseller in Sremski Karlovci, south of Novi Sad, to help him get hold of a copy, while travelling with friends to Petrovaradin and Novi Sad. At the Matica Srpska library he finds more information on vampires, in particular in the work of Stefan Novakovic, ‘the scholar who had found the original Flückinger documents about the Austrian Army vampire-hunting missions in Serbia.’ Novakovic had, apparently, found more information concerning the activities of Flückinger and other Austrians. Steven also finds information relating to the subject in the archives at the Fortress in Petrovaradin which leads him and his friends on a guided tour of the underground of that Fortress.

I am not going to disclose more of the exciting plot, but obviously Steven encounters an unexpected world in Serbia. Here evil is not an abstract term: ‘In America, if I were to talk about evil as being real they would laugh me out of the university. Yet everybody I speak with here talks of evil as if it exists and is a palpable presence.’

Source: Wikimedia

And the past and the present are intertwined. The novel sets out with Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia, following the Driva River upstream between Serbia and Bosnia in February 1476, heading to Srebrenica in connection with the Battle of Sabac. In 1991 Srebrenica is again to play a role in history. Vampire folklore, the Order of the Dragon, events in 18th Century Serbia and the conflict on the Balkans in the early 1990’s all become the backdrop of a conflict that transcends centuries.

A conflict that is related to the topic of Steven’s research, vampires that are in many ways very different from those Steven had heard of in California. They are shape-shifters, but typically turn into butterflies or moths, as in the Serbian folklore, the human spirit leaves the body in the form of a butterfly.

Kiss of the Butterfly is certainly an exciting read. The backdrop of Serbia on the brink of war, the minutiae of history, geography and customs, combined with a well-crafted mix of fact in fiction in the findings of Steven’s vampire research makes it a fascinating read as well. I recommend that readers have their smartphone or computer at hand when reading it, because it will prove handy to look up places and things on maps and in dictionaries while following Steven’s exploits. Eventually, you may find inspiration for future reading and travelling.

In short, I can highly recommend James Lyon’s Kiss of the Butterfly.

Kiss of the Butterfly is available as an e-book from Amazon.

Professor Marko Slatina: 'I am interested in real vampires, Balkan vampires, and they existed long before Dracula. The answers to the questions I have posed bear no resemblance to popular imagination. To find your answers you must undertake solid, academic research. You must comb through Balkan folklore, history and ethnography. You must find what the people who actually experienced vampires have to say. Find out how peasants, priests and soldiers fought against these dreaded creatures and what they had to do to vanquish them.'

James M. B. Lyon has over 30 years experience with the Balkans and the lands of former Yugoslavia: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia. Although he calls San Diego home, he has lived and studied in Boston, Florida, Germany, the Soviet Union, and England. He has a Ph.D. in Balkan History from UCLA and has lived in the Balkans for more than 18 years, during which time he has been involved in international peacekeeping efforts and Non-Governmental Organizations, and worked as a business consultant. A well-known political analyst, at present, he divides his time between Belgrade, Sarajevo and the Dalmatian coast.

'Vampire Skeletons'

As reviewed on Taliesin meets the Vampires, and including a dramatization of Flückinger's examination of supposed vampires in Medvedja in 1732.

Serbian vampires close-up!

This Serbian documentary provides an exceptional look at some of the places related to vampire history and legends in Serbia, including Kisiljevo and Medvedja. As I do not understand the language, I cannot tell you much about what they are actually saying, but names of places and persons, like e.g. Petar Blagojevic (i.e. 'Peter Plogojowitz'), are easy to recognize. Part two also includes some (split screen) clips from the old Leptirica film.

It is pretty ridiculous to see a guy trying to locate the grave of Blagojevic using a pendulum, and I had to smile when I saw Flückinger portrayed as an old man writing the Visum & Repertum. But I find it very nice to see Serbians reclaiming the vampire. After all this is where it started. Without the vampires - or at least the villagers worried about vampires - of Kisiljevo and Medvedja we would hardly be talking about vampires today.

What if ...

What if Flückinger had not been sent to Medvedja in 1732? Or if the Visum et Repertum had attracted no attention but had just been another report stored at the Hofkammerarhiv in Vienna?

As we know, Michael Ranft was so intrigued by reading of the supposed vampire Peter Plogojowitz that he presented his own De masticatione mortuorum later in 1725, but otherwise few people seemed to take note of it.

It did, however, attract a bit of attention at the Academia Naturæ Curios. in Breslau (Wrocław in Poland), the publisher of the so-called Breslauische Sammlungen, a major scientific journal of the early 18th century. Founded by Johann Kanold, it was originally published in Breslau, but later on in Leipzig and Budziszyn (Bautzen).

In 1727 the volume containing information on the Summer quarter of 1725 was published, and among other both enlightening and entertaining articles, e.g. ‘von einem See-Manne’, of a merman, it contains an Article 19: ‘Abentheuerliche Begebenheit mit einem Vermeyntlich wieder gekommenen Todten’. The dead man who was presumed to return was Peter Plogojowitz as referred to in a ‘gazette’ containing the report from Kisiljevo in Northern Serbia: ‘Copia eines Schreibens aus dem Gradisker District in Hungarn M. Aug. 1725’.

The document is followed by an analysis to prove that the incident stems from superstition, oversight and rashness (‘Diß ist abermals eine Begebenheit vom Aberglauben, Inadvertenz, und rachgieriger Ubereilung’), which argues in a forensic fashion that was to be used in several texts on the subject after the incidents at Medvedja in 1732. A short review of Ranft’s original dissertation is also provided, and a reference is given to a previous issue on examples of masticating dead from Poland and Prussia (‘Von dem Polnischen Upiertz oder sich selbst fressenden Todten und der daraus entstandenen Furcht for Pest- und Vieh-Sterben’).

I think it is fair to say that if Glaser and Flückinger had not reported from Medvedja in 1732, this would have been about as much attention the Serbian vampire had received.

Flückinger and Mayo

Untotes Wachsen im Textgrab: Zur narrativen Ausarbeitung von Flückingers Vampirismus-Protokoll (1732) bei Herbert Mayo (1846) by Clemens Ruthner is the latest addition to the anthology of papers from the conference on vampirism in Vienna last summer:

'The written records and the tradition of the vampire phenomenon are rich. I will focus on the literary and cultural constitution of the (popular) vampire myth on the basis of the existing textual corpus. Starting point are the earliest authentic reports on vampires from Serbia around 1732 which provide an interesting case study. It will be shown how from then on up to the 19th century a vampire plot has been developed and transformed in oral and written tradition through compilation, citation and similar intertextual processes - a kind of ping-pong play as it were between historical documents and literary texts.'

Visum et repertum

One of the most important sources for the history of vampirism is the report Visum et Repertum written and attested by military surgeons in Serbia on January 26 1732. It was sent to the authorities in Belgrade and Vienna, and copied by envoys of foreign governments. Foremost it was distributed in various versions to newspapers and scientific periodicals throughout Europe causing a public as well as scientific sensation in many European countries throughout the year 1732. In fact, had it not been for this report, the word ‘vampire’ and the stories of these supposedly blood drinking corpses would probably not have become known, and consequently the popular vampire of authors like John William Polidori and Bram Stoker, as well as the vampire of 20th and 21st century popular media would not have come into existence.

A copy of the original manuscript is stored in the archives in Vienna, but the text is mostly known in somewhat different versions through various printed sources. Curiously it has rarely been translated into English, and this is certainly also the case of the report from the first investigation of the vampire case in late 1731, and other documents commenting on the report.

I have referred to this report and vampire case many times, but I think it's time to write a bit more about this document, the vampire case, and the historical background.

Having defeated the Ottomans, the Habsburg Austrians entered a treaty with the Ottoman Empire at Passarowitz (Požarevac south east of Belgrade in Serbia) in 1718 whereby parts of present day Romania, a part of Bosnia and the Northern part of Serbia came under Austrian rule. These areas that had recently become occupied were put under military jurisdiction. Due to the war the area was very depolated. The population did, however, const of different ethnical groups, including the Ratzians, Serbs of the Orthodox Greek faith.

The occupied areas in Serbia acted as an enlargement of the so-called Militärgrenze, the military border (confinium militare), which was a buffer zone between the Habsburg and Ottoman empires. The zone was not only a buffer zone against military attacks but also against epidemic diseases which had ravaged parts of Europe for centuries. In 1679 the plague had cost Vienna about one third or fourth of its population, and as late as 1713 there had been a minor epidemic in Vienna. Epidemics were known to occur in the Ottoman Empire from time to time, and consequently it was necessary to stay aware of cases of epidemic deaths. So Austrian officials like military surgeons had good reason to be very cautious towards signs of inexplicable deaths.

One case was reported to the commander of the Imperial army in Jagodina, colonel-lieutenant Schnezzer, by inhabitants of the Serb village Medvegya (Medveđa or Medvedja) in the fall of 1731. Along with the local militia, the so-called haiduks, they complained of several mysterious deaths. Schnezzer consequently sent a Contagions-Medicus, a doctor called Glaser, to Medvedja to investigate what had happened.

Glaser arrived in Medvedja on December 12th 1731. Although he found symptoms from malnutrition caused by the fasting of the orthodox villagers, he found no evidence of any epidemic disease. The villagers, however, claimed that symptoms like fever were the cause of the deaths of 13 villagers who had died within the past six weeks.

They believed that the deaths were caused by bloodsuckers or vampires which had been common among the Ottoman Turks. Glaser could not persuade the villagers from believing this. In fact, they claimed that they would have to move somewhere else, if the authorities would not execute the vampires. Consequently, Glaser had ten graves opened to carry out an autopsy of the corpses. Some of the bodies had decomposed, but others had become bloated and bloody with fresh blood flowing from nose and mouth. For this reason, Glaser found it impossible to persuade the villagers from believing that the corpses had become vampires. In his report to the authorities he asked for permission for the corpses to be executed, so the people could be calmed.

Glaser’s report was sent to the commander in Belgrade who apparently decided to send a commission to investigate the matter anew. This commission was led by the regimental surgeon Johann Flückinger and arrived in Medvedja on January 7th 1732. They interviewed the villagers who said that a haiduk called Arnont Paole had died in 1727 from a fall from a hay wagon.

While alive, Paole had often told that he had been harassed by a vampire when he was in another part of Serbia. To rid himself of the vampire, he had eaten soil from its grave and rubbed himself with its blood. But after some 20 or 30 days after his death some of the villagers had complained of being haunted by Paole who had become a vampire.

Four villagers were claimed to having been killed by him. To rid themselves of the vampire, the villagers opened his grave forty days after his interment and found his body uncorrupted. Fresh blood was flowing from his ears, eyes, mouth and nose, and his clothing and the whole coffin was bloody. According to the villagers, these were signs that he was a vampire, and they consequently drove a stake through his heart which made his corpse groan and bleed copiously. Finally, the body was burned and the ashes buried in his grave.

As the villagers believed that everyone killed by a vampire could become vampires themselves, they also dug op the corpses of the four people who had allegedly been killed by Paole, and treated them in the same fashion as they had Paole. Still, as Paole had also sucked the blood of cattle, the people who had eaten the flesh of those animals also risked becoming vampires.

During three months in late 1731 and early 1732 17 villagers, young as well as old, had died. Some of them had become ill suddenly and had died after two or three days of illness. The daughter in law of a haiduk, Stanoika, had lain down to sleep healthy, but woke up with a terrible scream a midnight, frightened and shaking, complaining that she was being suffocated by Milloe, a man who had died nine weeks before. She then got a strong pain in her chest and got worse and worse until she died after three days.

The villagers told this on January 7th 1732 to the commission consisting of Austrian military officials, including two subordinate medical officers. After interrogating the villagers, the commission went to the cemetery, exhumed and examined the 17 corpses. The minority of the 17 corpses had corrupted, whereas most of them were found in a to all appearances incorruptible state with fresh blood within the body. This was e.g. the case of the sixty year old woman called Miliza who was believed to be the cause of the deaths, because she had eaten the flesh of sheeps which had been killed by a vampire. She had died after three months of illness and had been buried three months previously. Although she had all her life been skinny, much to the amazement of the villagers her exhumed body was fattish. In the cavity of her chest fluid blood was found, and the intestines were uncorrupted.

The above mentioned Stanoika was, 18 days after her burial, found with a ruddy and lifelike face. Under her right ear was found a blue bruise of a finger. A quantiy of fresh blood flowed from her nose when she was taken out of her grave, and fluid blood was found in her chest and heart. All the intestines, the subcutis and her nails were fresh.

After the examination of the bodies, the corrupted bodies were replaced into their graves, while the rest of the bodies were decapitated and burned by local gypsies. Finally, the ashes were thrown into the river Morava.

On January 26th 1732 the medical officers of the commission described their findings and acts in the report Visum et repertum (Seen and found) and sent it to the authorities in Belgrade who forwarded it to the war council at the court in Vienna along with a request for remuneration of Flückinger and his two colleagues. The council dealt with the matter on February 11th, but more correspondence was necessary before Flückinger and his fellow officers received their remuneration in November 1732.

In the meantime, however, the report had been reprinted in various newspapers and journals, causing a large scale debate in certain parts of Europe. This sensation was helped on its way by some of the people who were somehow connected with what had happened.

As early as the very day that the Visum et Repertum was signed, i.e. on January 26 1732, a standard bearer serving in Serbia, von Kottwitz, wrote a letter from Belgrade to professor Michael Ernst Ettmüller in Leipzig asking for an explanation of the phenomena observed.

Glaser himself tried to attract some attention to his experiences by first sending a copy of his report to the Collegium Sanitatis in Vienna, and later on to his father, Johann Friedrich Glaser. Glaser Sr. wrote about it to one of the editors of the scientific journal Commercii Litterarii ad rei medicae et scientiae naturalis incremementum institute published in Nürnberg. His letter was published in Latin in the journal on March 22nd 1732, and caused a debate on vampires in that journal which lasted for the rest of the year.

Meanwhile, Carl Alexander Prince of Württemberg, who had been in charge of Serbia and Belgrade, was travelling to the court of king Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia in Berlin. Apparently, they discussed the Visum et repertum, because the king asked The Royal Prussian Society of Sciences to state a verdict on the contents of the report. The society convened on March 7th and finished a statement on the vampires or blood suckers on March 11th, in which they stated that all the phenomena that had been observed on the examined corpses could be explained by well-known natural processes.

Particularly in Leipzig, but also in other places, however, the matter of vampires and how one were to explain the apparent incorruptibility of the corpses, the illness of the victims, and the claims concerning being haunted by vampires, were debated in numerous books and journals.

Later on, the vampire case from Medvedja was retold numerous times. The names of persons and places were changed along the way, so sometimes Arnont Paole became e.g. Arnod Paole or Arnold Paul. In the middle of the 19th century, Herbert Mayo decided to try and use 'the romancing vein ... to try and restore the original colours of the picture', i.e. he dramatised the story, when he recounted it in his letters 'on the truths contained in modern susperstitions' that were first published in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. It is this version that is more or less used by Dudley Wright and Montague Summers, and it is amazing to find that the 'original colours of the picture' include a story of doomed love between Arnod Paole and his neighbour, Nina. Curiously, we are even told that 'it was on a grey morning in early August that the commission visited the cemetery of Meduegna,' although we know it actually happened in January. The tradition of mixing up fact and fiction when it comes to vampires apparently is far from new.

When it comes to the name of Arnont Paole, Arnond Paole, Arnod Paole or however it is written, one theory is that the name was actually Pavle, and that 'Arnont' was actually a title or description, namely that of 'arnaut', a Turkish word for the people of Albania.

Medvedja in my opinion is the village Medvedja close to the Zapadna Morava branch of the Morava river, not to be confused with the much larger city of Medvedja that was outside the part of Serbia occupied by the Austrians in 1732.


The accompanying excerpts of the Visum et Repertum are from a contemporary copy that was sent from Vienna to the Danish government.

Sturm und Völker 40th Anniversary

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the first edition of Dieter Sturm and Klaus Völker's classic anthology, Von denen Vampiren oder Menschensaugern: Dichtungen und Dokumenten, originally published by Carl Hanser Verlag. It has been reprinted and published in new editions several times, including paperbacks that only contain certain parts of the original book, making it perhaps the most bestselling anthology of vampire fact and fiction!

Certainly, Sturm and Völker's book must have been a very important book for many who have become fascinated by this curious subject. This was the book that first introduced me to the text of Flückinger's Visum et Repertum, as well as to e.g. Luther talking about the mastication of the dead in his Tischreden. I can recall struggling with reading and understanding the old German texts back in my youth, and studying the extensive bibliography. This was indeed a ground breaking and inspirational work, and the continued reprinting is a testament to the quality and scope of the work. In the light of what has been printed later on, e.g. Hamberger's anthology, Von denen Vampiren is no longer up to date, but it is still a good starting point for anyone with an interest in vampires who can read German.

Both Klaus Völker and Dieter Sturm are around 70 now and have no doubt been active in various areas during the past 40 years, but for some of us 'Sturm und Völker' is simply another way of referring to their 1968 anthology Von denen Vampiren oder Menschensaugern!

Galileo Mystery

Galileo Mystery, a documentary series on German TV channel Pro7, earlier this year dealt with vampires, even dramatising the exhumation of corpses in Medvedja and showing excerpts from the original documents. I have only seen the clip available here, but it looks pretty interesting.

An der Türkischen Granitz

I recently quoted Glaser’s letter to one of the editors of Commercii litterarii about a case of Magia Posthuma in a Serbian village. Obviously, this was the famous Medvegia vampire case of the winter 1731-32.

Many years ago I first read the official report about the Medvegia vampire case, Flückinger’s Visum et Repertum, in Dieter Sturm and Klaus Völker’s classic German anthology Von denen Vampiren oder Menschensaugern: Dichtungen und Dokumente (1st edition: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1968). The reprint of the report is based on a contemporary version from Nuremberg and carries the introductory text:

“Über die so genannten Vampirs, oder Blut-Aussauger, so zu Medvegia in Servien, an der Türkischen Granitz, den 7. Januarii 1732 geschehen.”

In fact, the same text can be found on p. 211ff in Michael Ranft’s famous Tractat von dem Kauen und Schmatzen der Todten in Gräbern, Worin die wahre Beschaffenheit derer Hungarischen Vampyrs und Blut-Sauger gezeigt, Auch alle von dieser Materie bißher zum Vorschein gekommene Schrifften recensiret werden (Leipzig, 1734).

However, I never really understood that bit about “an der Türkischen Granitz”, but then I must admit that for many years I was uncertain about the location of the village Medvegia.

But when I noticed that Klaus Hamberger cites it as “an der türckischen Gräniz” in his anthology Mortuus non mordet: Kommentierte Dokumentation zum Vampirismus 1689-1791 (Turia & Kant, 1992; p. 49), it occurred to me that “Granitz” must either be a variant or possibly a misspelling of German “Grenze”, i.e. border. So Medvegia should have been located near the Turkish border.

In fact Medvegia (or actually, Medvedja or more correctly: Medveđa) is close to the river Zapadna Morava, into which the ashes of the supposed vampires were thrown, and this river was to my knowledge the border between the Northern part of Serbia occupied by the Habsburgs and the Southern part still under Ottoman rule during the years 1718 and 1739.

So “Granitz” has nothing to do with granite or whatever I might have wondered about years back, but just places this famous location of Magia Posthuma at the extreme periphery of the Austrian Habsburg Empire during the few decades when Northern Serbia was under their rule.

I will return to Medvedja and other places associated with Magia Posthuma in later posts.