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.

Elisabeth Bathory and Vlad Tepes in Austria

If you have read their books on Elisabeth Bathory and Vlad Tepes, or if you are just curious to know more about those two historical persons, you might plan to visit Austria next Summer for a tour of Ritterburg Lockenhaus or Burg Forchtenstein hosted by Gerald Axelrod and Liane Angelico. See their website for more information.

You can also watch a couple of videos on their Dracula and Bathory tours.

Unheimliches Wien

A couple of days ago I read a proof of my paper for the proceedings of the 2009 conference on vampirism and magia posthuma in Vienna, so the book should be on its way within a not too distant future.

At the conference Peter Mario Kreuter mentioned an article in the German magazine Merian about the Hofkammerarchiv in Vienna. I recently got hold of a copy of this special issue on Vienna from July 1999 which contains six pages on the archive:

Wie konnte Grillparzer einen Vampir auf dem Friedhof finden? Und mit einem Kaiser in der Hand aus dem Gleichgewicht geraten? Die Antworten stehen im Wiener Hofkammer-Archiv.

Franz Grillparzer was Direktor from 1832 to 1856 of the archive in Johannesgasse 6, that 'smells of wood and dust and old paper'.

'Eines der Kennzeichen eines Archives ist seine gnadenlose Gleichgültigkeit, die der eines Lexikons um nichts nachsteht: In einem Regal finden sich die schönsten, eisblumenhaften Spitzenmuster aus Böhmen, während sich schon der folgende Akt mit dem Vampyrismus auseinandersetzt: "Nachdem die Anzeig beschehen, daß Arnont Pavle, der sich durch einen Fall vom Heuwagen den Hals gebrochen, bei Lebzeiten von der Erden eines Vambygrabes gegessen und sich mit dessen Blut beschmiret und deswegen nach seinem Thode vervambyret und würklich auch vier Personen zu Tode brach habe. Umb dies Übl einzustellen seind wir auf den Fridhoff gangen, um die verdächtigen Gräber öffnen zu lassen. Der Pavle wurde ausgegraben und dabei gefunden, daß er ganz unverwesen seye, auch ihme das frische Blut zu denen Augen, nasen, Mund und Ohren herausgeflossen, auch ihme neue Nägel an Händen und Füßen gewachsen. Weillen nun die Leuth daraus gesehen, daß er ein wirklicher Vambyr seye, so haben die denselben eine Pfahl durch das Herz geschlagen, wobei er einen Grächazer gethan, dann ihme den Kopf heruntergeschlagen und sambt dem Körper verbrennet.... Andere Tote, wo die Leiber so verwesen, wie es sich auf einen rechtmäßigen Leichnamb gehört, wiederumb in Ihre Gräber gelegt worden." (Ärztlicher Visitationsbericht, mit vier Zeugen, Hofkammer-Archiv Wien), steht darunter.'

Apropos of Vienna, last year a book on the more horrific sides of Vienna was published: Unheimliches Wien: Gruselige Orte, Schaurige Gestalten, Okkulte Experimente by Robert Bouchal and Gabriele Lukacs (Pichler Verlag), fully illustrated with a lot of gloomy photos and including a chapter revenants, prematurely buried and vampires. The vampire related parts focus on the places associated with Erzsébet Báthory and Eleonore Schwarzenberg, as well as the story of Gerhard van Swieten's involvement with vampires and magia posthuma. In this part some photos are included of the copy of the letter from Frombald on the Kisiljevo vampire case. Other parts deal with the Narrenturm and the Josephinum. So if you are going to or living in Vienna, this book could probably serve as a guide to some interesting sightseeing.




Some videos relating to the book can be found here.

Out in March

I have still to post a few reviews of recent books which I hope to have ready soon. In the meantime I can mention that Norbert Borrman's Vampirismus is published in a new edition this March. I have actually never had a copy of the book in my hands, but apparently it is widely read.

What looks somewhat more interesting is a new book by photographer Gerald Axelrod tracing the life and myth of Elizabeth Bathory. Like his earlier book on Dracula, this one is likely to contain numerous photos, this time from places in Slovakia, Austria and Hungary:

'Sie ist zwar nicht so berühmt wie Dracula, hat es aber immerhin zu Titeln wie „Gräfin Dracula“ und „The World Champion Lady Vampyr of All Time“ gebracht. Die höchste Ehre wurde ihr aber zweifellos durch den Eintrag im Guinness-Buch der Rekorde von 1988 zuteil: Mit 650 Opfern gilt sie als die größte Serienmörderin aller Zeiten! Die Rede ist von Elisabeth Báthory (1560–1614), auch bekannt als Blutgräfin.

Ihre Bekanntheit verdankt sie allerdings nicht den Morden, die sie tatsächlich verübt hat, sondern einer Legende: Sie habe im Blut der Jungfrauen gebadet, um ewige Jugend und Schönheit zu erlangen! Aber handelt es sich dabei wirklich nur um eine Legende oder steckt ein Körnchen Wahrheit in den Blutbädern? Anhand der neuesten historischen Forschungen wollen wir das Leben der Blutgräfin rekonstruieren und die vielen Mythen, die sich um die grausame „Lady Dracula“ ranken, einer kritischen Prüfung unterziehen.

Dieses Buch begibt sich auf Spurensuche nach den Quellen und Originaldokumenten, die den Jesuitenpater László Turóczi und zahlreiche weitere Autoren zu ihren Werken über die Blutgräfin inspiriert haben. Es zeichnet das Leben der Elisabeth Báthory nach und zeigt in beeindruckenden Aufnahmen die Orte ihres Wirkens in der Slowakei, Österreich und Ungarn. Und jenseits der Legendenbildung werden die Versuche, die Abgründe ihrer Psyche mittels der modernen Psychologie zu beleuchten, dargestellt.'

The Blood Countess needs your support :-)

If anyone is interested in supporting an opera about Erzsebet Bathory, here is your chance:

Die Blutgräfin

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Although historically it has nothing to do with vampires, it is hard for someone interested in that subject not to be intrigued by the history and legends surrounding Elisabeth/Erzsebet Báthory. Through modern books on vampires she has become inseparably connected to the subject of vampires, and by itself it is interesting to try and understand how much of the myth is actually based on historical reality and how the legends about blood baths and other cruel acts arose and developed into the ‘Blutgräfin’, blood countess, of contemporary fiction.

Michael Farin compiled a comprehensive anthology of texts and documentation in his 1990 Heroine des Grauens: Elisabeth Báthory, which is available in a slightly updated edition from 2003. In English, the most recent biography is Infamous Lady: The True Story of Countess Erzsebet Bathory by Kimberly L. Craft, which was published last year and probably incorporates and comments on material from Farin’s book as well as Tony Thorne’s Countess Dracula: The Life and Times of Elisabeth Báthory, the Blood Countess (1997).


The earliest source for Bathory’s blood bathing and obsession with beauty is the 1729 book on Hungary, Ungaria suis cum regibus compendio data, by László Turóczi which is, I think, not available on the internet. The notion was then retold by various other writers, including Sabine Baring-Gould in his 1865 The Book of Werewolves which Bram Stoker read, a fact that has made a lot of later writers on Dracula and vampires claim that Stoker was inspired by Bathory when writing Dracula.

Although the actual acts of the trials against Bathory were made available to the public in the 19th century, the idea of the blood bathing countess has persisted, and Bathory appears to be increasingly popular in fiction. Prudence Foster mixed von Schertz’s Magia posthuma with Bathory in the 1989 novel Blood Legacy, and Georges Pichard made a comic book edition of Sacher-Masoch’s short story on Bathory in 1985, La comtesse rouge (some images from an English translation can be found here). Most recently she played a central part in the 'official sequel' to Dracula.

In the cinema, a couple of dramas have been made over the last couple of years, The Countess and the Czech Bathory which should finally be available on German DVD this summer, plus various vampire movies like Eternal (2004). But the most famous are probably still Les lèvres du rouge (1971), Countess Dracula (1971), and Contes immoraux (1974), although only the latter two attempt some kind of 'historical' portrayal.

Contes immoraux was released on DVD here in Denmark recently, so I had a chance to view it for the first time in many years. More like a series of tableaux, there is little storyline in the film’s four parts, of which the third concerns Bathory. In fact, the raison d’être of the movie seems to be to show a lot of young women with little or no clothes on. Most of the Bathory sequence shows a number of these young women bathing for a long, long time to clean themselves before providing the sanguineous liquids for the bath of Bathory (played by Pablo Picasso’s daughter, Paloma, apparently her sole attempt at acting). There is given no explanation for the blood bath, so the viewer is assumed to know the legend, perhaps from Sacher-Masoch or from a popular book by Valentine Penrose, Erzsébet Báthory – La Comtesse sanglante, published in France in 1962.

In all fairness to the director, Walerian Borowczyk, I should add that I found his (in)famous and very explicit La Bête (1975), which was also released on DVD here, far more entertaining and innovative than his imho slightly boring 'immoral tales'.

For this post I have taken some photos of novels that I collected many years ago that exploit the legend. Click on the photos to read the spine tingling attempts at whetting your appetite for new tales of the 'blood countess'. I also found an old Danish magazine of 'chocking and hair-raising' historical sensationalism which includes the story of 'Prinsessen bag Drakula-myten: Hun tog bad i jomfrublod': The princess behind the Dracula myth: She bathed in virgin blood.

Something seems to attract people to the story, as Michael Farin also admits in his 2003 postscript on Bathoriana: 'Ja, es sei zugegeben, ausch solchen Gelüsten diente die vorliegende Sammlung. Sie fand LeserInnen, deren Augen zu schwimmen begannen. Das gehört bei einem solchen Thema nun einmal dazu, und auch einem "Kulturarchäologen" ist dies nich gleichgültig.'

And so the cultural archaeologist may find some entertainment and inspiration for the holidays below...

Gender and crime

Criminal women is the theme of a book published last year: Murderesses in German Writing, 1720-1860: Heroines of Horror by Susanne Kord from the Department of German at University College London. The book contains a chapter on vampires, including a history of how 'Serbian vampires come to life in Germany (Leipzig and Vienna, 1732-1755)', but probably mostly concentrating on Elizabeth Bathory and 'female vampires in literature from Goethe to the Grimms (1797-1823)'. Published by Cambridge University Press, it is available for around £50.

The cover reproduces Philip Burne-Jones's famous painting The Vampire.

"Time has no respect for beauty"

Being 38 and worried about wrinkles and age setting in is hardly uncommon, but in the case of Erzebet Bathory it becomes an obsession when she finds out that her skin looks and feels smoother when touched by virgin blood.

The Bathory character has become immensely popular in works of fiction, turning up in e.g. the 'official sequel' to Dracula that I recently mentioned. She also serves as inspiration for a novel that also fictionalizes von Schertz's Magia Posthuma: Blood Legacy by Prudence Foster which I wrote about on another blog.

Bathory also turns up in regular vampire movies as well as in more regular historical dramas. I have yet to find a copy of the Czech Bathory (2008), but the German-French The Countess (2009) starring Julie Delpy was recently released on DVD here in Denmark. Curiously, the first nearly 40 years of Bathory's life are told in the opening minutes, so the movie focuses on her years as a widow, falling in love with a young man and becoming obsessed with using blood to retain her looks, before finally being punished.

Although there are some pretty unpleasant scenes, The Countess never turns into out and out horror. It even attempts to be somewhat ambigous as to how much of the charges against Bathory were based in reality or in a plot to gain her wealth and power. So it is definitely very much unlike e.g. the Hammer Horror of Countess Dracula, but perhaps not quite as entertaining :-)

In general it touches on many of the themes of the strange mixture of fact and fiction about Bathory that has made her a household name in books on horror and mass murder, but in my opinion it does not really attempt to answer any of the questions. Still, it is interesting to see a more 'realistic' and relatively sympathetic portrayal of Bathory that at least appears to be closer to history than e.g. Hammer's effort.

Heart-Eaters

Last year I mentioned a book by Christa A. Tuczay about demonic crimes in the Donau Monarchy: Die Herzesser: Dämonische Verbrechen in der Donaumonarchie (Seifert Verlag, 2007). I bought a copy of it when I was in Vienna, and from the parts that I have read I can say that it is a nice and informative book about subjects like cannibals, werewolves, murderers and vampires from the countries that have been part of the Donau monarchy!

There are about a dozen pages about vampires that provide an overview of some of the 18th century vampire cases, including Georg Tallar's examinations of victims of vampires. Gilles de Rais, Elisabeth Báthory, Vlad Tepes and a few other well-known characters are also briefly described, slightly ironically, as Tuczay says in her afterword: 'obwohl sie sicherlich meist nicht zum Lachen reizen, sich aber mit einer Prise Humor leichter ertragen lassen.'

The 'heart eaters' mentioned in the title refer to various tales of literal and symbolic eaters and stealers of hearts, including Le Livre du cuer d'amours espris by René d'Anjou, which exists in an illuminated manuscript in Vienna (see the above illustration which is shown in black and white in the book). In this poem the poet is in love and dreams that Amor takes out his heart and gives it to Desire, cf. the illustration. In other tales, the heart of a lover is served as food by the cuckolded husband to his wife.

The foreword is by Mark Benecke, and there are useful notes specifying sources and further reading. All in all 160 illustrated pages at €19.90, and once again: it is in German...

Addendum: I notice that Tuczay is also one of the editors of a new anthology entitled Faszination des Okkulten: Diskurse zum Übersinnlichen published by Francke Verlag that also published the Poetische Wiedergänger anthology on vampires.

Viennese vampires?!

While in Vienna, I attended one of those tours of Vienna concerning ghosts and vampires that I have mentioned before. Well, it was quite entertaining and informative, although to be taken with at least a pinch of salt. It lasted for over one and a half hour and consisted of three parts, the two first concerning ghosts of either commoners or nobles, and the final one vampires. Our guide was very talkative, humorous and good at starting a dialogue with our little group of 'ghost hunters'. The language was (Austrian) German.

He claimed that about tales of about 800 vampires were known in Vienna, but that most of them were located outside the center. That was certainly news to me :-) Anyhow, one of his tales concerned an 'arch vampire' that should have been seen at Freyung, and one of the others was about Elizabeth Bathory, whose Vienna house he pointed out the location of (see the photo below). This was the place where, according to a contemporary witness, the cries of Bathory's victims were so loud that the monks living in the monastery next door had to protest. We also got a rather curious version of the story of Gerhard Van Swieten who was described as a 'vampire hunter'!

Our guide, however, probably isn't familiar with the archival documents concerning 18th century vampire cases, because we strolled past one of the archives where some of these documents are stored without any comment from him!

But it was quite entertaining and also enlightening on other aspects of Viennese history.

What a load of ...

I have purchased the Vampire Secrets DVD along with four other Haunted Histories documentaries from The History Channel. Now I have also watched the vampire episode, and, honestly, what a load of ... rubbish!

As one would expect, it's pretty well produced, but the contents are simply so flawed by errors and misinterpretations of fact that it's really hard to understand why a channel like The History Channel lends its name to this documentary. It is claimed that Elisabeth Bathory played some important role in the history of vampires, and furthermore that people in around 1400 would become scared by hearing the word vampire, and that Calmet's Dissertation is some sort of manual for vampire hunters. Perhaps one shouldn't expect more considering some of the 'experts' that have been chosen for the documentary, but in my opinion this kind of misrepresentation of historical facts is more harmful than all the outlandish vampire fictions that we are used to in novels, comics and movies. Unfortunately, it is symptomatic of too many attempts at representing the history and phenomenon of vampires that one is more concerned with presenting chilling tales than in getting the facts and the historical perspective right.

The only really interesting and worthwhile part of the documentary is one in which Mark Benecke describes how the decomposition of actual corpses may have been interpreted as signs of vampirism. Apart from this short part of the documentary, I think that most people will have a better time and benefit more from watching one of the purely fictional vampire movies like those shown alongside the Haunted Histories DVD box in the photo below!

"Heart-Eaters"

I just happened to notice that Christa Tuczay, who has previously written about medieval magic, vampires and related subjects, is publishing a book this month that might interest some.

The subject is "Demonic Crimes in the Donau Monarchy", but as the publisher actually has a web page in English describing the book, I will refer you to that for a description of this - at least at first sight - rather outlandish subject. One example of a "demonic criminal" seems to be the infamous "blood countess", Elisabeth Bathory, who is frequently dealt with in books on vampires and Dracula, although she has nothing particularly to do with revenants.

According to the web site of the Vienna University, Tuczay is lecturing on 'Der Dichter als Aufklärer. Kritische Stimmen zum Aberglauben' this fall, and has previously lectured on 'Unheimliche Begegnungen: Geister, Vampire und Dämonen in der mhd. Literatur'.