On several occasions, particularly on the periphery of the Habsburg Empire during the 17th and 18th centuries, dead people were suspected of being revenants or vampires, and consequently dug up and destroyed. Some contemporary authors named this phenomenon Magia Posthuma. This blog is dedicated to understanding what happened and why.
’Vampire stories are generally set in Styria,’ wrote Eric, Count Stenbock in 1894 in A True Story of A Vampire, adding that ’Styria is by no means the romantic kind of place described by those who have certainly never been there. It is a flat, uninteresting country, only celebrated by its turkeys, its capons, and the stupidity of its inhabitants.’ Only a couple of decades later, Romuald Pramberger wrote of the revenant beliefs of Styria, but noted that the vampire as it is now from Slavic areas is alien to Styria.
A new book published in connection with the current exhibition Carmilla, der Vampir und wir at the GrazMuseum in Styria, explores how Styria became the location of fictional vampire tales, as well as the general evolution of the vampire from the early Eighteenth Century to the mass media of our day.
Hans-Peter Weingand discusses some of the sources for Carmilla that must have inspired Sheridan Le Fanu in setting his vampire tale only about 50 km from Graz, while Elizabeth Miller explores the Stoker connection, as Count Dracula (or was that Count Wampyr?) originally was meant to live in Styria. Peter Mario Kreuter writes about the vampire investigations of the Eighteenth Century and vampire beliefs, while Clemens Ruthner lines out the development of the vampire theme. Most contributions are in German, but three are actually in English.
Overall, a nice read about Le Fanu, vampires and Styria, with notes and bibliography for further reading. Included is also a set of photos from the exhibition, serving as either a souvenir from the exhibition or a substitute for traveling to Graz.
The contents are:
Annette Rainer, Christina Töpfer, Martina Zerovnik: Grenzerfahrung, Vampirismus
Brian J. Showers: The Life and Literature of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
Hans-Peter Weingand: Den leisen Schritt Carmillas … Wie die Vampire in die Steiermark kamen
Elizabeth Miller: From Styria to Transylvania
Peter Mario Kreuter: Vampirglaube in Südosteuropa einst und jetzt
Clemens Ruthner: Untot mit Biss: Kurze Kultur- und Erfolgsgeschichte des Vampirismus in unseren Breiten
Theresia Heimerl: Unsterblich und (un)moralisch? Der Vampir als Repräsentationsfigur von Wert- und Normierungsdiskursen
Laurence A. Rickels: Integration of the Vampire
Sabine Planka: Der Vampir in der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur
Martina Zerovnik: Zwischen Vampir und Vamp: Auf der Suche nach der ”Neuen Frau” in Carmilla, Dracula, Twilight & Co Auswahlbibliographie
Carmilla, der Vampir und Wir is published by Passagen Verlag in Vienna and is available from GrazMuseum, the publishers, and Amazon.
'In Styria ...' Irishman Sheridan Le Fanu set his Carmilla in Styria, part of current day Austria. A current exhibition at the GrazMuseum in Graz in Styria now explores the role of Styria in vampire literature, the development of the media vampire, and what it is all about.
Le Fanu appears to have read an 1836 travel book, Schloss Hainfeld, or a Winter in Lower Styria by Basil Hall, and probably found the description of a pre-industrial and romantic part of Europe an appropriate setting for his vampire novella. By the time Bram Stoker was working on Dracula, he also chose Styria as the home of the vampire count, before deciding to place Count Dracula's castle in Transylvania. The curators of the GrazMuseum believe that at the end of the nineteenth century the construction of a backwards, threatening, and superstitious East Europe had moved further to the Southeast, making Styria a region less likely for a vampire story. Stoker, however, as we know, still retained Styria as a location in his short story Dracula's Guest.
The exhibition, Carmilla, der Vampir und wir (Carmilla, the vampire and us), sees the fictional vampire of Le Fanu and Stoker not only as an extension of the Romantic vampire figure, but rather as a reaction to the industrialization that changed the face of many West European countries throughout the nineteenth century. This is, of course, evident in the conflict between East and West in Dracula, but as industries, media, and the globalization has developed and transforms even remote places, the vampire becomes (in the view of the curators) more a mirror image of the problems that humans face in an everchanging world more and more out of contact with its history and roots. At the same time the vampire of fiction, just like humans, faces his (or her) own existential crisis.
The exhibition at the GrazMuseum appears to explore such themes rather than the vampire's roots in folk beliefs. It consists of five rooms, glimpses of which can be seen in a clip from Austrian TV, from which a few shots are shown below. It is open until Halloween this year, and a publication related to the exhibition will be available later this year.
The entry on Edward Lear (1812-88) in my Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature - incidentally right below an entry on J. S. Le Fanu mentioning In a Glass Darkly, the collection including Carmilla - states:
'Lear was by profession a landscape painter, but his elaborate landscape paintings have much less distinction and interest than his drawings and sketches.'
Fortunately, there is more of interest in Lear's work as a landscape painter than the Guide will have us believe. He published his Journals of a Landscape Painter in Albania, &c in 1851, and a couple of years ago a television series followed in Lear's footsteps on his journey through Greece and Albania: An Exile in Paradise: The Adventures of Edward Lear is currently aired here in Denmark, so I just caught the episode in which Robert Horne - described as 'an adventurer, traveller and writer with a keen interest in art and science fiction' - guides the viewer through Albania, looking for the places where Lear stayed and tracing the history from Lear's time until today. Lear appears to have been something of an adventurer himself.
Detailed information on the production is available from Lear Productions, with the promo below. A DVD, unfortunately, is currently unavailable.
This prologue to the well-known Hammer vampire movie The Vampire Lovers from 1969 based on Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's famous short story Carmilla, has its roots in vampire or revenant lore.
In Le Fanu's story it is told by a woodman in chapter 13:
"How came the village to be deserted?" asked the General.
"It was troubled by revenants, sir; several were tracked to their graves, there detected by the usual tests, and extinguished in the usual way, by decapitation, by the stake, and by burning; but not until many of the villagers were killed.
"But after all these proceedings according to law," he continued - "so many graves opened, and so many vampires deprived of their horrible animation - the village was not relieved. But a Moravian nobleman, who happened to be travelling this way, heard how matters were, and being skilled - as many people are in his country - in such affairs, he offered to deliver the village from its tormentor. He did so thus: There being a bright moon that night, he ascended, shortly after sunset, the towers of the chapel here, from whence he could distinctly see the churchyard beneath him; you can see it from that window. From this point he watched until he saw the vampire come out of his grave, and place near it the linen clothes in which he had been folded, and then glide away towards the village to plague its inhabitants.
"The stranger, having seen all this, came down from the steeple, took the linen wrappings of the vampire, and carried them up to the top of the tower, which he again mounted. When the vampire returned from his prowlings and missed his clothes, he cried furiously to the Moravian, whom he saw at the summit of the tower, and who, in reply, beckoned him to ascend and take them. Whereupon the vampire, accepting his invitation, began to climb the steeple, and so soon as the had reached the battlements, the Moravian, with a stroke of his sword, clove his skull in twain, hurling him down to the churchyard, whither, descending by the winding stairs, the stranger followed and cut his head off, and next day delivered it and the body to the villagers, who duly impaled and burnt them."
The inspiration no doubt is Dom Calmet, who in chapter 51 of the second part of his 1751 Traité writes:
'Un prêtre de bon esprit m'a raconté il y a peu de temps que voyageant dans la Moravie, il fut invité par M. Jeanin, chanoine de la cathédrale d'Olmuz, de l'accompagner à leur village nommé Liebava, où il était nommé commissaire par le consistoire de l'évêché, pour informer sur le fait d'un certain fameux vampire, qui avait causé beaucoup de désordre dans ce village de Liebava, quelques années auparavant.
L'on procéda, l'on ouît des témoins; on observa les règles ordinaires de droit. Les témoins déposèrent qu'un certain habitant notable du lieu de Liebava avait souvent inquiété les vivants dudit lieu pendant la nuit, qu'il était sorti du cimetière et avait paru dans plusieurs maisons, il y avait environ trois ou quatre ans; que ses visites importunes étaient cessées parce qu'un étranger hongrois passant par le village dans le temps de ces bruits, s'était vanté de les faire passer et de faire disparaître le vampire. Pour satisfaire à sa promesse, il monta sur le clocher de l*église et observa le moment auquel le vampire sortait de son tombeau, laissant auprès de sa fosse les linges dans lesquels il était enseveli, puis allait par le village, inquiéter les habitants.
Le Hongrois l'ayant vu sortir de sa fosse, descend promptement du clocher, enlève les linges du vampire et les emporte avec lui sur la tour. Le vampire étant revenu de faire ses tours et ne trouvant plus ses habits, crie beaucoup contre le Hongrois, qui lui fait signe du haut de la tour, s'il veut revoir ses habits, qu'il vienne les cherchere. Le vampire se met en devoir de monter au clocher, mais le Hongrois le renverse de l'échelle et lui coupe la tête avec une bêche. Telle fut la fin de cette tragédie.
Celui qui m'a raconté cette histoire n'a rien vu; ni lui ni ce seigneur qui était envoyé pour commissaire. Ils ouïrent seulement le rapport des paysans du lieu, gens fort ignorants, fort supersticieux, fort crédules et infiniment prévenus sur le fait du vampirisme'
Or in the English translation of Henry Christmas:
'A sensible priest related to me, a little while ago, that, travelling in Moravia, he was invited by M. Jeanin, a canon of the cathedral at Olmutz, to accompany him to their village, called Liebava, where he had been appointed comissioner by the consistory of the bishopric, to take information concerning the fact of a certain famous vampire, which had caused much confusion in this village of Liebava some years before. The case proceeded. They heard the witnesses, they observed the usual forms of the law. The witnesses deposed that a certain notable inhabitant of Liebava had often disturbed the living in their beds at night, that he had come out of the cemetery, and had appeared in several houses three or four years ago; that his troublesome visits had ceased because a Hungarian stranger, passing through the village at the time of his reports, had boasted that he could put an end to them, and make the vampire disappear. To perform his promise, he mounted on the church steeple, and observed the moment when the vampire came out of his grave, leaving near it the linen clothes in which he had been enveloped, and then went to disturb the inhabitants of the village. The Hungarian, having seen him come out of his grave, went down quickly from the steeple, took up the linen envelopes of the vampire, and carried them with him up the tower. The vampire having returned from his prowlings, cried loudly against the Hungarian, who made him a sign from the top of the tower that if he wished to have his clothes again he must fetch them; the vampire began to ascend the steeple, but the Hungarian threw him down backwards from the ladder, and cut his head off with a spade. Such was the end of this tragedy. The person who related this story to me saw nothing, neither did the noble who had been sent as commissioner; they only heard the report of the peasants of the place, people extremely ignorant, superstitious and credulous, and most exceedingly prejudiced on the subject of vampirism.'
However, going back to one of the most popular German (and consequently Protestant) works on apparitions of the 17th century, Erasmus FrancisciDer Höllische Proteus, first published in 1690, one can find this story in his chapter on the masticating dead, Der schmätzende Todte:
'Es gedenckt auch Zeilerus, in seinen Trauer-Geschichten: Er habe / zu Eywanschitz in Mähren / im Jahr 1617 und 18 / zu unterschieclichen Malen / von glaubwürdigen Bürgern des Orts / erzehlen hören daß daselbst / vor etlichen Jahren / (nemligch von selbiger Zeit zuruckzurechenen) ein / dem Ansehn nach ehrlicher / Bürger / auf dem Kirchhofe selbiger Stadt beerdigt worden; aber stets / bey der Nacht / aufgestanden sey / und Leute umgebracht habe. Dieser ließ allezeit seinen Sterb-Kittel / bey dem Grabe / ligen : und wann er sich wiederum niderlegte; zoch er denselben wieder an. Es wurden aber einsmals die Wächter / auf dem Kirch-Thurn / gewahr / als er vom Grabe wegging; eilten derhalben hinab / und trugen ihm den Sterb-Kittel hinweg. Da er nun / wieder zum Grabe kommend / seinen Kittel nich antraff; rief er ihnen zu / sie sollten ihm den Kittel wiedergeben / oder er wollte ihnen Allen die Hälse brechen. Welches sie auch / in grossem Schrecken / gethan.
Aber nochmals musste der Hencker ihn ausgraben / und zu Stücken zerhauen. Worauf man witer nichts gespúhrt. Der Scharffrichter zoch ihm einen langen grossen Schleyer / aus dem Maul / hervor / welchen er seinen Weibe vom Kopff hinweg gefressen hatte. Diesen zeigte der Nachrichter dem umherstehenden Volck / und rieff: Schauet! wie der Schelm so geizig gewesen! Nachdem er aus dem Grabe genommen war / sagte er: Sie hetten es jetzo wol recht getroffen; sonst / weil sein Weib auch gestorben / und zu ihm gelegt wäre / wollten sie Beyde die halbe Stadt umgebracht haben.'
Zeilerus according to Francisci is 'Zeiler. im I Theil der Trauer-Geschichte p.25.seqq.', i.e. Les Histoire Tragiques de Nostre Temps: Das ist Newe/Warhafftige/trawrig/kläglich und wunderliche Geschichten/die wegen Zauberey/Diebstal und Rauberey/ Ehrgeitz / und anderer seltzamen und denckwürdigen Zufälle from 1624, a translation by Martin Zeiller of Francois de Rosset's popular Les Histoires tragiques de notre temps from 1615. I have looked at a digital scan of Rosset's work, and could not find the story. I may have overlooked it, but I think that the story may have been included by Zeiller in his edition. Unfortunately, I have not (yet) had Zeiller's translation at hand. For more on editions of Rosset's book, check here. The story, however, can also be found in Valvasor's famous book and elsewhere.
That Calmet's Liebava story is a variation on Zeiller's has been observed by others, cf. also Rob Brautigam's Shroudeater , and I think the earliest remark on it is made by Stefan Hock in 1900 who also referred to Ralston's Russian Folktales, and wrote (in a footnote):
'Eine ganz ähnliche Sage erzählt Calmet (II: 255 f.) aus Liebava in Mähren nach mündlichen Berichten von Zeugen, wo aber der Ungar, der die Rolle des Wächters spielt, das Gespenst hinunterstürzt und so das Dorf rettet. Diese Form steht Goethes Ballade viel näher.' (p. 32)
As noted by Hock, this tale was an inspiration for Goethe's Totentanz from 1815 which can be found here in the original and in an English translation. Speaking of the dance of the dead, there are some interesting web sites on the subject: The web site of the Europäische Totentanz-Vereinigung, and a fellow Dane's exploration of the Danish term: 'to look like Death from Lübeck'.
So you can follow this thread (of shroud, so to speak) back from a Hammer movie to earlier revenant concepts and the dance of the dead. And, appropriately, coming back to our 21st century, here is a recent version of Goethe's poem (re)animated by Lego bricks!
Abraham was the name of both Stoker himself and his father, as Bram is but a diminutive of that name, hence it has been suggested that Van Helsing should be 'an idealized self-portrait', but Stoker actually claimed that he was 'based on a real character', a 'highly respected scientist, who ... will also be too famous all over the educated world for his real name ... to be hidden from people'. Two possible candidates are Stoker's brother William Thornley and Max Müller, a German professor at Oxford.
The origin of the name Helsing is apparently unknown. Theories suggest that it may have been inspired by the fictional Dr. Hesselius of Le Fanu's In a Glass Darkly, the anthology that contained the influential vampire novella Carmilla, or by an alchemist called Van Helmont mentioned in one of Stoker's other sources.
Obviously, the personal characteristics of Van Helsing differ a lot from Gerard van Swieten. Whereas van Swieten was an enlightened man of science trying to end superstitious practices, Van Helsing talks of occult forces and believes in all sorts of posthumous magic.
For some reason, some years ago Van Helsing became sort of a superhero vampire hunter in a dreadful movie that was certainly full of sound and fury but had nothing to say or contribute to the genre.
Fictional and mythological characters can turn up in various guises in surprising places. While writing this post, I saw Santa Claus walking by on the other side of the street from my house :-)
+GrazMuseum.jpg)
