Austrian Books Online

Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, the Austrian National Library, now cooperates with Google Books in a joint venture called Austrian Books Online aiming at making the library's collection available online in digital format. 600.000 books are planned to be included in the online collection, and so far 100.000 are online.

Among the books is the Kronyka Czeska by Waclaw Hajekz Libocan aka Hagecius, one of the sources for two well-known tales concerning revenants: the shepherd from Blov and the 'witch' from Levin. Both were originally published in the Kronika Neplachov, but Hajekz embellished them in his chronicle. For more information about those revenant or vampire 'cases', follow the above links.

De statu quodam peculiari mortuorum

I just came across another book online worth adding to the list of selected works on the right hand of this blog: The 1732 edition of Commericum litterarium ad rei medicae scientiae naturalis published in Nuremberg, which contains the most comprehensive contemporary debate on the Serbian (or Hungarian, if you will) vampires. I referred to the journal and debate in an early blog post on Joh. Frid. Glaser's tale of horror, calling this initial report on the vampires of Medvedja 'a piece of cultural history'.

So now it is no longer necessary to go to some library to follow the journal's accumulation of information about vampires, the speculations and the reviews of books on the subject, it is right here available on Google Books - in Latin, of course, but worth a look anyway. In fact, you might start with the recensio synoptica at the beginning of the book because it contains a lengthy survey of the debate with references to where you can find various contributions. Readers of Hamberger's Mortuus non mordet will recognize the names of contributors like Geelhausen and Segner.

It is also interesting to see the context of this debate. The issue that contains Glaser's letter, from week 11 ('hebdomas undecima') begins with mentioning and commenting on what has been received by mail:  A new medical book: Lexicon medicum universale, Glaser's letter and a short notice on a medical case. Then you find reviews of two medical books, a list of causes of death in Nuremberg during February of that year, and finally a table of meteorological observations in Nuremberg during that same month.

I can recall when I, a few years back, sat in a reading room with this journal from 1732 and 1733, and noted how remarkably much is actually written on the subject of vampires in 1732, and then all of a sudden within less than a year of the publishing of Glaser's letter, the debate stops. Of course, as we know, Calmet and others resurrected the vampire as a learned subject, and corpses were still staked and burned in certain regions of Europe. But the original and fervent debate of 1732 died out relatively fast.

Pleasantly surprised

Thanks to kgroetsch, I am pleasantly surprised to find this online!

Google books at its worst

Apropos of Google Books, this example is really one of the weirdest examples I have seen on Google Books. In fact, the above clip looks almost psychedelic :-)

Unfortunately, as a scan it is absolutely useless, so this is not the way to gain access to Johann Christoph Pohl's 1732 Diss. de hominibus post mortem sanguisugis, vulgo sic dictis Vampyren. By the way, you can find a couple of old posts referring to this book.

I have removed the illustration because of an update to this Google Book, see the comment to this post.

Ranft in colour

I was delighted to find the above colour scan of the second edition of Ranft's work on vampires, De masticatione mortuorum (1728), on Google Books. I have now added it to my list of noteworthy books in the right hand column (but have kept the link to the other online scan of the book, who knows, it might come in handy some day). I have also added a link to the first edition from 1725, which is now also on Google Books. So now it is possible to do some armchair research into the development of this essential work in the vampire canon.

I might add that a couple of years ago I stumbled upon another, much shorter text (in Latin) by Ranft concerning vampires, but I am saving that for a special occasion. I have not seen it mentioned anywhere yet, and I do not know of an online edition.

Van Swieten's Vampyrismus (almost) on line

The Italian translation of Gerard van Swieten's notes on vampires have recently been made available on books.google.com. Unfortunately, access to the book is restricted, which means that you can search in the text but only view it in 'snippet view'. As yet there is no easy way to buy access to the text, so you have to find a copy that you can buy, if you need to study the text.

The 18th century German translation is unfortunately only available from the few libraries that own a copy of the original book which contains van Swieten's text as an appendix.

For the benefit of those unfamiliar with it, below I present a scan of the front page of the 1768 German translation. In fact, wealthy people can currently obtain a copy of the original book, Andreas Ulrich Mayer's Abhandlung des Daseyns der Gespenster nebst einem Anhange vom Vampirismus for the sum of € 1.250,00 at the Italian antiquarian book seller Libriantichi.it!