Archaeology as romanticism and ideology

When I initially read about the uncovering and quick exhibition of the ’vampire skeleton’ in Bulgaria, I was reminded of some of the bog body finds here in Denmark. Public interest in seeing the so-called ‘Grauballe Man’ was so extensive, that the authorities decided to put him on display quickly, and the 19th century ‘Haraldskær Woman’ was romantically identified with Queen Gunhild who according to the Jomsvikinga Saga was drowned in a bog by order of King Harald Bluetooth.

Today we are instead used to archaeologists spending a very long time preserving and studying their finds before they are described in papers and exhibited. And we are, I think, generally suspicious of interpretations that smack too much of romanticism or ideology. Archaeological finds have all too frequently been exploited for political purposes, or ideology and politics have served as a motivational factor intrinsic to the discipline, pre-determining interpretational possibilities and distinguishing between the relevant and the irrelevant.

The relationship between politics and archaeology is the focus of an anthology published by Routledge in 1998: Archaeology Under Fire: Nationalism, politics and heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East edited by Lynn Meskell. Chapter 4 is of particular interest here as it concerns Bulgarian Archaeology: ideology, sociopolitics and the exotic. It is written by Douglass W. Bailey, an expert on the later prehistory of South Eastern Europe, author of Balkan Prehistory: Exclusion, Incorporation and Identity (2000) and Professor at San Francisco State University, cf. the video at the end of this post.

Based on his own work in Bulgaria as well as discussions with Bulgarian archaeologists, Bailey not only analyses Bulgarian archaeology and the Western attitude towards it, but suggests ways in which to develop it. Following Todorova’s well-known 1997 book Imagining the Balkans, Bailey notes that not only do Westerners consider Bulgaria and its archaeology exotic, ‘the history of modern Bulgaria is one of auto-exoticism’:

‘Bulgarian auto-exoticism has entailed efforts to create a modern nation-state by illuminating its distance (ethnic, historical, linguistic) from other states as well as to eliminate any internal alternative pockets of cultural or ethnic exoticism (thus the internal campaigns of forced resettlement and name-changing of 'non--Bulgarian' Bulgarians).’

Here I cannot help thinking of the Dracula tourism promoted by Romania which certainly exploits an exotic interest in the country to attract tourists, while at the same time it creates an identity, exemplified by the Crama Dracula restaurant that I recently visited in Barcelona. One should, however, also recall that Vlad Tepes was employed as a national hero by Nicolae Ceauşescu, a historic figure whose personality and deeds was not something distant, but part of a glorious past that was important to consider in modern day Romania. So, obviously the auto-exoticism that Bailey describes is much more than a scheme to attract tourists who cater for the exotic:

'From the West, the discipline [of Bulgarian archaeology] appears to exist solely to glorify the ethos of a magnificent past through a fascination with the art and culture of extinct peoples. From this perspective it is confirmed as a discipline born in the spirit (and the period) of modernism: it seeks to study the primitive in its past and it relegates matters of causal explanation to the epiphenomena of descriptive ideas of cultural progress.

Thus, Bulgarian archaeology itself considers its object of study (i.e. the past) as exotic. In this sense, the more mundane elements of the material record hold little interest: common practice on excavations is to discard coarse-ware pottery without concern or quantification. The emphasis of research remains firmly centred on the most sensational and emotive sectors of the archaeological record (i.e. burials, figurines, metal-work, fortresses and fine-ware pottery). Most surprisingly, perhaps, the tradition of Bulgarian archaeology-as-romanticism has remained in place through the post-1989 period of the region-wide opening of intellectual borders, research resources and collaborative strategies.’

But this archaeology-as-romanticism is not imposed by some extraneous political or ideological factor; it is intrinsic to the discipline, but also to the structure of the academic sciences and the political institutions of Bulgarian society. To Bailey Bulgarian archaeology essentially is itself an ideology.

‘Following M. Todorova, I suggest that Bulgarian archaeology itself is an active socio-politics and ideology: it is not a passive tool of socio-political, nationalist, totalitarian, or other state--level political structures. Bulgarian archaeology's long-established position as a socio-political ideology is one of the conditions which makes it appear exotic to Western eyes.’

This active ideology, however, does not confine itself to (re)creating national histories and ethnic identities, it has a powerful role in a society in which the past arbitrates the present:

‘As an historical subject and thus as active socio-political ideology, Bulgarian archaeology occupies an unrivalled position as justifier and legitimator. In this sense, the past is an arbiter of the present and those who can read the past are arbiters of justice and, as such, possess considerable power. The ideology of the past as arbitration is not limited to the recreation of national histories and prehistories: it drives a social logic through the reality of all elements of daily life. A particularly strong recent manifestation of this logic was the enthusiastic (and in most cases successful) drive by Bulgarian families, in the early 1990s, to reclaim property confiscated by the communists during their forty-five years in power. Property reclamation rested on the simple principle that proof of ownership in the past justified the right to regain ownership in the present. The past arbitrates the present.’

But, if Bulgarian archaeology is in fact an ideology, then its professional practitioners must themselves be considered ideologues:

‘The case that Bulgarian archaeologists are ideologues rests on several important facts. The first is a long-standing link between politicians and members of the scientific and cultural intelligentsia. The second link connects two separate roles which Bulgarian archaeologists play: on the one hand they are scientific field-workers; on the other they are custodians and, as mentioned above, arbiters of the nation's past. These links raise (and suggest answers to) important questions about the power of archaeological data and its interpretation. In turn they raise a debate surrounding the personnel of Bulgarian archaeology, most particularly the question of who is allowed (as opposed to who is qualified) to study the past. Furthermore, it is through an examination of the practitioners of archaeology that one comes to understand the unchanging condition of archaeological interpretation in Bulgaria. Such an understanding is especially enlightening in the absence of either processual or post-modern developments in Bulgarian archaeologies.’

Bailey traces the linkage between science and politics back in time to the creation of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAN) a century ago in July 1912 as a centralised organisation based on a law formalising the connection between BAN and the government. This centralisation was further reinforced during the Communist era, and today it is still a member institution of BAN that grants permission to carry out field work in Bulgaria. The close link between the government and academia and intelligentsia is reflected in the number of academics and intellectuals who have and still do occupy important political offices, like e.g. the Director of the Bulgarian National Museum of History, Bozhidar Dimitrov.

Bailey however rejects any naïve and condescending depreciation of Bulgarian archaeology as ‘a retarded stage of development in the evolution of archaeological theory,’ as it does not only assume a Western righteousness of method, but also a lack of appreciation and understanding of the background of the contemporary Bulgarian discipline. Whereas the quest of a processual approach to archaeology (aka new archaeology) is for an objectivity separate from politics, the Bulgarian approach to archaeology can by definition not be separated from politics. So explanations do not ideally follow strictly from the given data, but are pre-determined by a centralised ideology: ‘often archaeological research entails little more than recovering more and more data which can be assigned to pre-determined chronological and social stages.’

Bailey discusses ways to ‘de-exoticise’ Bulgarian archaeology, and suggests that Western archaeologists ‘treat colleagues as peers and offer them the respect of critical comment on their work, their methods and the social consequences of their doctrines. To do otherwise is to abrogate any responsibility for the impact which archaeology has on the reality of modern existence in Bulgaria or in any place that archaeology is practised. The time to accept that responsibility is now when, as a discipline, Bulgarian archaeology drifts without proper financial ballast, having been orphaned from a long-exploitative family.’

Now this is, of course, Bailey's analysis, but from what I can gather from reviews and the information I have seen concerning his work, I have found it relevant to write about it here. It supports the notion that Bulgarian archaeology has a tendency to favour more sensational finds, possibly from an intrinsic reasons, but at the same time aiming at attracting not only attention from a wider audience, but also more funding, either directly from the government or indirectly from tourists who are perhaps not interested in the Bulgarian history in general, but who are willing to spend money to see a 'vampire skeleton' or to go on pilgrimage to the site of the (supposed) human remains of John the Baptist.

As for the skeletons themselves, the news stories about the 'vampire skeletons' have not only been imprecise, but have presented us with very little concrete information. For that reason I have so far mainly quoted the news stories instead of trying to discuss something that I feel I have only a vague idea about. But it is obvious that a) Bulgaria has now firmly placed itself as an area of 'vampire interest', and b) the archaeological finds are now to the public part of 'vampire lore'. Whatever that precisely is, but I suppose that films, novels and roleplaying games will be inspired by the Sozopol skeletons. At least, it probably has a little more to do with revenants and vampires than the most recent vampire blockbuster, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

'Vampire, see Serbia'

'Vampire, see Serbia', is what you find if you look up the word Vampyr in Dr. Christian Wilhelm Hufeland's encyclopedia on apparent death, Der Scheintod, oder Sammlung der wichtigsten Thatsachen und Bemerckungen darüber, from 1808.

The entry on Serbia, which incidentally follows an entry on the apparently dead eating themselves (das Selbstverzehren der Scheintodten: 'Man hat Beispiele von Todten, welche im Sarge sich selbst zu verzehren angefangen haben sollen...'), actually carries the title: 'Servien's Scheintodten-Ereignisse', the incidents involving apparently dead persons in Serbia. The entry concerns the incidents in Medvedja in the winter of 1731-2, although here erroneously dated 1733. Hufeland states that Emperor Charles VI asked Dr. Beyer to write an analysis of the matter, which however has not been published, but was probably suppressed by the Church ('Dieses ist aber, so sehr das Publicum auch darauf wartete, niemals öffentlich bekannt gemacht und warscheinlich durch den Kaiserlichen Beichtsvater, nach dessen Sinne es nicht ausgefallen seyn mochte, unterdrückt worden').

Hufeland finds that the vampires were in fact persons who became afflicted with some local disease and were presumed dead, and consequently  prematurely buried. Well, all things considered, it is not exactly a satisfactory theory, but that is the reason why Serbia and vampires are included in Hufeland's book.

But Hufeland is not the only one to identify Serbia with vampirism, and vice versa. In a recent book, Vampire Nation: Violence as Cultural Imaginary (Duke University Press, 2011), Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature at the University of Winsconsin, Tomislav Z. Longinovic, writes:

'Until the Bulldozer Revolution in October 2000, global media networks and the public relations industry profiled 'the serbs' as avatars of post-communist violence in the Balkans. Despite the burden of all too real war crimes committed during the 1990s in the name of collective survival of their own territorial identity, global media excessively emphasized 'the serbs' as the incarnation of an exemplary and exceptional form of evil not proper to Europe, a vision that gradually excluded this imaginary assemblage from the sphere of civilization. Despite the fact that 'the serbs' belong geographically to the very core of Europe, symbolically and territorially, their borderline position was constructed as a projection of the Eurocentric fantasy about a cruel Orient in Europe.' (p. 5-6)

'The perception of pathological fixation of Eastern Europe in general and of the Balkans in particular, on the "old centuries" voiced by Stoker at the end of the nineteenth century through the persona of Dracula* is symptomatic of a cultural vision based on an interesting intersection of local and global discourses of violence. The past and its bloody memories define a refusal to yield to modernity imputed to the countries of the Balkan region, whose resistance to civilization and its laws are naturalized as inherently evil to oppose the advances of the Enlightenment and its technologies of mediation. The narrative projected onto the vampire as a beast within, enslaved to the undying, bloody past, serves as a national fetish underlying the repressed origins of Europe proper.

A small nation such as 'the serbs' is by definition led by a mysterious, degenerate leader who is ready to sacrifice others and commit bloodshed only to prolong his political power. During the 1990s, this vision of the other Europe reinforced an imaginary relationship that extended the vampire metaphor from the realm of the Gothic period's horror genre to the mundane practice of global politics, strategically deploying violence to advance civilization and the rule of law in the Wild East of Europe. The signifier that will forever sink into historical oblivion - Yugoslavia, the proper name of the country that was erased to deny the striving of culturally heterogeneous populations to live in a common state - has been assaulted by differentialist logic of the "clash of civilization" to enforce local insecurity by bringing about a collective return to the ideology of the vampire nation.

Stoker's Dracula, which founded the literary discourse of the Gothic imaginary, appears as the incarnation of those old centuries that refuse to fade away in the face of modernizing Europe. This imaginary, sparked by a belated Romantic mourning for the glory of the past boundaries of Europe, uses violence with the automatism of the beast who has no other choice but to feed itself on the blood of others. This hungry being is always engendered in zones of intense cultural and linguistic hybridization and simultaneously is imbued with the pathos of a race submerged in the narratives of its own past and viewed as a herald of a cruel modernity at hand.

Many "national" histories written and taught in the Balkans and in the rest of "Oriental" Europe are saturated with a celebration of violence that is monumentalized as just revenge and sacrifice offered to the glory of cultural life and survival. Small nationalisms contain this imaginary economy; they appear colorful but ostensibly irrational, steeped in gore despite enlightened intentions and dominated by discourses of masculine injury that claim the victim's right to feed on the blood of others as the only way to sustain survival.' (p. 19-20)

'The discourse of stolen blood reveals how the imaginary lens crafted by Stoker persists in the West as a cultural filter that defines alterity: Eastern Europe is a location where sex and violence know no limits. The image produced in British popular culture at the end of the nineteenth century has traveled to the end of the twentieth century to establish political discourses that the U.S.-led West sustains when it deals with new yet old types of revenant nationalism: the specter of 'the serbs' as the global vampires who deserve a well-guided stake of democracy.

This Gothic vision defines the boundaries of proper identity and its civilizatoinal other within Europe, a location where bad but sharp teeth, carnage, and fornication abound. The other Europe is an extension of the notorious count's ruined castle, where excessive passions and "old centuries" conspire to halt the progress and enlightenment proper only to the superior technology of the West. One of the most symptomatic returns of this Gothic vision is the mediated emergence of 'the serbs' as a phantasm of a vampire community governed by an excess of malignant historical imagination that is alien to the values of Europe and the "civilized world."

Firmly rooted in political and cultural ideals inherited from the best European traditions of nationalism and liberalism, 'the serbs' share military rationality and territorial logic of the nation-state with Europe proper. In fact, the Yugoslav tragedies of the 1990s are a legacy of the violence that formed the foundation of modern Europe: the political and cultural ideals made flesh and blood in the uncanny law binding the nation-state. The temporal disjunction between the "other" Europe steeped in old centuries of its historical imagination and the hypermodern amnesia of the U.S.-led West is at the root of this interpellated subjectivity structuring the Gothic emergence of 'the serbs'.' (p. 10)

Europe according to USA, from Mapping Stereortypes

'The extraordinary success of Twilight among youth in the United States appears as a global symptom of chronic hunger for attention from others and a craving for freedom that, paradoxically, shrinks under an invisible yet omnipresent force based on consumption and concealed forms of violence inherent in the developed modes of the current economy. Images of vampires have persisted in popular culture as a remnant of that undying demand for the extraordinary established by the Romantics and reveal, with symptomatic ambiguity, ever more powerful yet abstinent revenants who can control their craving for the blood of the ones they love. The disgusting, corpse-like appearance of the vampire has been sublimated into beauty in Goth subcultures, lending esthetic currency to the love of death that is overcome by the ever increasing levels of consumption demanded from ordinary humans.

In fact, the global media gaze that has discovered the cradle of European violence among 'the serbs' continues to act as a stake to put other vampire nations out for good. The skill of the vampire slayer equals that of the exterminator, acting with rational violence against the irrational one of the nations deemed below civilization's dividing line. The imaginary of minor and peripheral cultures of southeastern Europe has been interpellated by the political discourse based on that gaze to produce a variety of strategies of resistance to both domestic and foreign attempts at appropriation. While 'the serbs' face up to the unflattering task of confronting the real crimes committed in their name, the sublimation of the vampire on the global entertainment scene points to the displacement of Balkan topoi to account for the return of imperial desire to its rightful source.' (p. 186-7)

'In the global landscape where the force of capital naturalizes its existence to appear as the omnipotent and invisible source of death-in-life, the vampire perhaps remains the only true face of a being lost in the speculations of Western metaphysics. Its imaginary journey from the undead creature of Balkan folklore to the antihero of Hollywood blockbusters tells the story of our post-human future, shared by the most peripheral of European cultures and the political and economic centers of the West, to account for the increasing acceptance of humanity's transformation since mass ideologies of emancipation failed in 1989. The status of the vampire in popular culture suggests that the naturalized state of predation inherent in the global order of consumption marks a transition of humanity to a new stage of development in which it gradually accepts and covertly celebrates the violence whose origins remain hidden by the ruins of Dracula's castle. The notion of the nation as an effect of bourgeois liberalism that originated in the philosophy of the Enlightenment has given birth to a vampire whose current transformations manifest a dawn of a different subjectivity, detaching itself from the nation to enter the global stage of free play, and offer a model identification that transcends humanism.

The vampire as a theoretical hybrid between political science and psychoanalysis offers a kind of lay philosophy that transcends both the model of the machine and that of the animal commonly utilized by theoreticians of the post-human. The power of this hybrid to incarnate the subjectivity to come builds on the conventions that, in previous centuries, posited the vampire as the opponent of the common human subject. The precognition inherent in the imaginary flights of popular culture speaks the truth about a political unconscious that has found its incarnation in both the phantasm of 'the serbs' as a vampire nation and the vampire as a new model for the global order of being - an order that is all too (post)human.' (p. 188-9)

I have only dipped into this complex, and I think it fair to say: far from easy to read book, so in the words of another blogger I will be cautious when commenting on Vampire Nation: 'I will let others more knowledgeable than I opine on how successfully Longinović applies critical theory to historical analysis. In any case his book makes a provocative addition to the literature on the Yugoslav wars.'

The popular and globalized vampire of Western fiction is, of course, probably as popular in Serbia as in so many other parts of the world, so there is even a Vampires Serbia magazine containing photos of the stars from Twilight and other vampire films and TV series. We love Twilight, we love True Blood, and we love The Vampire Diaries in Serbia as well.

*) Longinovic refers to Jonathan Harker's diary in Stoker's Dracula where Harker while in Dracula's castle writes: 'It is the nineteenth century up-to-date with a vengeance. And yet, unless my senses deceive me, the old centuries had, and have powers of their own which mere "modernity" cannot kill.'

Vanished Kingdoms

'All my life, I have been intrigued by the gap between appearances and reality. Things are never quite what they seem.' Anyone used to the popular conception of vampires who is getting interested in the historical background of the phenomenon, will probably agree. As well as is the case of many other subjects.

The fictional vampire and gothic tale to a large extent relies on a mythical landscape of names, places and concepts, in general a curious concoction of fact and fiction. Transsilvania, the German names of towns in the area, Styria etc. etc., all places that may conjure up some kind of association or picture in our imaginations, often on a background created by British or American filmmakers with only a passing knowledge of the reality behind those names.

But our concept of our past is, as Norman Davies addresses in the quote, generally biased towards understanding the past in terms of e.g. current boundaries and concepts. 'Whether consciously or not, they [authors and publishers of history books] are seeking the roots of the present, thereby putting themselves in danger of reading history backwards.' This affects what he calls 'our mental maps', which are 'thus inevitably deformed. Our brains can only form a picture from the data that circulates at any given time; and the available data is created by present-day powers, by prevailing powers and by accepted wisdom. If we continue to neglect other ares of the past, the blank spaces in our mind are reinforced, and we pile more and more knowledge into those compartments of which we are already aware. Partial knowledge becomes ever more partial, and ignorance becomes self-perpetuating.'

For someone attempting to make some sense of all the information about vampires, shroud eating corpses, posthumous magic etc., it is necessary to get at least a rudimentary understanding of the geography and history of the areas where things happened or were debated. Although living not so far from Central Europe, Moravia, Bohemia, Silesia, Galicia, or even Serbia are names whose significance in European history is rarely discussed here. And, as Norman Davies notes, it can be hard to find literature on the subject, and the focus is typically on the past hundred years or so.

So, Norman Davies' book, Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-forgotten Europe, recently published by Allen Lane, sounds like an interesting read. According to a review in The Telegraph,

'For anyone wanting to understand the ongoing influence which these “disappeared states” still exert on their present-day successors, there could hardly be a better place to turn than Norman Davies’s encyclopedic new book. Its author, who made his name as a historian of Poland (where his fame is not far behind that of the late Polish pope), has a broad and luminous erudition, and he uses it to shed light on whole swathes of the European past – from the early medieval Kingdom of Alt Clud (a large rock in Scotland’s Western Isles) in the far west, to Byzantium (now the western side of Istanbul), that final outpost of Europe on the Bosporus. (---)

Davies is keenly observant of how modern-day European nations choose to conduct this dialogue between these multiple pasts and the present: in particular, the way they use their institutions of collective memory – museums, monuments, memorial days – “to keep in touch with the past, and sometimes to reconstruct it systematically”.

Much can hang on the answers. Does modern-day Muslim Turkey, with an eye to future membership of the European Union, for instance, choose to “own” the period when it was the Christian capital of the Roman world? Or does it instead look to become top dog in the Muslim world, playing up its Islamic past and effectively disowning the Christian centuries before the Muslim conquest of Constantinople (now Istanbul) in 1453? Davies’s alertness to these implications makes his book a must for anyone with a serious interest in Europe’s present-day international relations.

Better still, however, is to savour this book in the manner that its length (a hefty 830 pages) and range permits. Take it with you to read the relevant chapter en route to your next European destination – whether to familiar Florence, once capital of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Etruria (now comprehensively forgotten by the Italians), or to rather less tourist-friendly Minsk. There are few better ways of coming to an understanding of the multilayered splendours and horrors of Europe’s past than through the pages of this wise, humane and unfailingly engaging book.'

The vanished kingdoms discussed in the book are: Tolosa, Alt Clud, Burgundia, Aragon, Litva, Byzantion, Borussia, Sabaudia, Galicia, Etruria, Rosenau, Tsernagora, Rusyn, Éire, and CCCP. Can you honestly say, you had heard about all of them before now?

According to The Economist: 'All across Europe ghosts will bless [Norman Davies] for telling their long-forgotten stories.' See also the review in The Independent.

Vampire: Monster, Mythos, Medienstar

Florian Kührer’s Vampire: Monster, Mythos, Medienstar (Butzon & Bercker) is a pleasant, interesting and in every respect very much up to date survey of vampires in folklore, history, the arts and popular culture in general. In Kührer’s own words, his book is ‘die Geschichte vom Aufstieg eines Dorfmonsters zum Popstar der Moderne’, the story of the rise of a village monster to pop star of the present.

Although relatively brief compared to the vastness of the subject, it is evident that Kührer has studied the topic thoroughly and has a good understanding of the various aspects of the subjects. Clearly, Kührer is familiar with the latest literature on the subject like the contributions to the 2009 vampirism conference in Vienna as well as well as the most prominent works of the current vampire trend of Twilight etc.

In the first part of the book Kührer presents a synthesis of the themes of the folkloric vampire: the various types of living corpses or revenants, their names and characteristics, mostly from parts of Europe, but also providing examples from other parts of the world as well as from different periods. Here Kührer also touches on the archaeological finds that are some times interpreted as evidence of vampire or revenant beliefs, and comments sensibly on the recent find of a ‘vampire skeleton’ in Venice:

’Ein klassischer Beispiel für ein Vampirgrab? Ja und nein. Wer immer dieser Frau den Stein in die Mundhöhle gesteckt hat, er dachte dabei kaum an einen Vampir, denn dieser Begriff war in diesem Raum im 16. Jahrhundert mit allerhöchster Wahrscheinlichkeit unbekannt. Wenn wir also am Begriff ”Vampir” hängen, handelt es sich gewiss um keinen “Vampirismus”.’ (p. 40)

Kührer also provides some interesting comments on the construction of a superstitious backwards, not only in the vampire reports of the 18th century, but also in recent news stories from e.g. Romania, where the distinction is not only between a civilised West and a superstitious, backwards East, but also between the enlightened Romanian cities and the superstitious villages. As in the case of the Marotinu de Sus incident:

‘Und wie schon drei Jahrhunderte zuvor stürzten sich die westlichen Medien gierig auf diese Geschichte. Alle großen europäischen Zeitungen berichteten über den Fall Toma, under Discovery Channel drehte gar eine Dokumentation, in der auch Dorfbewohner zu Wort kommen und ihre Versionen der Geschichte erzählen durften. Niemals wird in diesen Berichten vergessen, auf den Beitrittsantrag Rumäniens zur Europäischen Union hinzuweisen. Da waren sie wieder, die Bilder und Geschichten über eine rückständige und geheimnisvolle Gegend, die sich so sehr vom aufgeklärten Westen unterscheidet. Die Grenzen zwischen Zivilisation und Rückständigkeit folgen jedoch nicht ausschließlich dem Ost-West-Schema. Die Bruchlinien verlaufen mitten durch die Gesellschaft: Der westliche Lebensstil durchcringt sukzessive die urbanen Räume Osteuropas, und Vernunft und Aufgeklärtheit halten im Gefolge von Flatscreens und Multimediahandys Einzug. Auf dem Land hingegen scheint die Zeit stillzustehen, Mensch und Tier muss sich offenbar noch immer den Lebensraum mit Hexen, Gespenstern und Wiedergängern teilen. Denn aktuelle Vampirgeschichten aus dem Osten Europas – Mythen vom Rande der zivilisierten Welt – sind bestens dazy geeignet, dem Westen seinen zivilisatorischen Vorsprung zu bestätigen.’ (p. 57)

The second part of the book follows the vampire theme from Rohr’s Masticatione Mortuorum in the late 17th century over the vampire reports and debates of the the 18th century onto the transition of the vampire into a fictional creature of poetry, novels and movies. Kührer describes how the vampire provided the infotainment that suited the 18th century magazines and shortly characterizes the vampire ‘research’ of the period. Kührer, however, also attempts to view the vampire from the point of view of the villagers themselves, and tries to explain why the field surgeons and the learned people were unable to grasp the everyday vampire concept of the villagers:

‘Für die Dorfbewohner war der Vampir der monströse Alltag, der die Gemeinschaft bedrohte und eine tödliche Wirkung entfaltete, die für einen Betrachter von außen kaum zu verstehen war. Dewegen konnten die damaligen Erklärungsversuche den Vampir niemals völlig fassen. Denn die innere Logik der Ereignisse musste dem selektiven Blick des Militärarztes, des Verwaltungsbeamten und des aufgeklärten Philosophen verborgen bleiben. Vielleicht ist es diese Ohnmacht, die den Fremden aus dem Westen veranlasst, auf den Osten Europas oft herabzublicken und ihn sich als einen Ort der Rückständigkeit und des Aberglaubens vorzustellen.

Für die Leser der Zeitungsberichte muss der Eindruck entstanden sein, dass ohne das österreichische Militär ein völliges Chaos in den wiedereroberten Gebieten herrschen würde. Unter diesen Voraussetzungen ist es kein Wunder, dass der recht spezielle Begriff des Vampirs bald auf eine ganze Reihe von magischen Erscheinungen ausgeweitet wurde, die eine Sache gemeinsam haben: ihr Erscheinen in Grenz- und Übergangszonen, wo politische und kulturelle Einflussbereiche ineinander übergehen. Denn der Vampir ist der jeweils Andere, ein Fremder, für die Dorfbewohner ein Außenseiter des Kollektivs, der wie Arnand Paole erst später zur Gemeinschaft dazugestoßen ist oder sich anderwertig durch seinen abnormen Lebenswandel verdächtig machte. Und für den Westen ist er ein Monster aus einer fremden Welt, die gleichzeitig mit der Beschreibung ihrer Phänomene in der Phantasie des Westens neu erschaffen wird.’ (p. 84-5)

Kührer nicely describes how the vampire became part of gothic fiction, the creation of Stoker’s Dracula and the rise of the cinematic vampire. His exposition is clearly quite up to date, as he avoids the fallacies of most writers on the subject in e.g. describing the genesis of Dracula. I particularly enjoyed his account of the attempt at creating a Dracula theme park in Romania, ‘Projekt Draculapark’. Here as well, he interestingly traces the creation of Transylvania as the land of vampires.

The last part of the book traces a number of themes, including blood, gender, vampires as metaphor, anti-Semitism, mass murderers, and the construction of ‘real’ vampires. This part includes interesting, and again: up to date, passages on both Montague Summers and Elizabeth Bathory.

Kührer finishes with a summary that points out the distinction between the modern, popular concept of the vampire and the folkloric vampire, before pointing out why the vampire has developed into one of the most powerful and ever transforming myths of our time:

‘Der Vampir, dieses Geschöpf der Moderne, ist berühmt geworden, weil er dem Westen sein von der Aufklärung um die metaphysischen Dimensionen beraubtes Weltbild mit neuen übersinnlichen Facetten versehen konnte. Er ist mehr al seine einfache Legende oder ein Märchen. Die verschiedenen Entwicklungsstränge – vom serbischen Volksvampir bis zum Produktnamen für Haushaltgeräte – verbinden sich zu einem der mächtigsten Mythen der Moderne. Die Gestalt des Vampirs, zu Beginn noch Thema, hat sich zu einem Motiv entwickelt, zu einem auf wenige Elemente verkürzten Code, der auf der ganzen Welt verstanden wird.’ (p. 273)

It is fair to say that Kührer's book is not a detailed account of any particular aspect of the subject, but an overall history of the vampire, as well as an attempt as answering the obvious question: Why does the vampire remain so popular? It is well written and researched, and it is delightful to read a book that is in all aspects in accordance with a modern view of the subject, free of the myths and errors that you find in most other books. For that reason alone, this book is worth reading for the casual reader as well as for those of you who have a special interest in vampires.

Highly recommended.

Vampirism in Austria and Prussia

The digital anthology on vampirism on the Kakanien Revisited web site that I mentioned here contains a recent paper by Thomas Bohn on vampirism in Austria and Prussia (Vampirismus in Österreich und Preussen).

In the paper Bohn provides a brief, but clear and noteworthy history of the vampire and magia posthuma from the late 17th century and onwards that reveals an unusually good knowledge of the literature on vampires. Bohn obviously has studied not only the usual sources, but also some of those that are a bit harder to come by (like perhaps the one shown below) and background information on the period. He discusses the development of the vampire and its connection with geography and the construction of an East-West dichotomy, and in short concludes that 'Summa summarum symbolisierte der schillernde Ausdruck "Vampir" in den westlichen Gesellschaften bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg einen clash of civilizations.' Highly recommended reading.

But my interests lie elsewhere...

Following up on my recent autobiographical note, I should perhaps say a bit more about my current interest in the subject.

I have frequently stressed my interest as 'historical'. I find that it is important to place vampires and magia posthuma in time and space instead of in some Neverland reminiscent of the Transylvania of our fictional or 'symbolic' geography. The people who were afraid of revenants were 'real' people, and it was 'real' people who were doctors, military personnel, priests and other persons in authority who had to find a way to deal with this 'superstition'. Also, it was well-educated and learned people who were involved in debating the incorruptibility of the corpses exhumed and the illness that the supposed victims were suffering from. In my opinion, it is more fascinating to try to understand these people, their concerns, notions, theories, beliefs and fears, and why they spent time on this strange subject, than to perpetuate the vampire mythology of Stoker or Summers, cf. some old posts here, here, and here.

So one of my interests is simply to place vampires and 'posthumous magic' in a historical context by asking relatively simple questions like: What did it look like in 'Medvegia', when people were afraid of vampires in the winter of 1731-32? How were the people dressed? Who were they? What medical background did a field surgeon like Flückinger have? Oh, and where is 'Medvegia' anyway? So I've tried to find out about the Habsburg Militärgrenze, looked for books on soldiers and military uniforms from the 18th century, and have been reading about the development of medicine in those years, but still some of the questions are pretty hard to answer when you're not familiar with the history of those regions, and the amount of information available here in Denmark on the region and period is far from impressive. You can for instance not find a copy of the only modern biography of Charles VI (Bernd Rill: Karl VI. Habsburg als barocke Großmacht) in any Danish library, so I had to get it on loan from Sweden...

On top of such practical obstacles, even historians can have a hard time understanding e.g. the history of the Habsburg Empire, cf. the preface to Charles Ingrao's The Habsburg Empire 1618-1815. Certainly, there are other aspects of the relevant period of European period that is far from described and understood, but then it is intriguing to see how e.g. the research into the witch hunt has developed over the past few years. What is particularly interesting is to see how muddled the picture really is, and how the stereotypical mythology of the progress of enlightened rationality and secularism isn't in harmony with the actual historical development. But then that is one of the aspects that might whet one's appetite for figuring out was going on and why :-)

This particularly goes for the great vampire debate of 1732. Very few studies place this debate in the context of the contemporary scientific and philosophical discourses, and consequently it is hard for most people to get an understanding of why learned people found it necessary to discuss revenants and incorruptibility. I am grateful for the hard work laid down by people like Klaus Hamberger to help understanding the various theories and discussions, because it's frequently hard to understand the context of a past debate.

In this respect, I see the vampire debate as an interesting case for illustrating and understanding the developments in science and academia in those years, as well as in other aspects of society, in an era when science and society developed pretty rapidly. From a more theoretical point of view on the development of the sciences, it is also very interesting to see how phenomena are discriminated and organized in new ways, new theoretical frameworks built, allowing for new institutions and methods. Here the various ways to deal with the 'miracula mortuorum', including incorruptibility and tales of revenants, are an interesting and pretty pertinent example.

No doubt, a lot of interest has been given to some of these subjects over the past decades, e.g. on burial practices, cf. not only the well-known work by Philippe Aries, but later work like that found in the anthologies Körper ohne Leben: Begegnung und Umgang mit Toten edited by Norbert Stefenelli, and The Place of the Dead: Death and Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe edited by Bruce Gordon and Peter Marshall.

Another aspect that has been stressed in the later years, is the relation between vampires and the magia posthuma on one hand and the witchcraft beliefs on the other. Gabor Klaniczay has contributed to this understanding leaving an easily detectable fingerprint on the current understanding of the history of the witch hunt, cf. e.g. volume 5 of The Athlone History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, but I believe that a better understanding of the magia posthuma in e.g. Moravia and Silesia is required, see e.g. the work of Karen Lambrecht, to fully link the history of magia posthuma with that of Central European witchcraft.

This way, the history of vampires and magia posthuma is probably also an interesting case for illustrating and understanding the 'decline of magic' and the development of the modern secular society.

In fact, the 'complete' synthesis of the current knowledge of folklore, archaeology, evidence of revenant beliefs and apotropaics, etc. with the documents and books on vampires and magia posthuma of the 17th and 18th centuries, in my opinion still requires some work. However, with the opening up of borders within Europe, and the easier access to books and archival material, it should be possible to fill in the gaps. So I'm pretty optimistic, and maybe that elusive 'vampire book to end all vampire books' that I mentioned in my recent post, will get published in the near future :-)

Due should of course be given to the people who have put in important work in the later years and have inspired me in my own endeavours. Some have been mentioned in this post, some elsewhere in previous posts on this blog.

Vampires Unstaked

It is well-known that the vampire became a political metaphor almost immediately after the 1732 Medvedja case was published across Europe. Markman Ellis has described in The History of Gothic Fiction (Edinburgh University Press, 2000) how the vampire played a role in the British political debate as early as that very year, and to this day the vision of the bloodsucker or the living dead vampire still crops up in the media as a potent political metaphor.

An example from academia is the published proceedings of a colloquium on “National stereotypes as Factors of Political Change in East Central Europe” that took place on 18-20 May 1994 in Amsterdam. The title of the book is Vampires Unstaked: National Images, Stereotypes and Myths in East Central Europe and it is edited by André Gerrits and Nanci Adler (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1995). In the introduction the choice of title is explained this way:

“Robert Hayden employed the expression ‘vampires unstaked’ in his discussion on the ‘return’ of the Cetniks and the Ustasas in the Yugoslav war. The term so appropriately characterized the phenomena dealt with here that we did not hesitate to borrow it for the book’s title.”

The Cetniks (Četnici) and Ustasa (Ustaše) were nationalist organizations from respectively Serbia and Croatia, both of which fought the Communist partisans at the end of the Second World War.

In his paper, ‘The Use of National Stereotypes in the Wars in Yugoslavia’, Robert Hayden, associate professor in the Department of Antropology of the University of Pittsburgh, writes:

“The inflammatory nature of the Serb and Croat portrayals of each other as Ustasas and Cetniks received credibility by the adoption of Ustasa and Cetnik images, symbols and uniforms by some political figures in Croatia and Serbia. The fall of communist rule and the end of its suppression of these symbols and images pulled the stakes from the hearts of these fascist vampires.” (p. 213, my emphasis)

The vampire metaphor here both relates to the fascist nature of the Cetniks and Ustatas as well as to the revival of these terms. Hayden talks of “the transformation of Cetniks and Ustasas from horror story to horrible reality” (p. 215) and analyses the “symbolic geography” that plays a central part in this transformation.

We are all no doubt aware of the symbolic geography that e.g. divides Europe into a more privileged and advanced West and a poorer and possibly uncivilized East, and that creates divisions based on religion. Hayden quotes one Eugene Hammel on this subject:

“the emergence of the modern standard classification that identifies Croats with Catholicism and Serbs with Orthodoxy came only with the absolutism of the Habsburgs in the 18th Century. Ethnic classification in the Balkans is thus not strictly an endogenous process but either exogenously imposed or endogenously shaped in response to exogenous pressures.” (p. 208)

More interesting analysis of and background material for the “symbolic geography” of East Central Europe can also be found in three papers on Transylvania: ‘Transylvania: Myth and Reality. Changing Awareness of Transylvanian Identity’, ‘The Politicization of Myths: The Transylvanian Case’, and ‘Transylvania and the Great Powers: 1945-1946’.

So although Vampires Unstaked does not contain information on Magia Posthuma, it is an interesting collection of studies on how images, stereotypes and myths play an important role in shaping political events. No doubt many of us are aware of other political 'vampires' that unfortunately have become or may become unstaked in the near future.