Directions to go to Munich

From Bram Stoker's Notes for Dracula: A Facsimile Edition by Robert Eighteen-Bisang and Elizabeth Miller p. 34-5: 'Directions in letter of Count to go to Munich stop at Quatre Saisons & wait instructions. Start on same day & arrive direct service. Visit to Pinacothek museum & to Dead House - telling how brought about.'

According to Bram Stoker's notes for Dracula, Jonathan Harker's travel route was: London - Paris - Munich - Salzburg - Vienna - Budapest - Klausenburg - Bistritz. In Munich he stayed at the Quatre Saisons hotel, now Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten in Maximilianstrasse, part of the Kempinski group. Opened in 1858 as a state of the art hotel, it is still considered one of the leading hotels of the world. Judging by the only Kempinski hotel I have myself stayed at, the luxurious Hotel Adlon in Berlin, the Vier Jahreszeiten is no doubt worth a stay - if you can afford it.

Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten

The relationship between the short story Dracula's Guest and Dracula, the novel, is disputed, but elements from the short story can be found in some of Stoker's notes for the novel. These include a visit to the Pinakothek, which at the time consisted of two collections, the Alte Pinakothek and the Neue Pinakothek. Today a Pinakothek der Moderne has been added. The collections exhibit many well-known and important pieces of art, e.g. Michael Pacher's 15th century set of four paintings from St. Augustine's life, including that of the Devil showing Augustine the Book of Vices. Currently the Alte Pinakothek is exhibiting an interesting collection of motifs from the Old Testament.

Alte Pinakothek

Stoker possibly intended Harker to visit the Opera for a performance of Wagner's Flying Dutchman, no doubt at the Nationaltheater München. There are, of course, also other things to enjoy while in Munich.

Waking the German Undead

The development of the literary vampire from John William Polidori’s The Vampyre over Varney the Vampire and Carmilla to Bram Stoker’s Dracula is well-known. This development highlights the vampire as an English language phenomenon, but this is, perhaps, due to lack of knowledge of the German language vampire fiction of the nineteenth century. According to Oliver Kotowski, this view probably stems from both Stefan Hock and Montague Summers, the latter claiming that ‘in Germany sensational fiction was long largely influenced by Polidori’, but it is a view that underestimates the number of vampire stories actually written during the nineteenth century.

Kotowski collects a dozen of these stories in his recent anthology Lasst die Toten ruhen: Deutsche Vampirgeschichten aus dem 19. Jahrhundert (Atlantis Verlag, 368 pages, paperback and hardcover at 14.90 € and 19.90 € respectively). Spanning the whole century, the stories are stylistically different, and Kotowski also includes two stories from parts of Eastern Europe that were available in German at the time.

Some texts are relatively well-known, e.g. Hoffmann’s Cyprians Erzählung, while others see their first modern reprint in this volume. Ernst Benjamin Salomo Raupach’s Lasst die Toten ruhen is among the latter, although it has been frequently reprinted in English as Wake Not The Dead where it is usually attributed to Johann Ludwig Tieck. An appendix reprints another story that is popular in English, The Mysterious Stranger, but as the original in German is so far unknown, Kotowski here has translated it from the English short story.

Each story is accompanied by biographical and bibliographical information as well as an afterword on the story and its use of the vampire motif. At the end of the book is a short summary of tendences in the German vampire literature of the nineteenth century and a bibliography.

Vampires in Berlin

Arriving at Hauptbahnhof, the main railway station, in Berlin, one in instantly met by vampires in the form of huge adverts for the Tanz der Vampire musical, currently performed at Theater des Westens. The photos were taken earlier today after some days of vacation in that city. Unfortunately, I did not find time to go to see the musical. However, I must admit that I am a bit wary of that kind of thing, although I enjoyed Polanski's film.

Count Orlock and his contemporaries

I have previously praised the brilliant German magazine Der Spiegel Geschichte. The current issue (no 5, 2012) concerns the history of Berlin, and the topic of one article is the avantgarde and decadent culture of post-WWI Berlin. Friedrich Murnau's Nosferatu is mentioned as an example of the new medium of cinema, a film that in gesture and make-up takes atmospheric expressionism as far as can be endured. The article sets the silent masterpieces of German cinema into the cultural context of artists like Brecht, Dix and Kafka. Clips from Nosferatu and other films from the era can be seen in this video from Der Spiegel.

Otto Dix: Großstadt (1928)

The Brothers Grimm commemorated

Gerald Axelrod, author of Im Reich von Dracula and Die Geheimnisse der Blutgräfin Elisabeth Bathory, two well-written and richly illustrated books on Vlad Tepes and Elisabeth Bathory respectively, is preparing yet another lavishly illustrated book, this time on the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm: Die fantastische Welt der Brüder Grimm: Entlang der Deutschen Märchenstrasse. The book will be published by Stürtz in May 2012 to commemorate the two hundred anniversary of the first volume of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's Kinder- und Hausmärchen.

The book's photos are taken along the Fairy Tale Route (Märchenstraße) that was created in Germany in 1975. According to the route's web site, it 'stretches over 600 km from Hanau near Frankfurt in the south to Bremen in the north, meandering through the towns and cities where the Brothers Grimm lived and worked, connecting the places and landscapes of their collected fairy tales into a route of wonders. The Fairy Tale Route offers culture and history, enchanting medieval towns of half-timbered houses, castles and fortresses, museums and art galleries, concerts and theatres - a charming blend of traditional town life, urban atmosphere and local folklore crafts.'

Axelrod's photos from his Dracula book, by the way, once again grace a calendar, also available from Stürtz.

Vampyres according to an English Gentleman and a German Director

One of the most frequently quoted descriptions of vampires in English is referred to as a translation from a dissertation on vampires published in Duisburg in 1733, the only German book on vampires written and published in this part of German territory. The original translation of the description is found in an anonymous manuscript, The Travels of three Gentlemen, from Venice to Hamburgh, being the grand Tour of Germany, in the Year 1734, first published in volume IV of The Harleian Miscellany: A Collection of Scarce, Curious, and Entertaining Pamphlets and Tracts, as well in Manuscript as in Print in 1745, and continued in the subsequent volume.

When in Lubljana in Slovenia, the author mentions Valvasor: 'All persons of taste and learning in Carniola have in high esteem the piece of Baron Valvasor, intitled 'Gloria Ducatus Carniolæ,' which, they say, is wrote with the utmost truth, accuracy, and exactness.'

The landlord of the three gentlemen, 'a cheerful agreeable person, and a man of very good sense and understanding,' 'seemed to pay some regard to what Baron Valvasor has related of the Vampyres, said to infest some parts of this country'. In this connection, the author mentions a dissertation upon vampires written by the director of the gymnasium in Essen in Germany, M. Jo. Henr. Zopfius, 'from whence we shall beg leave to transcribe the following paragraph'.

This paragraph is quoted in various books and on many web sites, but it may be worthwhile to quote it in toto:

'The Vampyres, which come out of the graves in the night-time, rush upon people sleeping in their beds, suck out all their blood, and destroy them. They attack men, women, and children; sparing neither age nor sex. The people, attacked by them, complain of suffocation, and a great interception of spirits; after which, they soon expire. Some of them, being asked, at the point of death, what is the matter with them? say they suffer in the manner just related from people lately dead, or rather the spectres of those people; upon which, their bodies (from the description given of them, by the sick person,) being dug out of the graves, appear in all parts, as the nostrils, cheeks, breast, mouth, &c. turgid and full of blood. Their countenances are fresh and ruddy; and their nails, as well as hair, very much grown. And, though they have been much longer dead than many other bodies, which are perfectly putrified, notthe least mark of corruption is visible upon them. Those who are destroyed by them, after their death, become Vampyres; so that, to prevent so spreading an evil, it is found requisite to drive a stake through the dead body, from whence, on this occasion, the blood flows as if the person was alive. Sometimes the body is dug out of the grave, and burnt to ashes; upon which, all disturbances cease. The Hungarians call these spectre Pamgri, and the Servians, Vampyres; but the etymon or reason of these names is not known.'

Montague Summers quotes the passage in his 1929 The Vampire in Europe, but one year earlier, on the first page of the first chapter of The Vampire: His Kith and Kin, this is how he quotes Zopf(ius):

'Vampires issue forth from their graves in the night, attack people sleeping quitely in their beds, suck out all their blood from their bodies and destroy them. They beset men, women and children alike, sparing neither age nor sex. Those who are under the fatal malignity of their influence, complain of suffocation and a total deficiency of spirits, after which they soon expire. Some who, when at the point of death, have been asked if they can tell what is causing their decease, reply that such and such persons, lately dead, have arisen from the tomb to torment and torture them.'

Not being satisfied with just quoting either of these English translations (or transcriptions?), I have looked up what the director of the gymnasium in Essen actually wrote. Zopf's Dissertatio de Vampyris Serviensibus consists of 27 pages written in Latin, and when you start looking for a text like the ones in English, you find that it is actually adapted from two bits of text on pp. 6-7.

On page 6, the dissertation is introduced with some comments on the word 'vampire', which includes this passage:

Apud Hungaros etiam PAMGRI audiunt, cuius de vocabuli notione atque etymo non magis constat, quam de obscuro Vampyrorum nomine. Germanico idiomate dici solent Todten-Freßer/Blut-Sauger/vulgoque habentur pro hominum defunctorum spectris, quæ nocte intempesta de sepulcris prodeant, in dormientes insiliant, & sanguine exhaustos, leto tradant.'

It is the last sentence that refers to the spectres of dead people, who come forth from their graves at the dead of night, throw themselves upon sleeping people, and leave them to die, drained of blood.

The main description of vampires and their characteristics than be found as § III on page 7:

'Ex iis relationibus, quae de Vampyris Seruiensibus adhuc emanarunt in vulgus, haec potissimum phaenomena nobis innotuerunt: tradunt nimirum (1) apparere in Seruia, praesertim in pago Medvedia, non procul Beraxino, spectra personarum, quae paucis ante diebus, septimanis, mensibus, e vita discesserint; (2) spectra isthaec adoriri homines vtriusque sexus, neque etiam infantibus parcere; (3) personas ab eiusmodi incubis infestatas, de suffocatione & spiritus interceptione grauiter conqueri, ac breui post exspirare; (4) rogatos a suis moribundos, ecquid malae rei ipsis acciderit, a spectro hominis nuper defuncti sibi illatum, profiteri; (5) quo facto cadauer personae a moribundo designatae e sepulcro effodi, in quo crudus adhuc vigor, capilli vnguesque recens prognati, nares, bucca, pectus, ventriculus, & reliqua corporis vasa, recenti sanguine turgida deprehendantur, cumque alii post eos extincti iam putrescant, in his ne minimam corruptionis notam conspici; (6) eos, qui ab eiusmodi Vampyris necentur, eandem post fata naturam induere, atque alios pari leto adficere; (7) quod ne latius malum serpat, hominis enecti praecordia palo transfigi praeacuto, vnde cruor largus, quasi ab homine viuo, profluat; (8) saepe cadauer e sepulcro erui, rogoque impositum in cineres redigi, quo ipso malum sopiatur.'

In short, the English translations are close to the original text, but not literal. Also, if you take a look at the beginning of the previous paragraph, you can see that both the anonymous gentleman and Summers chose to omit the reference to Medvedja ('Medvedia') in Serbia.

Michael Ranft was not happy with Zopf's dissertation and his idea of a 'contagium quoddam magicum', a kind of magical contagious disease. As translated into German in Klaus Hamberger's Mortuus non mordet:

'Es scheint uns nicht völlig unwahrscheinlich, daß die ganze Vampyrpest bei Serben und anderen in einere magischen Ansteckung (contagium magicum) besteht, die nach dem gerechten Ratschluß Gottes die Bewohner jener Gegend heimsucht. Wir sagen Ansteckung, weil sie sich gleich einer Seuche weiter ausbreitet und mit ihrem Anhauch nicht nur einzelne Mesnchen, sondern ganze Familien infiziert und ausrottet; und wir nennen sie magisch, weil der Teufel sein Wirken unter die Kräfte der Natur mischt, und so einige widernatürliche Effekte erzielt.' (p. 204)

As for the three gentlemen, I have referred to the author of the manuscript as the anonymous gentleman. Aribert Schroeder in his Vampirismus: Seine Entwicklung vom Thema zum Motiv from 1973 discusses the identity of the anonymous gentleman at length and identifies three persons as possible matches: The astronomer James Bradley, the botanist Johann-Jakob Dillenius, and the physician Frank Nicholls. However, a paper from 1999 by T. Shaw, John Swinton, F.R.S., identified as the author of a 1734 travel journal, identifies the author as John Swinton, whose entry in the wikipedia succinctly says:

John Swinton (1703–1777) was a British writer, academic, Fellow of the Royal Society, Church of England clergyman and orientalist. In 1731 he was a fellow of Wadham College, Oxford, but migrated to Christ Church in 1745. He contributed to George Sale's Universal History. Swinton also contributed articles on the transcription of the 'Ruins of Palmyra'. Beginning in 1749, Swinton donated a number of Roman coins to the collection at Christ Church. From 1767 until the year of his death he was Keeper of the Archives at Oxford University.

As Schroeder remarks, the English gentleman (the Rev. John Swinton, apparently) probably could not read most of the books on vampires, because they were written in German. For that reason he referred to Zopf's dissertation in Latin, and his transcription and the later adaption by Montague Summers made Zopf a household name of vampire books and web sites in English.

Johann Heinrich Zopf himself was born in 1691 and died in 1774, and you can easily find biographical info like this, as well as a number of books by him on the internet.

Cheeky

Perhaps a bit cheeky, but while it looks like I've been writing a few posts over the last couple of days, I actually wrote them in advance so they would pop up on the blog while I was on a short visit to Leipzig and Halle. Visiting as a tourist, I got to see some of the sights and looked for whatever I could find reminiscent of what I've been reading about the role the two cities played in the 18th century vampire debate. As I have just returned home, I will just post a photo of a detail from the old cemetery in Halle, the Stadtsgottesacker, but more will follow...

H-Sonderauftrag

One of the most curious sources for information on the historical witchcraft cases and to some extent to the Magia Posthuma is the archive created by the H-Sonderauftrag or H-Sonderkommando of the SS Sicherheitsdienst (SD) between 1935 and 1944. H is an abbreviation for Hexen, witches. Created by Heinrich Himmler, the researchers of this special and secret part of the SS studied source material in more than 260 archives and libraries throughout German territory and systematically detailed cases of people prosecuted and punished for witchcraft.

The archive consisting of about 33.000 A4-sized entries was found at the end of the war and is now located in an archive in Poznan in Poland. A copy of the archive is also stored in Frankfurt in Germany. In Poznan, the archive also comprises a library of books and pictorial material.

Himmler hasn't left any clear statement on his motives for initiating this large scale research into the witch hunt cases. However, it seems that he wasn't motivated by studying the witch hunters, but rather by sympathy for the Germans persecuted by one nationalsocialism's enemies, the Church.

In 1986, the archive was brought to the attention of historians by Gerhard Schormann in a work on the witchcraft cases in Germany, and since then researchers have studied the archives. In 1999, a collection of papers on the arhive was published, Himmlers Hexenkartothek: Das Interesse des Nationalsozialismus an der Hexenverfolgung (Verlag für Regionalgeschichte).

The verdict on the use of the archive for modern historical research is not unanimous. Some find it useful, whereas others are less positive. For instance, Wolfgang Behringer, known for his research into Bavarian witchcraft cases, is adamant in his critique of the quality of the research. It also seems that the methods and insistence of the various H-Sonderauftrag researchers varied a lot, allowing for some parts of the archive to be more useful than others.

Karen Lambrecht who has studied Silesian witchcraft cases, including a few cases of Magia Posthuma, however, found the archive useful for her research. This probably particularly goes for the cases where the original source material that the SS researchers studied, unfortunately no longer exists.


The archive and the H-Sonderauftrag was dealt with in a German three part TV documentary on witches, Hexen - Magie, Mythen und die Wahrheit which is released on DVD this April. It was shown on Danish television last summer, and I include a couple of shots from it here.

Finally, here is a Polish web page in English concerning the H-Sonderauftrag with four examples of archival material: 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Dracula's Vettern

In an earlier post I stated my doubts concerning the uniqueness of the vampire. Peter Kremer’s book Draculas Vettern: Deutschlands vergessene Vampire (Dracula’s cousins: The forgotten vampires of Germany; PeKaDe-Verlag, 2006, 14.99 €) is very much concerned with this question: Is the vampire a Slavic concept which influenced the folklore of other parts of Europe, or is the Slavic vampire only one manifestation of the concept of a revenant or living corpse that has been known throughout Europe?

Peter Kremer convincingly documents that the latter is the correct answer, and that folkloric entities known in e.g. Western parts of Germany share all the basic characteristics of the Slavic vampire. This may surprise those who have not been able to study the material available on revenants of various sorts throughout Europe, but Kremer certainly has done his home work and is familiar with not only the usual literature on vampires, but also the literature on other types of revenants, as well as folklore in general, witchcraft cases, werewolves, anthropology and more.

His reading of various authors and sources is both critical and analytical. He appropriately critisises Montage Summers and the great number of authors and ‘vampirologists’ whose works are more or less derivative of Summers, but he also presents a very interesting analysis of the background of German folklore research, which sheds light on its leanings towards finding or constructing a Germanic origin and in its extreme: national socialist ideological ideas. To some scholars the belief in revenants and vampires was so primitive that it had to be seen as non-Germanic, and consequently they had reason to insist on the South East European Slavic roots of the belief.

Kremer expertly reviews the literature and details the various German kinds of revenants, including the masticating dead, and explains the ideas behind these beliefs. He even goes back into prehistory to explore the origins of the fear of the dead and the apotropaic means to defend oneself against the harm of revenants.

He shows how many popular myths stem from fiction and have very little to do with the original folkloric vampires and revenants, and administers what ought to be the final rites to various ‘scientific’ explanations of vampires (porphyria and rabies to name the most popular), showing that they are more based in fiction than in fact.

He is even able to propose hypotheses on how the various revenants can be seen as various evolutionary stages of revenant beliefs, incorporating the role of the Christian churches in the evolution of the corporeal revenant into the 'ethereal' spectre of later ghost stories.

There are 733 footnotes in this 205 page book, and they are a very rich source of information, both concerning the source material and the richness and care of Kremer’s research. Many hours of further reading and consideration can be based on the footnotes alone.

The title’s reference to Dracula seems a bit too popular, considering that this book will probably not appeal to the casual reader. He or she may actually find that their own concepts of vampirism will shatter upon realising that there is nothing desirable about becoming a vampire, no “eternal life” in the company of other vampires, only the state of a living corpse that brings harm to its kith and kin.

Peter Kremer’s Draculas Vettern is a miracle of a contribution to the field and should be read and studied by anyone seriously interested in understanding the origin and nature of vampires and Magia posthuma.

PeKaDe-Verlag can be contacted at pekade3@aol.com.