Rarities at Schloss Ambras: Vlad Tepes

The 1655 engraving of the Danish physician and antiquarian Ole Worm's collection of various animals, plants, minerals and other objects, the Museum Wormianum, is one of the most famous examples of the Schatz-, Kunst-, Raritäten-, and Wunderkammern from the sixteenth and seventeenth century. After the death of Worm, King Frederik III obtained the collection and integrated it with his own art collection. The original collection no longer exists, but I suppose it is hard not to wonder what it would have been like to visit Worm's museum, and, if my memory serves me right, an attempt was actually made to temporarily reconstruct the Museum for an exhibition at Rundetårn in Copenhagen some 25 years ago.

The only collection of this kind that survives to this day, is the one started by Ferdinand II of Tyrol at Castle Ambras just outside Innsbruck in 1580, and it is fortunately readily accessible to the public. It is, however, not easy for the modern visitor to find out what the unifying principle behind the collection was, as it consists of natural objects, art and handicraft from around the globe, some fantastic, some very exotic, some grotesque, and some more ordinary, like the portraits of the Renaissance authors Petrarca, Dante, and Boccaccio, as well as that of the Wallachian ruler Vlad Tepes.

Castle Ambras at Innsbruck, Austria

I first read of 'the fascinating and rather frightening gallery of rogues and monsters at Castle Ambras' many years ago in the then instant classic In Search of Dracula, in which historians Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu wrote, that 'a visit to Castle Ambras, particularly to the "Frankenstein Gallery", as the modern-day guides insist on calling it, is a startling experience, even for the most stout-hearted.'

According to the two historians, 'Ferdinand II, Archduke of the Tyrol, who owned Castle Ambras during the 16th century, had a perverse hobby of documenting the villains and deformed personalities of history. He sent emissaries all over Europe to collect portraits of such persons, and reserved a special room in the castle for displaying them. It made no difference whether the subjects were well-known or comparatively obscure. What did matter was that they be actual human beings, not imagined ones.'

The catalogue for sale at the castle, Meisterwerke der Sammlungen Schloss Ambras, is, however, more prosaic in describing the Archduke's collection mania. Apart from collecting armoury and weapons and building a library, the Archduke was in full harmony with the ideology of that day and age, collecting examples of antiquitas, antiquity, mirabilia, wonders, abnormalities, and artefacts, scientifica, scientific instruments of all sorts, as well as exotica, objects of non-European origin. The collection was intended to comprise a compendium of works of nature and art that reflected the macrocosm of God.

The notion that such a collection should reflect God's macrocosm did, however, not mean that it should be a microcosm of God's creation or Nature or an inventory as e.g. the daunting Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna, but in fact only 'a microcosm or Compendium of all rare strange things,' as a French physician had inscribed over his own cabinet. 'Early modern collections excluded 99.9 percent of the known universe, both natural and artificial - namely, all that was ordinary, regular, or common,' writes Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park in Wonders and the Order of Nature (2001).

In fact, the Wunderkammer and its curiosities should not only stimulate an emotional response, it was 'provocatively subverting or straddling the boundaries of familiar categories. Was a winged cat bird or animal? Was coral vegetable or mineral? Was a gilded cocnut shell nature or art? Distraction as well as disorientation amplified the onlooker's wonder. Not only did individual objects subvert commonplaces or shatter categories; from every nook and cranny uncountable rarities clamored simultaneously for attention. The cabinets paid visual tribute to the variety and plenitude of nature, albeit very partially sampled. Stuffed with singularities, they astonished by copiousness as well as by oddity. Collectors did not savor paradoxes and surprises, they piled them high in overflowing cupboards and hung them from the walls and ceilings. The wonder they aimed at by the profusion of these heterogeneous particulars was neither contemplative nor inquiring, but rather dumbstruck.' (Daston and Park, p. 272-3)

Obviously there is much more to Archduke Ferdinand's collection than the mere interest in horrors that McNally and Florescu would have us believe back in 1972.

The famous portrait of Vlad Tepes, 60 cm by 50 cm, was painted during the second half of the sixteenth century, and it is usually assumed to have been copied from another painting that may be lost. It is known to have been located in Archduke Ferdinand's library by 1596. In fact, according to the inventory of 'allerlai gmäl und taflen' from that year, the painting is simply described as 'Dux Balachie' (as mentioned in the catalogue from the Dracula. Woiwode und Vampir exhibition at Castle Ambras in 2008). The lower part of the painting is painted white, perhaps in an order to remove a name or title.

Incidentally, the Dracula. Woiwode und Vampir catalogue mentions that the letters 'S T', probably the initials of the otherwise anonymous artist, can be found on the middle button, cf. the photo below. 

When McNally and Florescu visited the castle forty years ago, the portrait of Vlad Tepes was situated to the right of 'the portrait of Gregor Baxi, a Hungarian courtier who in the course of a duel had one eye pierced by a pale. The other eye degenerated into a bloodied and deformed shape. Baxi managed to survive this condition for one year, long enough for the portrait to be completed with the actual pale protruding from both sides of the head - which made medieval history. It is strangely appropriate that this impaled victim should be located close to Dracula, whose eyes are depicted slightly turned to the left and seem to gaze in satisfaction at this macabre scene.'

During my visit, the truly unusual portrait of Gregor Baxi was exhibited as part of a fascinating exhibition about the history of knights, along with a reconstruction of an impaled skull similar to the painting of Baxi made as part of a research project that concluded that the pale penetrated Baxi's head so low that the brain would have been left intact.

As can be seen from the photo of this blogger in front of the portrait of Vlad Tepes, it was placed next to the painting of a disabled man suffering from a genetic disease of the connective tissue, possibly Thomas Schweicker, who used his feet for producing art and calligraphy:

'The naked man is illustrated together with a collectible from a chamber of art and curiosities in the background. This means he is already presented in the environment where his picture is displayed. A red sheet of paper was attached to the painting, so that only the left shoulder was visible. If the observer wanted to see more, he had to lift the paper.' (from the text next to the painting)

Below the disabled man is a painting of a dwarf, perhaps one of the dwarfs present at the court of the Archduke, including 'the Italian Magnifico, who had the looks of an eighty-year old at the age of eighteen. Magnifico presumably suffered from progeria, a disease where the body ages prematurely.'

To the left of this set of paintings is a painting of a giant and a dwarf, and to the right Pedro Gonzalez, 'The Wolfman of Munich' according to McNally and Florescu, along with his two children. I intend to return to these portraits in another post.

Outside the castle is a large garden consisting of, I suppose, both a more baroque and a more romantic and naturalistic garden, both worth a walk up and down the heights. Next to the castle one finds a very cold cave, the Bacchus Grotto, where noble visitors were requested to ceremoniously pass a test in which they were put in fetters until they had drunk a cup of wine. Afterwards they were freed and signed a ledger. These Trinkbücher still exist and are exhibited at the castle.

The castle seen from the Bacchus Grotto

No ceremony is required to enter the castle these days, apart from paying a few Euros. It is truly a great place to visit, and so is Innsbruck and the surrounding Alps. Of particular interest in my opinion is the Tiroler Volkskunstmuseum, and if you fancy Renaissance and early Baroque music, you might consider the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music. Believe it or not, during my visit, one of the local cinemas, Cinematograph, was actually showing Werner Herzog's Nosferatu!

Innsbruck seen from Hafelekarspitze (2.334 m above sea level)

Einen schönen Hals hat Eure Frau

'Is this your wife? What a lovely throat!' says the Count in Murnau's Nosferatu (here in this English language version of the script).

I was reminded of this complimentary remark when I saw a documentary video on Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916) as part of an exhibition on Hammershøi and Europe at the National Gallery of Denmark. A number of Hammershøi's paintings from the late 19th and early 20th century show a woman in an austere apartment, usually from the back or the side, leaving her face unseen. In the documentary, one of the curators of the exhibition opines that Hammershøi this way indulges in the beauty of the female neck, and that other painters did the same during that period. Well, personally I think that at best this would be a secondary feature of these paintings. Anyhow, Count Orlok certainly had an eye for a beautiful neck, in this case that of Ellen Hutter portrayed by Greta Schröder.




'Einen schönen Hals hat Eure Frau...' is also the title of a new score to Murnau's film composed by Stephan v. Bothmer and performed live in a numbere of places this year, cf. the video below.




Finally, I should mention that the similarities between Hammershøi's paintings and those of other European artists which is a fundamental premise of the current exhibition has been criticised in Danish media, including another feature that may interest some of this blog's readers: A handful of paintings of empty rooms by Hammershøi and De Deuren (The Doors) by Xavier Mellery. Mellery's painting, apparently, is understood in term of Freud's Das Unheimliche, which in this context is translated not as usually: The Uncanny, but more literally as The Non-homely:

'The German word unheimlich is obviously the opposite of heimlich, heimisch, meaning “familiar,” “native,” “belonging to the home”; and we are tempted to conclude thatwhat is “uncanny” is frightening precisely because it is not known and familiar.' (In the original: 'Das deutsche Wort »unheimlich« ist offenbar der Gegensatz zu heimlich, heimisch, vertraut und der Schluß liegt nahe, es sei etwas eben darum schreckhaft, weil es nicht bekannt und vertraut ist'). Cf. e.g. this talk on youtube.

Jaw bones and carousing

I picked up the current issue (no 1 from 2012) of the Danish popular history magazine, Illustreret Videnskab Historie, because it contains an article on Danish funerary customs from the 16th to the 18th century. Like many similar magazines, this one tries to cater for readers seeking the unusual, sensational, and macabre.

One news story concerns an Italian archaeological find last autumn. In September 2011, the Daily Mail reported that during archaeological diggings in an ancient cemetery in Piombino in Tuscany, an 800 years old female skeleton was found with seven nails found driven through her jaw bone. Archaeologist Alfonso Forgione, from L'Aquila University, who led the dig said at the time:

'It's a very unusual discovery and at the same time fascinating. I have never seen anything like this before. I'm convinced because of the nails found in the jaw and around the skeleton the woman was a witch. She was buried in bare earth, not in a coffin and she had no shroud around her either, intriguingly other nails were hammered around her to pin down her clothes. This indicates to me that it was an attempt to make sure the woman even though she was dead did not rise from the dead and unnerve the locals who were no doubt convinced she was a witch with evil powers.'

As usual it is quite difficult to be certain what to make of the find, cf. my recent post on archaeological 'evidence' of vampire and revenant beliefs. News stories tend to be unreliable in these cases, so one should look out for what Forgione publishes on the matter.

An Italian actually plays a role in the aforementioned article on Danish funerary practices. This Italian visited Denmark in the 1620's and noted that when someone dies, the Danes do not grieve, they laugh, eat, drink and dance around the corpse. Apparently, when Denmark adopted the Lutheran faith, funerary practices changed, and people bid the deceased farewell by gathering socially for days. At times, they even gathered before the dying person had actually deceased.

When he or she had in fact died, the church bells chime to scare evil forces away. While the bells were chiming, the relations of the deceased notified the animals belonging to the deceased person of his or her death, so they would not accompany the deceased in death. News of the death were whispered into the ears of every animal, even the bees were informed as people gently knocked on the beehive.

Then the corpse was washed, dressed properly and put in a coffin. The feet, however, were kept without shoes to avoid the deceased from walking about, and as an extra precaution, the feet were tied together.

Over the next days, relatives and neighbours stopped by to participate in the wake. People sang, ate, played cards, drank beer and brandy, and danced until early morning.

In 1607, King Christian IV tried to prohibit the partying, but without success. A century later, pietist priests finally suppressed the carousing, promoting a more puritanical approach to death, so by the end of the 18th century all the partying was over. Nowadays, Danes usually participate in a service in a church or chapel followed by a sombre and relatively sober gathering, although named after the beer that is customarily imbibed: gravøl = grav (grave) + øl (beer).

The Danish history magazine is published by Bonnier Publications, and national versions are also published in the other Scandinavian countries, in Estonia, Latvia and in the Netherlands.

Interviews

That not everyone with an interest in the subject of vampires is enthusiastic about the Twilight phenomenon, is a fact clearly stated by Mark Benecke in a recent interview about the 'vampire subculture', where he remarks that: 'Die Leute, die denken sie wären Vampire, die haben «Twilight» nicht gesehen.', The people who think they are vampires haven't seen Twilight.

Personally, I did work my way through the first film, but must admit that I had to press fast forward to get through the next two. But then, I doubt that I belong to the target audience of those books and films...

Well-known vampire expert, Peter Mario Kreuter is being interviewed by Anthony Hogg on his Vampirologist blog. In the first installment Kreuter tells how he first got interested in vampires, a road that curiously begins with an interest in this blogger's native country, Denmark: 'Danish history fascinates me...'

Apropos of Kreuter, he contributed a paper to a book on Theophrastus Paracelsus that was published last year, Paracelsus im Kontext der Wissenschaften seiner Zeit: Kultur- und mentalitätsgeschichtliche Annäherungen. The paper (Paracelsus und die deutsche Sprache. Nebst Anmerkungen zur deutsch-lateinischen Mischsprache temporibus Theophrasti et Lutheri) concerns the language of Paracelsus, which is apparently usually critized, but Kreuter has another view on the matter.

A stone's throw away

Living next door to a cemetery, earlier today I noticed a grave where the family had placed various sorts of food and drink: Fruits, biscuits etc. as you can see in the photo above. Out of respect I am not disclosing the identiy of the buried person, but the gravestone carries an Oriental name so this is obviously a tradition from those parts, like e.g. the Chinese Qingming festival which, however, I think took place earlier this month:

'The Qingming Festival is an opportunity for celebrants to remember and honour their ancestors at grave sites. Young and old pray before the ancestors, sweep the tombs and offer food, tea, wine, chopsticks, joss paper accessories, and/or libations to the ancestors. The rites have a long tradition in Asia, especially among farmers. Some people carry willow branches with them on Qingming, or put willow branches on their gates and/or front doors. They believe that willow branches help ward off the evil spirit that wanders on Qingming.'

'Vampire epidemic'

As shown in an old post on the Visum et Repertum, a copy was sent from Vienna to the Danish government early in 1732. This document and others documenting supernatural beliefs in the archives in Copenhagen are briefly described in this 'web exhibition'. The exhibition is, unfortunately, only in Danish.

Happy New Year

I would like to wish everyone a happy new year!

It is as usual an appropriate time to look back on the previous year and also a bit forward to what is coming up in the future.

For me the conference on vampirism and magia posthuma in Vienna certainly was the highlight. Made possible by Christoph Augustynowicz and Ursula Reber this was an exceptional possibility to meet others interested in the field and learn what they are working on. If you are able to read German, you should make sure to read the papers in the growing digital anthology at Kakanien Revisited!

2009 also saw the popular interest in fictional vampires in constant growth, in particular because of the incredible popularity of Twilight. Unfortunately, this does not reflect in an increasing interest in the aspects of the subject that I have written about here on the blog or that were dealt with at the conference in Vienna.

Abebooks even included vampire books in their list of top sellers in 2009, a first edition of Dracula going for $3.000, while a signed first edition of Twilight was sold for $2.000!

With young people in my own country reading several novels about vampires it has been annoying me that so little is available on the internet on the historical vampire in my native language, so over Christmas I have put together sort of a Danish sister web site to this blog, magiaposthuma.dk, that presents a bit of information on vampire cases, debates etc. from the 16th century and onwards. I am not entirely satisfied with the way it is presented, so I will probably do a bit more work on it.

I know that there are a few other projects that people are working on, but I am unfortunately not able to provide any definite information at the moment. As usual, I will of course post more here, when I know more :-)

Haralde ou Hrappe

Rob Brautigam has recently added quite a number of new cases to his Shroudeater web site, one of them listed as coming from my native country, Denmark. He is referring to a paragraph in the second volume of Augustin Calmet's Dissertation, which is shown above, the story of 'Haralde ou Hrappe, Danois'. Here in the English translation of Henry Christmas:

'Haralde, or Harappe, a Dane, who caused himself to be buried at the entrance of his kitchen, appeared after his death, and was wounded by one Olaüs Pa, who left the iron of his lance in the wound.'

Calmet refers to this story because he discusses the nature of the apparition or revenant: 'This Dane, then, appeared bodily. Was it his soul which moved the body, or a demon which made use of this corpse to disturb and frighten the living? Did he do this by his own strength, or by the permission of God? And what glory to God, what advantage to men, could accrue from these apparitions? Shall we deny all these facts, related in so circumstantial a manner by enlightened authors, who have no interest in deceiving us, nor any wish to do so?'

Calmet does not mention the source of the story of Hrappe, but it can be found in one of the Icelandic Sagas: Laxdæla Saga. Written in the 13th century, the Saga covers the story of seven generations of settlers in the Laxdæla region of Iceland from the 9th to the early 11th century, Hrappe or Hrapp being introduced in chapter X:

'Hrapp was the name of a man who lived in Salmon-river-Dale, on the north bank of the river on the opposite side to Hoskuldstead, at the place that was called later on Hrappstead, where there is now waste land. Hrapp was the son of Sumarlid, and was called Fight-Hrapp. He was Scotch on his father's side, and his mother's kin came from Sodor, where he was brought up. He was a very big, strong man, and one not willing to give in even in face of some odds; and for the reason that he was most overbearing, and would never make good what he had misdone, he had had to fly from West-over-the-sea, and had bought the land on which he afterwards lived. His wife was named Vigdis, and was Hallstein's daughter; and their son was named Sumarlid.'

The death and return of Hrapp is dealt with in the Saga's chapter XVII:

'It is said of Hrapp that be became most violent in his behaviour, and did his neighbours such harm that they could hardly hold their own against him ... but his power waned, in that old age was fast coming upon him, so that he had to lie in bed. Hrapp called his wife Vigdis to him and said, "I have never been of ailing health in my life, and it is therefore most likely that this illness will put an end to our life together. Now, when I am dead, I wish my grave to be dug in the doorway of my fire hall, and I want to be placed in it, standing there in the doorway. In that way I shall be able to keep a more searching eye on my dwelling."

After that Hrapp died, and all was done as he said, for Vigdis did dnot dare do otherwise. And evil as he had been to deal with in his lifetime, he was even more so when he was dead, for he walked again a great deal after his death. People say he killed most of his servants in his ghostly appearances. He caused a great deal of trouble to those who lived near, and the house of Hrappstead became deserted, since Vigdis, Hrapp's wife, had taken herself west to her brother's house and settled there with all her goods. Things went on like this, until men went to find Hoskuld and told him all the things Hrapp was doing to them, and asked him to do something to put and end to this. Hoskuld said something should be done, and he went with some men to Hrappstead, and had Hrapp dug up, and taken away to a place where cattle were unlikely to roam and men unlikely to venture. After that Hrapp's walking-about abated somewhat...'

The ghost of Hrapp returns in chapter XXIV where he is confronted by Olaf the Peacock whom we are introduced to in chapter XVI. This is the character Calmet calls Olaüs Pa, 'Pa' being the nickname 'peacock':

'One evening the man who looked after the dry cattle came to Olaf and asked him to make some other man look after the neat and "set apart for me some other work."

Olaf answered, "I wish you to go on with this same work of yours."

The man said he would sooner go away. "Then you think there is something wrong," said Olaf. "I will go this evening with you when you do up the cattle, and if I think there is any excuse for you in this I will say nothing about it, but otherwise you will find that your lot will take some turn for the worse."

Olaf took his gold-set spear, the king's gift, in his hand, and left home, and with him the house-carle. There was some snow on the ground. They came to the fold, which was open, and Olaf bade the house-carle go in. "I will drive up the cattle and you tie them up as they come in."

The house-carle went to the fold-door. And all unawares Olaf finds him leaping into his open arms. Olaf asked why he went on so terrified?

He replied, "Hrapp stands in the doorway of the fold, and felt after me, but I have had my fill of wrestling with him."

Olaf went to the fold-door and struck at him with his spear. Hrapp took the socket of the spear in both hands and wrenched it aside, so that forthwith the spear shaft broke. Olaf was about to run at Hrapp but he disappeared there where he stood, and there they parted, Olaf having the shaft and Hrapp the spearhead. After that Olaf and the house-carle tied up the cattle and went home. Olaf saw the house-carle was not to blame for his grumbling. The next morning Olaf went to where Hrapp was buried and had him dug up. Hrapp was found undecayed, and there Olaf also found his spearhead. After that he had a pyre made and had Hrapp burnt on it, and his ashes were flung out to sea. After that no one had any more trouble with Hrapp's ghost.'

Although Iceland was once under Danish rule (and many people in Iceland still speak and read Danish), I think it is a bit misleading to talk of Hrapp as a Dane.

A ghost

Inspired by the brothers Grimm, Danish author and art historian Just Mathias Thiele (1795-1894) collected and published all sorts of tales, including some about ghosts, werewolves, and mares. Here is an example in my translation:

There lived a wealthy man in Ebeltoft by that alleyway which leads to the beach. He had commerce with prohibited goods, but he behaved himself so cleverly that no one noticed while he was still alive. But when he had died, he got his punishment; for every night he was seen walking from his house to the beach dressed in a tunic with many silver buttons. At long last a priest was called for, who laid him in the meadow and drove a stake in the earth at the place where he had been laid. This stake still stands there, and when one rocks it at winter, he is clearly heard saying: “Tug up! Tug up!”

St. John's Eve

Yesterday I carried some branches from our garden for a bonfire in a local park. It was set on fire earlier this evening to celebrate St. John's Eve or in Danish: 'Sankt Hans aften'. The tradition of midsummer bonfires is known in many countries, see e.g. Wikipedia's entry on Midsummer, but I think the Danish tradition has its own peculiarities as described here.On the one hand I find it interesting that our past is not so remote that we haven't forgotten midsummer bonfires and witches. On the other I find it really hard to sympathise with the idea of people of the 21st century burning a figure resembling a human being. It may be tradition, but I find it hard to understand why another generation teaches its children to burn witches, even though it is only in effigie.

But I like the bonfire itself!

A Winged Kiss

Everyone familiar with both non-fictional and fictional books on vampires will probably have seen a few of Max Ernst'st striking and surreal collages from Une Semaine de Bonté of persons with bat wings, in particular the one shown below.

Recently, an exhibition of Ernst's works opened at an art museum here in Denmark. I look forward to going there, and perhaps also seeing some of those famous collages exhibited, who knows. The exhibition earlier on was shown in Stockholm, Sweden. Those of us living in the area now have an opportunity to see a unique retrospective of the various phases of Ernst's work, Dream and Revolution.

Actually, just last year another artist whose works sometimes is used to illustrate vampire and horror books was exhibited here in Denmark, Felicien Rops.

'Zu vielen Schriften'

In my last post I mentioned my search for the 'ultimate' book on the subject of vampires, 'the vampire book to end all vampire books'. Curiously, as early as the 1730'ies people were complaining about the literature on the subject. E.g. in 1739 in his Bibliotheca, sive, Acta et scripta magica, Eberhard David Hauber (1695-1765), complains that too much had been written on 'the so-called vampires or bloodsuckers', and that most of it had turned out very badly:

Die nunmehro sattsam bekannte Historie von den so genannten Vampyren oder Blut-Saugern, welche sich vor einige Zeit in Ungarn wieder hervor gethan, hat bisher zu vielen Schriften Gelegenheit gegeben, die aber meistens sehr schlecht geraten sind.

He discusses three of the books published in Leipzig in 1732, two of which he thoroughly ridicules (Putoneus: Besonderes Nachricht von denen Vampyren and the anonymous Actenmäßige und umständliche Relation von denen Vampiren), and one that he praises (Eines Weimarischen Medicus muthmaßliche Gedankcen von denen Vampyren).

A few years after completing his Bibliotheca, Hauber was summoned by the Danish king to become priest at the St. Petri church, the church of the German congregation in Copenhagen. He stayed there for the rest of his life. Part of his book collection is now in the possession of the Danish Royal Library, where I recently read the few pages of the book devoted to vampires.

The secret capital of vampire theory

Ohne daß ein einziger Vampirtraktat dasselbst veröffentlicht würde - sieht man von W.S.G.E. ab, hinter dem Ranfft spontan einen »Hallischen Medicus« vermutet - wird Halle die heimliche Haupstadt der Vampirtheorie, und drei der unterschiedlichsten Lehrmeinungen zum Vampirismus verpflichten sich Hallenser Professoren. (s. 26)

Thus from the point of view of Klaus Hamberger in Mortuus non mordet: Although not one single vampire treatise was published there - disregarding W.S.G.E., who Ranft spontaneously assumes to be a »Medicus from Halle« - Halle became the secret capital of vampire theory, and Professors from Halle engaged themselves in three very different views on vampirism.

These three views were, again according to Hamberger:

1) The "cartesian" view represented by Friedrich Hoffmann (1660-1742) and Christian Wolff (1679-1754)

2) The "neoaristotelian" view represented by Georg Ernst Stahl (1659-1734)

3) The "neoplatonic" view represented by Christian Thomasius (1655-1728)
Arriving at the main railway station in Halle, just a little over half an hour by train from Leipzig, on the way to the center one is greeted by the names of all the above mentioned prominent scholars of the University at Halle, founded by Thomasius in 1694. Other names and faces include the famous August Hermann Francke (1663-1727) who was a pietist founder, and various other famous people related to Halle like Johann Friedrich Struensee (1737-1772), who became a powerful minister in Denmark carrying out enlightened and progressive reforms before his downfall and execution by beheading.

Halle certainly is very different from the apparently more affluent Leipzig with its building sites and many shopping arcades. According to a television programme on the German mdr station that was shown while I stayed in Leipzig, Leipzig is the second most popular city for tourists in middle Germany (Dresden being the one visited by most tourists). Halle probably doesn't get the number of tourists it deserves, but of course that may change. It seems more quiet and provincial than Leipzig, but still it's the home of a university, and here you can see the actual death mask of Martin Luther himself along with a pulpit he used.

Halle also is the home of a remarkable cemetery, the Stadtsgottesacker. Most graves are from the 19th century, but you can also find older graves like those of the above mentioned Francke, Thomasius and Hoffmann.

I may have overlooked older buildings, but the university buildings I saw were from the 19th century, so I didn't get to see any buildings that were used by the scholars of the 'secret capital of vampire theory'. But Halle is definitely worth a visit, if you happen to be in the area.

More about some of the above mentioned scholars will follow in future posts.

Exlibris

It's not very often, but occasionally second hand books contain an exlibris. Sometimes these miniature pieces of art indicate that the book has been the property of a collector of books that are related to the topic of magia posthuma. One case is the exlibris shown, which is located in a 1937 edition of A Popular History of Witchcraft by Montague Summers. "I H" was a Danish lawyer called Ivar Heiberg (1930-1980). He is said to have owned the finest collection of ghost stories in Denmark. I had the luck of buying a few of his books when they were up for sale in a rather obscure second hand book shop in Copenhagen, including this book by Summers.

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!

Found and seen

Behind these doors the reading room of the Danish Rigsarkiv is located, an archive where one can find e.g. documents relating to diplomatic and government affairs going back centuries. I was there earlier today, spending a few hours looking for, finding and perusing a couple of 18th Century documents referring to vampires, or either Wampyres or Vampyres to use the two ways of spelling the word that I encountered in the documents. Well, I found nothing fundamentally new, but the documents do add some extra facets to the history of vampires.

A stone's throw away

I don't live near places that are known from the history of magia posthuma, but close to my home in the Danish town Køge you can find this plaque on a house just round the corner from the town square. The plaque commemorates the house where one of the most famous Danish witchcraft cases occurred, and as you can see, this year it's exactly 400 years since it began.

The Devil himself was claimed to have been at large in the house, and a certain Johanne Thommeses was accused of having invoked him. Strange sounds were heard in the house, and the Devil was claimed to have been seen several times in different guises over the years in that haunted house. At court, Johanne Thommeses confessed to being a sorceress and accused other women of the same crime. All in all 12 women, including Johanne Thommeses herself, were condemned to be burned at the stake over the next few years as a consequence of the hauntings which occurred more or at less a stone's throw away from my home.

The plaque was placed on the house in 1911.

Modern day superstition

According to a poll published today in a Danish newspaper, 21 % of Danish women and 15 % of Danish men believe in ghosts and spirits. Only 36 % of Danish women say they don't believe in ghosts, because 43 % say they don't know! For Danish men the same figures are 54 % and 31 % respectively.

I find it hard to believe that Danes in general are very concerned with supernatural entities like ghosts, but on the other hand it seems that many Danes, although living in a highly secular society, do not rule out the potential existence of such phenomena!

Obsolescit nempe vivus omnis inter mortuos

Quid stupetis, qui relictum me colore cernitis?
Obsolescit nempe vivus omnis inter mortuos.

The words of Asmundus (Asmund), when he returns from the grave of Asuithus (Asvith) in the Gesta Danorum (Deeds of the Danes), here in an English translation from 1884:

Why do you stand aghast, you who see me colourless?
For every living man fades once he is among the dead.

The tale of Asmund and Asvith is often recounted in books about vampires. Here the original Latin text can be found. The illustration below of Asmund being drawn out of Asvith's grave is one of many drawings by Louis Moe that accompanied a popular Danish translation of Saxo's chronicle originally published in 1898.

Wikipedia

I have found a lot of useful information on the various Wikipedia web sites, particularly the German, but some of the entries on the subject of vampires are quite a mixture of fact and fiction. That certainly has been the case of the Danish language entry, so a friend of mine has continually been asking me to do something about it. Finally, this christmas I gave in and have revised it somewhat. It's still far from satisfactory, but at least it's more precise and the worst nonsense has been removed. Someone has even kindly added a link to this blog...

I also added quite a few books to the bibliography, but as I noted in a recent comment, a lot of these books are not easily accessible in my native country. Even the old books by Montague Summers are only available in a handful of copies at Danish libraries. This might be a good thing, if only some of the best other books were available. The good news is that Paul Barber's Vampires, Burial, and Death is actually available at a few libraries, but otherwise it will require some effort (and probably some money) to get hold of the most useful books.