Harenberg: Vampire icon

It is highly unlikely that Johann Christoph Harenberg imagined that, 280 years after he originally wrote it, the title page of one his books would be sold as a poster in Italy. That, however, is what happened at the Dracula e il mito dei vampiri exhibition in Milan, and the book was, of course, Harenberg's Vernünftige und Christliche Gedancken über die Vampirs oder Bluhtsaugende Todten, published in Wolffenbüttel in 1733.

Source: Europeana

Harenberg was born on April 28 1696 in the village Langenholzen close to Alfeld in present day Lower Saxony. His parents were farmers and traders of cloth. Having given birth to four daughters, his mother prayed to God that, if God would grant her a son, she would devote him to the service of God. Besides, the young Johann Christoph was a delicate child, so he was allowed to devote his energy on learning to read, write and calculate in German as well as in Latin. At eight years of age he was sent to school in Alfeld, and at thirteen he went to Hildesheim to continue his education in various subjects and languages.

As he was walking from Alfeld to Langenholzen one Saturday in the Spring of 1708, he saw a well-dressed, old man nearby whom he recognized as a man he knew. Harenberg approached him, but he suddenly noticed that the man was transparent, and the closer he got to the man, the more transparent he became. Terrified, Harenberg retreated to his village, where he next day learned that the old man had died from consumption at about the time that he had seen the vision. This was only Harenberg's first of three encounters with apparitions in connection with the death of locals.

In 1715, at the age of nineteen he went to the University in Helmstedt to study the sciences as well as further languages. In 1719 he visited the universities in Jena and Halle, and the following year he was asked by the abbess and duchess of Gandersheim, Elisabeth Ernestine Antonie von Sachsen-Meiningen, to become headmaster of school belonging to the diocese. Besides teaching, he researched not only the Holy Writ, but also the history of the diocese. Several of his theological articles were published in the so-called Bremische Sammlungen published by Theodor Hase.

Merian's view of Gandersheim from Wikimedia

1734 was marked by ups and downs for Harenberg. He finished his voluminous history of the Gandersheim diocese, but fell into disgrace with the abbess and, although he accepted to become a parson at Bornhausen, he was finally appointed chief caretaker of the schools in the duchy of Wolfenbüttel. While there, he was in 1738 appointed a member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin. Incidentally, in 1732 this academy had been asked to write a memorandum on the Serbian vampires.

In 1745 Harenberg became Honorary Professor at the newly established Carolina collegium in Braunschweig and dean of the St. Lorenz convent in Schöningen. He died in Braunschweig on November 12 1774.

Göttingische Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen November 26 1774, p. 1224
(He must have been 78 years of age, not 74).

Harenberg's multiple writings were mostly concerned with historical and theological topics, and particularly include a two volume book on the history of the Jesuit Order published in 1760. He was, however, also interested in other matters, like the fossil encrinus that was relatively common in Lower Saxony and also became the subject of one his shorter writings. In fact, at his death he left behind a large collection of these fossils, cf. Journal für die Liebhaber des Steinreichs und Konchyliologie Vol. II, pp. 524-7 (Weimar, 1775).

It was while he was Headmaster in Gandersheim that he wrote his book on vampires on the request of a high-ranking individual, no doubt the abbess herself. It must have been aimed at a wider audience, as it was not written in Latin like most of his other writings at the time, but in German. Postponing the publication in the hope that more examples would be published, he finished it on September 24 1732, and was consequently able to comment on a number of books on the subject that were published in the first half of that year. He also drew on his own experiences, including the above mentioned vision from his youth.

In Harenberg's view, the Serbs who claimed to be victims of vampires, probably suffered from angina (pectoris) that was caused by a) eating contaminated animal flesh, b) visiting other ill persons, and c) coming into contact with contaminated corpses. The illness then caused the blood to thicken, and as the blood began to stand still in the small vessels in the head, depression set in and the imagination malfunctioned. As the beliefs in harmful revenants were so impressed upon their imagination, the ill and their relations explained the illness, the chest pains and suffocation in terms of such vampires.

Ranft on Harenberg

Harenberg not only commented on a variety of theories that had been proposed since the publication of the Visum et Repertum, but also on subjects like werewolves. His etymology of the word 'vampire' was ridiculed by Michael Ranft in the third edition of his dissertation on the mastication of the dead. Ranft in fact ridiculed Harenberg and his efforts in general, leading to some controversy, when a review of both Harenberg's and Ranft's books were published in the supplements to the Leipzig Nova acta eruditorum, an anonymous review that was actually written by Harenberg himself. Obviously, Ranft felt obliged to vindicate himself, as years later, in 1742, he published a comment on the whole episode.

An in-depth study of Harenberg's book can be found in Anja Lauper's paper published in Begemann, Herrmann and Neumeyer's Dracula unbound: Kulturwissenschaftliche Lektüren des Vampirs (2008) and her subsequent book Die "phantastische Seuche": Episoden des Vampirismus im 18. Jahrhundert (2011).

Although it is, of course, his book and its subject that could be considered a 'vampire icon', one might still imagine a film inspired by Harenberg: His visions of the recently deceased and his considerations on the vampires could be intertwined and combined with machinations at the various courts and universities, perhaps even including some creative use of the controversy with Ranft, so that Hollywood could come up with stories of his own feverish experiences with bloodsuckers...

Geschichte Jetztlebender Gelehrten Vol. V (Zelle, 1732), pp. 94-144

A terrible incident ...

The fourth annual edition of Austria, an Austrian universal calendar or almanac for the year 1843, contains a wealth of information for erudition and entertainment, including a short article on vampires by one J. P. Kaltenbaeck. The main part of this short article reproduces the text of a leaflet from 1725 entitled Entsetzliche Begebenheit, welche sich in dem Dorff Kisolova, ohnweit Belgrad in der Ober-Ungarn, von einigen Tagen zugetragen, published without a place of printing.

The text itself is not identical with, but overall very close to the version of Frombald's report from Kisiljevo reprinted in the Wienerisches Diarium on July 21 1725. As the Diarium was closely connected to the Viennese court, one would suppose that the report was first published in the Diarium and then made available as a flyer or leaflet, even though the title of the flyer claims that the incident happened only days before the printing.

Copies of such flyers are usually pretty scarce, as Kaltenbaech himself also notes: 'Der folgende Bericht ist einem fliegenden Blatte entnommen, das wohl jetzt zu den Seltenheiten gehören dürfte.' Personally, I cannot recall seeing any more recent writer dealing it with more than its title - until I was recently contacted by a reader of this blog, who kindly told me of an item that a Scottish dealer of antiquarian books had for sale a couple of years ago:

Kayserl Provisor in Gradicker District.: Entsetzliche Begebenheit, welche sich in dem Dorff Kisolova ohnweit Belgard in Ober-Ungarn vor einigen Tagen zugertragen. 1725. n.p., n.d. single sheet folded , pp.4, 20 x 16 cms., Gothic type , sl. worn at edges and with a few small marginal tears not affecting text, light age staining. Not noted in Caillet and not traced in any major search engine. Concerns the celebrated case of Peter Plogojowitz, an alleged vampire. See Paul Barber : Vampires, Burial, and Death. pp.5-9

And the price? £350.

I contacted the dealer who informed me that it had been bought by another dealer, and he was unable to tell me anything about its whereabouts. So either that other dealer has sold it on, probably at a price substantially higher than £350, or it awaits a buyer somewhere willing to part with a nice sum.

Apart from the leaflet, Frombald's report appears to have attracted only limited interest. It was reprinted in  the so-called Breslauische Sammlungen under the title 'Abentheuerliche Begebenheit mit einem vermeyntlich wieder gekommenen Todten' where it is noted that it is taken from the public gazettes in Holstein: 'in den öffentlichen Holsteinischen Gazetten', but no one seems to have identified these periodicals or perhaps flyers. Apart from discussing the substance of the report itself, Michael Ranft's De masticatione mortuorum in tumulis is dealt with. Ranft himself was himself inspired by the report from Kisiljevo to write his dissertation, as he read of it in a Leipzig journal, cf. e.g. Aribert Schroeder's Vampirismus from 1973.

We had thought that vampires were extinct

’… One of the most curious legacies ever bequeathed to anybody is perhaps that of £1000 left by the late Mrs Olivia Flint, of Pittsburg, to her doctor: Mrs Flint was very fond of novel reading, and, although very ill, began to read Bram Stoker’s thrilling romance, ”Dracula.” So interested did the dying woman become in it, that when she had read a chapter or two, she turned to her nurse, and, asking for pen and ink, wrote a few words to the effect that if Dr Allardyce could keep her alive long enough for her to finish the tale he was to receive a legacy of £1000. Mrs Flint lived for several hours after the last words had been read.’

This, an excerpt from the Marlborough Express Nov 2 1909, is one of the more curious examples of the early reception of Bram Stoker’s Dracula that have now been collected in a slim volume, Bram Stoker’s Dracula: The Critical Feast. An annotated reference of early reviews and reactions, 1897-1913, compiled and annotated, with an introduction, by John Edgar Browning (Apocryphile Press, 179 pages, $18.95).

Aiming at both dispelling the misconception that Dracula received a mixing critical reception and providing literary scholars and the public with the documentation, Browning compiles 91 examples of reviews and letters, along with book covers and ads, from the English languaged part of the world where most of the initial editions were published. Only two translations appeared in Stoker’s lifetime, and a ‘bibliographical afterword’ by J. Gordon Melton presents of a list of non-English editions of Dracula.

The tale of a ‘human vampire’, as many reviewers call Count Dracula, is generally favourably received, and apparently made the blood of many critics curl. ‘We had thought that vampires were extinct,’ notes the Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art, ‘but Mr. Bram Stoker has set himself to prove to us the contrary. Or rather he has recreated them with considerable ingenuity and a distinct gift for story-writing of the blood-curdling order.’ ‘There are a hundred nightmares in “Dracula,” and each is more uncanny than the last,’ writes St. James’ Gazette, while a reviewer in The Daily Mail is reminded of the author of a number of gothic novels: ‘It is said of Mrs. Radcliffe that, when writing her now almost forgotten romances, she shut herself up in absolute seclusion, and fed upon raw beef, in order to give her work the desired atmosphere of gloom, tragedy and terror. If one had no assurance to the contrary, one might well suppose that a similar method and regimen had been adopted by Mr. Bram Stoker while writing his new novel Dracula.’

Some critics found that the transition of the vampire from the more gothic Transylvanian setting to contemporary London did not work so well.‘Vampires need a Transylvanian background to be convincing,’ wrote The Academy: A Weekly Review of Literature, Science, and Art, adding: ‘The witches in “Macbeth” would not be effective in Oxford-Street.’ Still, there was no doubt that Dracula’s castle is not a place to visit, in the words of The Glasgow Herald: ‘Henceforth we shall wreathe ourselves in garlic when opportunity offers, and firmly decline all invitations to visit out-of-the-way clients in castles in the South-East of Europe. Dracula is a first rate book of adventure.’

What will strike modern day readers as odd, is that some critics saw Dracula as a werewolf book. ‘Mr. Bram Stoker, in his remarkable novel “Dracula”, has gone to the old legends of the were-wolf for the inspiration of his story,’ writes The Speaker, calling the novel ‘the first introduction of the were-wolf to English soil.’ Similarly, The Daily Telegraph finds that Bram Stoker illustrates and modernises ‘a revival of a mediaeval superstition, the old legend of the “were-wolf”,’ and traces this ‘old legend’ and its literature more closely, as the critic asks: ‘What has Mr. Bram Stoker been reading?’

Indeed, what has Stoker been reading? Today, we tend to forget how small the existing ‘canon’ of vampire literature in the English language was when Stoker wrote the novel. In fact, the deluge of books on the subject only dates back to the 1960’s or 1970’s, and the 'classics' by Ernest Jones, Dudley Wright and Montague Summers were all published after Stoker’s death. So in the 1890’s, one might have found the translations of Dom Calmet, Herbert Mayo’s letters, and a bit here and there, including the Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould’s The Book of Werewolves, Being an Account of a Terrible Superstition from 1865, which is in fact mentioned by the reviewers of both The Daily Telegraph and The Stage, the latter apparently finding some pleasure in describing the horrors of the novel:

‘Those who know the Rev. S. Baring Gould’s little volume on the Were-Wolf, a theme also touched on here and there by Kipling, may possibly not be repelled by the grisly details of two beautiful and virtuous women having the veins in their throats sucked by the red lips, and lacerated by the gleaming white teeth of this centuries-old Transylvanian warrior and statesman, who often appears as a gaunt wolf and a huge bat.’

In his notes, Browning writes that the convention of seeing vampires transform into wolves ‘was to fin de siècle readers relatively unfamiliar – practically an innovation at the hands of Stoker.’ His other vampiric innovations are humourously commented on by Longman’s Magazine, when reviewing an inexpensive reissue in 1901: ‘The rules of vampirizing, as indicated by Mr. Stoker, are too numerous and too elaborate. One does not see why the leading vampire, Count Dracula, could not bolt out of the box where was finally run to earth by a solicitor named Jonathan. If he could fly about as a bat, why did he crawl down walls head foremost? The rules of the game of Vampire ought to be printed in appendix: at present the pastime is as difficult as Bridge.’ The reviewer then lays down eight chief rules like e.g. this sixth rule: ‘No vampire can vamp a person protected by garlic.’

Fortunately, an interview with Stoker himself was published in The British Weekly, allowing him to comment on both his sources and the vampire belief itself. Asked, ‘Is there any historical basis for the legend?’ he answers:

‘It rested, I imagine, on some such case as this. A person may have fallen into a death-like trance and been buried before the time. Afterwards the body may have been dug up and found alive, and from this a horror seized upon the people, and in their ignorance they imagined that a vampire was about. The more hysterical, through excess of fear, might themselves fall into trances in the same way; and so the story grew that one vampire might enslave many others and make them like himself. Even in the single villages it was believed that there might be many such creatures. When once the panic seized the population, their only thought was to escape.’

He apparently thought that the vampire belief was particularly prevalent in certain parts of Styria (where he originally set Dracula), and added, that ‘the legend is common to many countries, to China, Iceland, Germany, Saxony, Turkey, the Cersonese, Russia, Poland, Italy, France, and England, besides all the Tartar communities.’ Two sources are mentioned in the interview: Baring-Gould’s book and Emily Gerard’s Essays on Roumanian Superstitions.

Interestingly, not many reviewers go into detail regarding the subject of vampires. The National Observer, and British Review of Politics, Economics, Literature, Science, and Art, briefly mentions that ‘More awful even than the ghoul of the Arabian Nights is the Slavonic superstition of the human vampire, which, dead to all intent and purposes during the day, is supposed to prowl around by night and gorge itself with the blood of living man,’ adding that ‘this fearful legend, which flourished in Eastern Europe a century ago, and still finds credence among the ignorant.’ The Liverpool Mercury claims that it is ‘An old Eastern superstition, still having weight in Hungary.’

On the whole, the only reviewer to deal with ‘vampiredom’ in more detail is actually the one writing for the Australian Argus in 1897, who states that ‘Vampires – the “living dead,” whose corpses cannot decay, but who have the power of rising from their graves at night to batten upon the blood of human beings – are the Vroucolakas of the Greeks,' and then goes on to mention that 'They have been treated of by an old German writer, Michael Raufft (sic!), in his learned book “De Masticatione Mortuorum in Tumulis,” by the Frenchman Calmet, and by many another grave-faced sifter of mediæval superstitions,' before supplying more information about 'these unpleasant noctural prowlers.'

Upon Stoker’s death one hundred years ago on April 20 1912 , The Outlook found reason to note that ‘The lamented death of the author should direct fresh attention to the most imaginative creation of his pen. For weird force and picturesque horror Dracula deserves to rank with the classics of morbidity.’

For that reason, as well as for the novel's role in keeping ‘vampiredom’ alive and well in modern popular culture, the centenary of Stoker's death is good reason to read or re-acquaint oneself with the novel. For those interested in getting a better understanding of the literary reception of this, the single most important piece of vampire fiction, John Edgar Browning’s reference book is highly recommended.

Finally, a few words regarding the bibliography of translations: It is quite a daunting task to compile a complete and faultless bibliography of this task, and judging by the Scandinavian language editions mentioned, it is not a completely or a fully correct list. The Danish translations are all listed under the title ‘Drakula,’ but have actually all been titled Dracula, and I doubt that the list of adaptations is complete. The list of Swedish editions is, unfortunately, incomplete, and it is not correct that the first English translation of the preface to the Icelandic translation was published in 1993.

Sometime in the mid-Eighties, I was in contact with Richard Dalby, author of the first Stoker bibliography (published by the aptly named Dracula Press in 1983), and supplied him with information on the translation and copies of the preface. He subsequently had it translated and published by Guild Publishing in 1986 in a one-volume edition of both Dracula and The Lair of the White Worm, this also being the first time the latter novel was reprinted in its original length, as it had been absolutely butchered in all previous reprints.

The product of superstitious and false beliefs

What do we understand by superstition?

I suppose that we all have some kind of commonsensical idea of what ‘superstition’ means, when we use it on an everyday basis, but when you need to apply it to a specific historical context, you easily get into trouble. So when I took up the subject of vampires and posthumous magic some years ago, I quickly felt a pressing need to get some grasp of the term and its history. This, unfortunately, was not so easy, because the meaning of the term not only has changed over time and very much depends on a given context, but frequently there is ‘a certain elasticity about it’, as Keith Thomas pointed out in his Religion & The Decline of Magic (1971, p. 48-9). Similarly, in a more recent work, Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason, & Religion, 1250-1750 (2010), Euan Cameron calls superstition ‘an elusive and slippery term’ (p. 4) that is ‘a flexible designation, and can be aimed at a range of targets at different times and by different people.’ (p. 5)

'In the era of confessional orthodoxy from the late sixteenth century to the end of the seventeenth, the rhetoric that had traditionally condemned superstition and magic in the eyes of the devout became a crucial part of the intellectual armour used to prosecute sorcerers, magicians, and witches. Then, in the early Enlightenment, ‘superstition’ took centre stage in religious discussions to an even greater extent than before. ‘Superstition’ and ‘reason’ became the poles around which the religious and ethical theorists of the early Enlightenment debated the proper claims of religion on the human mind.' (p. 6)

Superstition and reason are also frequently seen as the poles in the vampire debate of the 1730’s. Stefan Hock did so in 1901, dividing the authors of vampire books into two groups: those explaining vampires in terms of demonic influences, and those seeking a rational and natural explanation. However, if you actually read the books and articles from the period, you find that the texts do not easily fit into such a simple scheme. Likewise, on a more general scale, Cameron stresses the complexity of the debates concerning superstition:

'The eighteenth century did not discard the heritage of previous centuries wholesale, whatever the statements of propagandists for the ‘Enlightenment’ might at times imply. Some ‘superstition-treatises’ emerged from the movement known as ‘baroque Catholicism’ that embodied a firm belief in the continuity of traditional metaphysics and traditional pastoral theology. In Protestant Europe, the seventeenth-century debate over the reality of spirits continued into the era of the Enlightenment with no clearly discernible winners or losers.’ (p. 286-7)

In a lengthy paper from 2010, “… da sie in den närrischen Wahn gestanden, daß es Vampyren gebe”. Dimensionen des Aberglaubenbegriffs und Strategien der Aberglaubenskritik in gelehrten Beiträgen zur Vampirdebatte der 1730er Jahre, Benjamin Durst notes that the view of a vampire debate between obscurantism and Enlightenment has survived well into our time and can be found even in modern works on the subject.

Durst points out that the dichotomy between mystical obscurantism and rational Enlightenment that many historians superimpose on the eighteenth century is rather a result of the Enlightenment process than a condition of the period itself. This dichotomy is a construct of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, not of the eighteenth, so Durst sets out to critically scrutinize the vampire debate in terms of the knowledge and views of its own time. Limiting himself to what he calls the first phase of the vampire debate: the debate during the 1730’s between authors whose native tongue is German, Durst divides the debate into three groups according to the arguments employed: 1) theological, 2) sympathetic (Aristotelian or Paracelsian), and 3) medical.

Their different points of view notwithstanding, all authors tend to agree that the Serbian vampire belief is superstitious. Frequently, they consider the superstitious Irrglaube and Altweibermärchen to be the surviving remains of pre-Christian, pagan beliefs. Harenberg in his Vernünftige und Christliche Gedancken über die Vampirs oder Bluhtsaugende Todten stresses the antiquity of the belief in harmful revenants, saying that it existed at the time of Moses and can be found in the works of Vergil and Homer. Michael Ranft writes of the poison of superstition from old times and thinks that it may still work in the hearts of Christians.

As the Serbians typically were Orthodox Christians, the authors participating in the debate, most of whom were Protestants, find that this Church plays a role in the vampire belief. Protestants were of the opinion that both the Catholic and Orthodox Church had introduced superstitiones superstructae, false and superstitious constructions on top of the pure Christian belief, in order to maintain and gain power and money. Polemical books about the Orthodox Church, such as Thomas Smith’s Epistola de Graecae Ecclesiae hodierno statu (1698) and Johann Michael Heineccii Eigentliche und wahrhafftige Abbildung der alten und neuen Griechischen Kirche (1711), were not only sources of contemporary views of this Church, but also contained information on the Greek popular beliefs in revenants like the Brucolaccas.

from Salomon Schweigger: Ein newe Reiss Beschreibung auss Teutschland nach Constantinopel (1639)

The participants in the debate were quick to equate the Serbian vampire belief with the Greek revenants, and generally link the Orthodox belief in the effects of excommunication with the Serbian vampire belief. They criticize the clergy for not eradicating the superstitious belief, but instead accepting or promoting it for their own purposes. Consequently Durst notes that the criticism of vampire superstitions turns into a critique of the Orthodox Church.

There were, of course, exceptions. Johann Conrad Dippel accepts the Orthodox belief in the preservation of holy people and of the excommunicated as the work of God, but refutes a connection between excommunication and vampire beliefs. The Catholic W.S.G.E. finds that the vampire belief is the product of the uneducated and superstitious Serbians’ reception of true Christian tenets. From a theological point of view, the more superstition and the less education there is in a place, the easier it is for the devil to carry out his schemes in that area.

The Serbians themselves are also the subject of various explanations. They are stereotypically considered barbarous and under the influence of opium which is thought to have influenced both the deaths of suspected vampires as well as the belief itself. Their moral deficits and lack of education make them susceptible to superstition or even demonic influence. Egidius Günther Hellmund in his book on divine judgment, Iudicia Dei Incognita, oder unerkannte Gerichte Gottes über Böße und Gute in der Welt (1737), goes so far as to consider the revenants as God’s punishment of a sinful and ungodly Serbian populace in need of repentance.

The authors, and not just those those writing from a medical perspective, find that there is a close connection between the superstitious belief and the disease that the supposed victims of vampires suffer from. In some cases an analogy between these is stated, blurring the division between disease and superstition.

The superstition leads to fear and fancy, perhaps even creating visions of nightly revenant visitations, making the villagers more prone to diseases. So itself a product of pagan doctrine, false religious beliefs and the inability of uneducated people to comprehend natural phenomena, the vampire belief is inseparable from the suffering – and ultimately the death - of the Serbian villagers.

Durst carefully describes the individual arguments behind these general views of the role of superstition in the Serbian vampire belief. He does, however, emphasize that more work on the subject will yield more facts and dimensions to our understanding of what superstition was according to the learned authors involved in the debate.

I plan to write about some other recent papers on the seventeenth and eighteenth century writings about vampires and related topics. For now, I will recommend a reading of Durst’s work which not only provides an interesting reading of the vampire debate, but also points to a handful of works that I don't recall seeing mentioned elsewhere.

Illustration in Leithäuser: Das neue Buch vom Aberglauben (1964)

An Uncertain Place: Highgate, Kisiljevo and Medvedja

Vampire history very infrequently turns up in fiction, and as I only sporadically inform myself about fictional vampires, and by the way have never been a fan of crime fiction, the vampiric connection in Un lieu incertain (An Uncertain Place) by Fred Vargas somehow slipped under my radar. Fortunately, a reader recently mentioned it, so I have picked up and read the 2008 novel in the Danish translation, Et uvist sted.

Definitely a page-turner, although I personally find that the gallery of more or less eccentric characters smacks a bit too much of a crime fiction cliché, this novel in the series about Commissaire Adamsberg takes him and his colleagues to Highgate Cemetery in London and to a small village on the Danube in Serbia, Kisiljevo, on the trail of a murderer who literally destroys his victims. The plot not only involves the infamous 'Highgate Vampire', but also the famous 18th century vampires Petar Blagojevic/Peter Plogojowitz from Kisiljevo and Arnold Paole from Medvedja, as well as their ancestors. What kind of sense this combination makes, if any, you should read the novel to learn, because I am not going to spoil the fun by giving it all away here.

Fred Vargas herself is actually a French historian and archaeologist called Frédérique Audoin-Rouzeau, who became a successful author of crime fiction in the mid 1990's. Some of the Adamsberg novels have been made into a TV series, Collection Fred Vargas, including Un lieu incertain as shown in the youtube video below. This episode, unfortunately, is not yet available on DVD.



'An example of modern legend-building,' according to English Wikipedia, the Highgate Vampire case, to the extent one can actually call it that, has taken on a life of its own, in particular on the internet. Because of the legend-building, perhaps even cult surround the subject, it is probably difficult to be certain what actually happened in 1969 and 1970 when a 'vampire hunt' purportedly took place in the famous cemetery.

Fred Vargas couples this incident with another legendary occurrence in the old part of the cemetery, the one initiated by poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rosetti when in 1869 he had the corpse of his late love, Elizabeth (Lizzie) Siddal (also visit this site devoted to her), dug up from its grave in Highgate Cemetery to obtatin the one and only copy of a book of poetry that he had left buried in her hair. Rossetti's operation is told in Felix Barker and John Gay's Highgate Cemetery: Victorian Valhalla (1984):

'Much secret preparation took place in which [Dante Gabriel Rossetti] enlisted the help of a young man called Howell who, as well as being Ruskin's secretary, had a talent for conspiracy. Through Howell, Rossetti obtained the Home Secretary's permission for an exhumation, and on a night early in October 1869 'the ghastly business', as Rossetti called it, was carried out. The deed was done by the light of lanterns and the warmth of a small bonfire watched by Howell, a solicitor and a Camberwell doctor. The receipted bill of two guineas for the workmen is still in existence. Rossetti could not bring himself to be present. Full of self-doubts he waited alone at Howell's house in Fulham.

When the coffin was opened, it was said that Lizzie's pale beauty remained unimpaired, and someone - it was probably Howell - carried back the message that her lovely hair had retained its colour and had grown in death. The vital manuscript, discovered to be intact, was eased gently from her face. After being disinfected and dried by the doctor, it was conveyed to Rossetti.'

The preservation of Lizzie, and particular the claim that her hair had grown in death, is of course reminiscent of the phenomena related to vampirism, the 'vampire state' reported about in the early 18th century from both Kisiljevo and Medvedja.

Imperial Provisor Frombald's 1725 report from Kisiljevo, which today is only known in a copy in the Viennese archives, is well-known from a contemporary newspaper, the Wienerisches Diarium, reprinted and translated in a number of journals and books, and the inspiration for the young Michael Ranft's first edition of his De masticatione mortuorum in tumulis from 1725, commenting on the similarly titled book by Philip Rohr published in 1679. Frombald's report is the oldest known use of the word vampire as spelled that way (the copy actually has: 'vanpiri').

The occurrences in Kisolova, i.e. Kisiljevo, concerning the vampire Peter Plogojowitz (probably Petar Blagojevic) are recounted in English on Wikipedia. In An Uncertain Place, the villagers in Kisiljevo are today familiar with the vampire story, and one can still locate the grave of Plogojowitz, but this is mere fiction, because Serbian media have been unable to locate any local information on this contender to the title of the world's first vampire.

In that respect Plogojowitz plays a central role in defining 'vampirism', so it is important to point out that the people who said there were haunted by Plogojowitz did not complain of bloodsucking but of being suffocated by him as he lay on top of them. Furthermore, his wife said Plogojowitz had come to her to retrieve his shoes (Oppanki = opanci, according to Wikipedia: Opanak are 'traditional peasant shoes' worn in Southeastern Europe). As Peter Kremer has pointed out, this is the well-known motif of a deceased returning as a revenant to retrieve something that he requires to rest in peace after death, in this case his shoes.


View Larger Map

Source for this map: Wikipedia

The exhumation and examination of Plogojowitz' corpse, including his penile erection, forebodes the large scale examinations carried out seven years later in Medvedja in the Southern part of Serbia under Habsburg military control. Commissaire Adamsberg doesn't visit this village, but Arnold Paole, probably Arnaut Pavle, contender for the title as the world's most famous and influential vampire, also plays a role in An Uncertain Place. Oddly, Vargas places Medvedja in the Branicevo District, not very far from Kisiljevo, but I am not aware of any Medvedja in that area.

For more information on this, the most famous incident in vampire history, see my post on the Visum et Repertum, as well as other posts on this blog.

This vampire case also turns up in a work of popular fiction, as German author Markus Heitz includes it in his 2006 novel Kinder des Judas.


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A shared treasure

A year ago, or perhaps earlier than that, I put this image onto the right hand column of this blog to show my support of Wikipedia. Although one must be cautious in trusting everything on this online dictionary, it has in its various incarnations and languages (Danish, English, German, Czech etc.) over the years been an invaluable source for information for me, and I have frequently referred to it in my blog posts.

Like most of us, I have myself grown used to using various online services for free, although frequently that also involves dealing with annoying ads. In reality, we pay a lot of money to some companies, whereas others we more or less take for granted. However, someone has to pay for the servers and salaries required to keep a service like Wikipedia online, and if it should stay free of commercial content, it is up to some of us users to consider contributing a small amount.

One example of Wikipedia's strengths could be the German entries on well-known authors of 18th century books on vampires like Michael Ranft, Johann Christoph Pohl, Johann Heinrich Zopf, Otto von Graben zum Stein, and Johann Christoph Harenberg. And, of course, you can also find background information on contemporary thinking in the entries on e.g. Wolffianism and Christian Thomasius, cf. the English entries on Wolff and Thomasius.

The quality of entries differ (that, unfortunately, is also the case of some professional dictionaries), but at least you get a starting point, whereas not many years ago, and especially in my own youthful interest in the subject, the above mentioned names were but names. Back then I thought that it would be interesting to contact the university in Leipzig to find out more about some of these people. Now, Wikipedia (and other resources) provides you with a headstart from your pc, tablet or phone!

Mastication in Italian

Initially written in Latin, then translated into German and expanded by the author, and some 250 years later translated into French, and published in a modern German edition, Michael Ranft's De masticatione mortuorum in tumulis was published in Italian earlier this year by LibriPerduti as Diceria del Vampiro. It is accompanied by texts by Gabriele Ferrero and Dario Spada.

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.

What if ...

What if Flückinger had not been sent to Medvedja in 1732? Or if the Visum et Repertum had attracted no attention but had just been another report stored at the Hofkammerarhiv in Vienna?

As we know, Michael Ranft was so intrigued by reading of the supposed vampire Peter Plogojowitz that he presented his own De masticatione mortuorum later in 1725, but otherwise few people seemed to take note of it.

It did, however, attract a bit of attention at the Academia Naturæ Curios. in Breslau (Wrocław in Poland), the publisher of the so-called Breslauische Sammlungen, a major scientific journal of the early 18th century. Founded by Johann Kanold, it was originally published in Breslau, but later on in Leipzig and Budziszyn (Bautzen).

In 1727 the volume containing information on the Summer quarter of 1725 was published, and among other both enlightening and entertaining articles, e.g. ‘von einem See-Manne’, of a merman, it contains an Article 19: ‘Abentheuerliche Begebenheit mit einem Vermeyntlich wieder gekommenen Todten’. The dead man who was presumed to return was Peter Plogojowitz as referred to in a ‘gazette’ containing the report from Kisiljevo in Northern Serbia: ‘Copia eines Schreibens aus dem Gradisker District in Hungarn M. Aug. 1725’.

The document is followed by an analysis to prove that the incident stems from superstition, oversight and rashness (‘Diß ist abermals eine Begebenheit vom Aberglauben, Inadvertenz, und rachgieriger Ubereilung’), which argues in a forensic fashion that was to be used in several texts on the subject after the incidents at Medvedja in 1732. A short review of Ranft’s original dissertation is also provided, and a reference is given to a previous issue on examples of masticating dead from Poland and Prussia (‘Von dem Polnischen Upiertz oder sich selbst fressenden Todten und der daraus entstandenen Furcht for Pest- und Vieh-Sterben’).

I think it is fair to say that if Glaser and Flückinger had not reported from Medvedja in 1732, this would have been about as much attention the Serbian vampire had received.

Ranft - then and now

As mentioned in an earlier post, I have a couple of times been contacted by descendants of some of the people who have played a role in the history of magia posthuma and vampires. Most notably, I was recently contacted by Richard Ranft who informed me that Michael Ranft was his 5th great-grandfather. Richard Ranft lives in England and informs me that 'one of Michael Ranft's great-great grandsons, Michael Walter George Ranft (1854-1893) was born in Leipzig but later on emigrated from Geneva to London, which is why I am English.'

He has also directed me to a genealogical web site, RootsWeb, where you can follow the Ranft family from the 1500's. If you take a look at the entry on Michael Ranft, you will probably be amazed to learn that not only was he a very productive author, he was also the father of no less than twelve (12) children! Apparently, his first wife, Johanne Sophie Vogt, died at the age of 26, so Ranft married Konstantia Maria Birkholz. (Actually, according to a contemporary biography, Johanne Sophie gave birth to five children, but one of them was still born. Two of Ranft's other children died very young, and another died in his youth).

Born on December 9th 1700 in Güldengossa, Michael Ranft was the son of the local pastor also named Michael Ranft (1670-1743). Obviously an intelligent child, Michael Ranft went to school at Chemnitz from 1712-19 before going to Leipzig where he became a Baccalareus in 1723 and a Magister in 1724. In 1725 he was inspired by the Kisiljevo (Peter Plogojowitz) vampire case to write his dissertation on the mastication of the dead.

Joining his father who had in the meantime become a pastor in Droysig for a short while in 1726, Ranft became a deacon in Nebra the following year. Here he was an industrious writer of biographies and genealogical works. During this period he wrote an expanded edition of his work on the mastication of the dead, which no one seemed to take serious until the advent of the 1732 Medvedja vampire case. The ensuing vampire debate prompted Ranft to write a third edition in 1734, translating the former editions to German, and commenting on the vast vampire literature of 1732-3.

In 1739 Ranft returned to Droysig to aid his ageing father, whom he followed in office upon the father's death in 1743. In 1749 he became pastor in Groß Stechau where he died in 1774.

Obviously, Ranft was an extremely productive author, and one biographer mentions 38 books in his Ranft bibliography. A couple of his books are available online like this one, but most of them will today mostly be of interest to specialists. Somehow, he got obsessed with the matter of the masticating dead, revenants and vampires, writing three editions of his dissertation on the subject, and even later on referred to it in his writings. Certainly, it is this obsession that has made his name known today, although for many years his books on the subject were only read by those who could find a copy at a library. Recent editions in German and French, and now an online edition, have, however, made his thoughts on the subject more accessible to a modern audience.

Ranft the biographer

Those who have studied the bibliography of Michael Ranft will have noticed how many biographical works he published. It is quite a curious experience to browse through his books, because he must have spent an incredible amount of time compiling biographical information. Above is one of the earlier examples, a collection of biographies - or necrologues - of deceased dukes of Saxony, including the life of Christiane Eberhardine, queen of Poland (1671-1727). The original includes print in colour, but unfortunately I only have a black and white scan.

This book was published in the same year as Ranft's second edition of his De masticatione mortuorum, 1728, when he was just 27 years old. Note that he is only credited as 'M. M. R.'!

Online text on Ranft's Traktat

Fellow blogger Nicolaus Equiamicus again refers to interesting material on vampires. This time it's a text by Bettina Meister on Michael Ranft's Traktat von dem Kauen und Schmatzen der Todten in Gräbern. Meister reviews the contents of the book and adds some comments on it. She says:

'Die große Leistung von Ranft besteht meiner Ansicht nach darin, sich in einer theologischen Welt im Umbruch mit philosophischen und intellektuellen Methoden der grassierenden Angst der Menschen vor dem Vampirismus genähert zu haben und Antworten zu bieten, die sich von Spekulationen und mystischen Annahmen entfernen.' (Ranft's great achievement in my opinion is that he in a theological world in upheaval has approached men's raging fear of vampirism with philosophical and intelluctal methods and has offered answers that are removed from speculation and mystical assumptions).

The article is published in an online magazine called Zauberspiegel.

Überall etwas von denen Blut-Saugern

In his critical review of the contemporary vampire debate, Michael Ranft writes that at the Easter fair in Leipzig in 1732 there were books on bloodsuckers in every book shop ('...wenn man an der letztwichenen Leipziger Oster-Messe in einen Buchladen gieng, man überall etwas von denen Blut-Saugern zu Gesichte bekam.' P. 179 in Traktat von dem Kauen und Schmatzen der Todten from 1734).

That is certainly not the case in 2008. In fact, the photo below shows the closest I got to a collection of books on 'blood suckers' in any book store in Leipzig. And in 1732, no one would have connected vampires with bats, as it wasn't until a few decades later that Count de Buffon wrote of the vampire bat ('We shall call it Vampire, because it sucks the blood of men and other animals when asleep, without occasioning pain sufficient to waken them.') in his Histoire naturelle. Love at first bite (as it says on the bat) would hardly be a term used in the connection with the revenants and masticating dead that Ranft was writing about.

Güldengossa

While in Leipzig I purchased a book on the churches in Leipzig and the surrounding area. It contains a short paragraph on 'die kleine barocke Dorfkirche von Güldengossa' (the small baroque village church in Güldengossa), but there is no picture or much information available in it concerning this church, where Michael Ranft supposedly must have spent some time in his early childhood, as he was born in Güldengossa in 1700 as son of the local priest. Fortunately, a picture of the church is available here. According to this web site, the church was built in 1540 and was almost destroyed in a fire during the thirty years' war, but rebuilt and in 1721 enlarged. Güldengossa is a small village with a population of less than 400 citizens, situated some 15 km south of Leipzig and is also the location of the Schloß Güldengossa. Unfortunately, I didn't have an opportunity to go there while I stayed in Leipzig.


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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.

...so sie Vampyri nennen...

The Austrian newspaper Wiener Zeitung is the oldest newspaper in existence. Originally published in 1703 under the name Wienerisches Diarium, it continues to this day. On July 21 1725, the Diarium published a copy of a manuscript from the Gradisker Distrikt in Hungary, actually the North Western part of Serbia. The text is Frombald's original account of the Peter Plogojowitz vampire case, and this is probably the first time the word vampire is published in print: '...so sie Vampyri nennen...', i.e. in a latinized form.

The Austrian National Library has digitalized various issues of the Diarium, including the July 21 1725 edition, so we can all enjoy reading this vampire document in its contemporary context of other news, including lists of marriages and deaths in and around Vienna.

The editors of the Leipziger Zeitung found the document so interesting that they copied it, thereby bringing it to the attention of Michael Ranft who was inspired to write the first edition of his book on the mastication of the dead.

Ranft's Traktat online!

I have an old photocopy of Michael Ranft's 1734 Traktat von dem Kauen und Schmatzen der Todten in Gräbern which I have studied over the years. Before Calmet's Dissertations this was the only book that attempted to collect more or less all available knowledge on vampires and comment on the authors who had themselves commented on Ranft's Latin first edition.

I also have a modernized edition that was published in 2006 by Ubooks in Germany.

Now, however, the original has been scanned and made available to the public on the internet by Klassik Stiftung Weimar here, so everyone interested in our subject of magia posthuma and vampires can get to read - or at least take a look at - this important book!

Internet resources II: Zedler's Universal-Lexicon

To finally continue pointing out interesting internet resources on Magia Posthuma and related subjects (here is my first post on the subject), I would like to mention the online edition of Johann Heinrich Zedler's famous Grosses vollständiges Universal-Lexicon which was published in 64 volumes in Leipzig between 1732 and 1750. The encyclopedia gives an interesting insight into many things that have a bearing on our subject of Magia Posthuma, vampires and other revenants. In fact, there is no entry on Magia posthuma, but there are several other kinds of Magia listed and explained: Magia Adamica, Magia artificialis, Magia dæmonica, Magia diabolica, Magia directa etc. Evidently this makes it possible to get some understanding of what was understand by Magia.


We can also read about the geography of Hungary (Ungarn), where the (changing) borders are listed along with the a list of areas that were originally ('in the days of old') part of Hungary: 'Siebenbürgen, Wallachey, Bulgarien, Thracien und Romanien, Servien, Bosnien, Dalmatien, Croatien und Sclavonien' (Transylvania, Wallachia, Bulgaria, Thracia, Romania, Serbia, Bosnia, Dalmatia, Croatia and Slavonia). In this 'old' sense of the name Hungary, the Serbian vampire cases can be attributed to Hungary, whereas it has often been pointed out that some of the vampires referred to as 'Hungarian' were not located in contemporary or modern Hungary.

And, of course, there are the long entries on vampires (Vampyren) and the mastication of the dead (Schmatzen der Toden), which according to the Zedler are closely related, although of Greek origin. Vampires are defined as ‘Todte menschliche Cörper, welche aus den Gräbern hervor spazieren, den Lebendigen das Blut aussaugen, und sie dadurch umbringen sollen.’ (Dead human bodies, which walk out of the graves and suck the blood of the living, thereby killing them). Both vampire cases from Serbia (Kisiljevo 1725 and Medvedja 1731-2) are described in detail, and various aspects of Greek Orthodox faith, Valvasor's mention of vampires/revenants etc. are related and discussed. There is even a rather detailed list of many of the 18th century works on vampires, so it is really a rather nice review that sums up a lot of what one might say about vampires in Leipzig some 10-15 years after the great vampire debate of 1732.

Furthermore, one can read a detailed bibliography of Michael Ranft (here called Ranfft), and there is the short entry on von Schertz which was shown in a previous post. In short, this is a wonderful source of information for anyone interested in the knowledge of 18th century.

Connoisseuers of the gothic will probably find it intriguing that the editor of the two first volumes of the Universal-Lexicon was Jacob August Franckenstein (1689-1733), and may consequently be interested in reading the entry about the ancient family Franckenstein or Frankenstein in volume 9.

On a more modern note, Jutta Nowosadtko who was mentioned in my previous post, has been involved in a project researching and writing about the Zedler lexicon, Zedleriana.

Das grosse Handbuch der Dämonen

During a visit in Hamburg I tried to look for books of value for my interest in the Magia Posthuma. In fact, I only found two books, and I wasn't quite sure about one of them, Das grosse Handbuch der Dämonen compiled by Helmut Werner (tosa/Verlag Ueberreuter, Vienna). A few vampires encyclopedias have been published, but I must confess that I rarely use them, because they mainly focus on the fictional vampire. So I feared the worst when I unwrapped this hardcover book, but was delighted to find entries on early authors on vampires and vampire related topics like Phillip Rohr, Michael Ranft and Johann Christoph Harenberg.

In his foreword the author describes the book's themes:

"In über 1.200 Stichworten bietet dieses Nachslagewerk für den Laien und den Fachmann eine übersicthliche und umfassende Übersicht nach dem neuesten Forschungsbestand zu folgenden Themen: Monster (Luft, Land, Wasser), monströse Dämonen und Geister, Mischwesen, Fabeltiere, rätselhafte Tiere, Missgeburten (Mensch und Tier), rätselhafte Menschen und menschliche Ungeheuer wie die Blutgräfin Bathory, Kürten etc., Vampire, vampirartige Dämonen, Werwölfe, Biografien bedeutender Gelehrter, die sich mit dieser Thematik beschäftigten, und die zentralen Begriffe dieser Themen."

As for these creatures being demons or not, the first page of the Handbuch actually contains this entry:

"ADÄMONISTEN
Bez. für Anhänger einer Vampirtheorie, welche davon ausgeht, dass der Teufel, böse Dämonen, unkörperliche Substanzen wie Astralkörper (→Unverweslichkeit) und →Incubus nicht zur Erklärung des →Vampirismus herangezogen werden dürfen. Im Gegensatz zu ihren Gegnern, den Dämoniaken, glauben sie zwar an die Existenz des Teufels, sie lehnen aber seine Leiblichkeit ab. Der Teufel untersteht Gott und seine Fähigkeit, mit Erlaubnis Gottes in die Schöpfung einzugreifen, ist nur begrenzt."

So, obviously, it is debatable whether this is really an encyclopedia of demons or not, and it is probably a matter of taste whether you like the mix of themes. Personally, I would have preferred it done differently, e.g. making it easier to find the sources behind each entry, but I still find the encyclopedia both useful and enjoyable. Certainly, this book made the trip from Germany to Denmark by train feel shorter.


Unfortunately, errors can be found, and I can't help wondering why there is no entry about Peter Plogojowitz, when there is one about Arnont Paole?! I certainly don't understand how Werner has come to rename Karl Ferdinand von Schertz "Karl-Friedrich Schertz"?!

So some caution is required when using Hemut Werner's Handbuch, but I am sure that this book will be enjoyed by others interested in Magia Posthuma, and it will probably also attract some new attention to the old vampire cases and the 18th century vampire debate. The bibliography is also worth studying, so at the price of €9.95, there is no need to hesitate in ordering this 316 page Handbuch.

Ranft reprint

I just noticed that one of Michael Ranft's biographical works has been published in facsimile by a publisher called Elibron: Die merkwürdige Lebensgeschichte des unglücklichen Rußischen Kaysers Peters des Dritten. An extract is available. It's a 363 page reprint of the 1773 Leipzig edition. Ranft wrote several biographies, some of which are listed in Wikipedia's entry on Ranft.