Serbian vampires close-up!

This Serbian documentary provides an exceptional look at some of the places related to vampire history and legends in Serbia, including Kisiljevo and Medvedja. As I do not understand the language, I cannot tell you much about what they are actually saying, but names of places and persons, like e.g. Petar Blagojevic (i.e. 'Peter Plogojowitz'), are easy to recognize. Part two also includes some (split screen) clips from the old Leptirica film.

It is pretty ridiculous to see a guy trying to locate the grave of Blagojevic using a pendulum, and I had to smile when I saw Flückinger portrayed as an old man writing the Visum & Repertum. But I find it very nice to see Serbians reclaiming the vampire. After all this is where it started. Without the vampires - or at least the villagers worried about vampires - of Kisiljevo and Medvedja we would hardly be talking about vampires today.

Dracula Lives!

This evening German TV channel ZDF aired a new documentary, Dracula lebt (Dracula lives), which is fortunately available online here. In German, of course, but worth watching even if you do not understand that language for its scenes from Romania, Vienna, Whitby etc. Elizabeth Miller, Dacre Stoker, Hagen Schaub, Mark Benecke are among the participating experts. A number of photos from the documentary can be found on Der Spiegel's web site.

A unique tour of vampire sites and other remarkable places in Serbia

Predrag Djordevic, an experienced tourist guide in Serbia, has suggested that he can arrange a tour of vampire related sites as well as other exciting places in Serbia if an adequate number of people are interested.

The tour would probably last 4-5 days and could e.g. be in June or September of 2010. Those participating would have to arrange individual travel to and from Belgrade, but otherwise a tour by air conditioned bus would include:
• Sightseeing in Belgrade and information on the Belgrade Vampire
• Kisiljevo, Medvedja, and Kukljin, known from vampire history
• The mill related to the vampire Sava Savanovic
• 14th century Ljubostjinja monastery and other sights en route
• Pozarevac (Passarowitz) where the Habsburgs and Ottomans signed a peace agreement in 1717
• Conversations with locals on e.g. vampires
• Local food and wine
Depending on the interest and contributions, it is also possible to include a seminar, individual lectures or similar activities.

Djordevic and I have corresponded on the matter for some time, and we now need some feedback to gauge the interest in participating in a unique tour like the one suggested. Nothing is set, so your feedback will only state an initial interest and it will also allow you to provide additional suggestions. The date and price will very much depend on the number of participants, so no one who contacts me stating an interest in this tour has made any commitment whatsoever, only stated an interest!

This will probably be the first tour of its kind, so if we succeed in arranging it, those who participate will certainly be in for a unique experience, including exploring the actual places where vampire cases were investigated in the 18th century.

If you are interested, please contact me at niels@magiaposthuma.com as soon as possible, stating:
1) The number of people you write on behalf of
2) Whether June or September 2010 would be possible
3) If you would be interested in a seminar in conjunction with the tour
4) If you have any ideas or suggestions you would like to propose

'Let's save Dracula!'

When in Germany and Austria I have been amazed that there is an audience for magazines that are pretty high brow. In one of the news stands at the Vienna airport I saw a magazine on romanticism that contained e.g. an article on Caspar David Friedrich. It would be impossible to sell something like that in Denmark, but as the above photo shows, the so-called 'historical' Dracula is at times the subject of magazines here in Denmark.

A reader from Romania recently sent me an e-mail with the subject line: 'Let's save Dracula!'. Although it is hard to be interested in vampires and posthumous magic without reading about Vlad Tepes, I personally devote very little time to the subject of this 15th century Valachian ruler. So I had to answer that I probably am the wrong person to involve in an enterprise concerning Vlad Dracula.

But I would like to devote a few lines about a recent effort that shows the way of dealing with both Dracula and vampires, namely an exhibition at the Austrian Castle Ambras in Innsbruck, which I unfortunately was unaware of at the time in 2008. I recently acquired the beautiful and excellent catalogue which documents this stunning and extraordinary exhibition, and I certainly regret that I did not get to see the exhibition :-(

Judging from the catalogue, the exhibition must have been divided into four sections, the first one concerning Vlad III. Dracula, including portraits and manuscripts. There are a number of portraits I have never seen before, and all are remarkably reproduced. The second part concerns Balkan from the period of Vlad Tepes in the 15th century to the time of the vampire cases in the 18th century, including portraits of some of the key persons from the period, maps, weapons, pieces of dress etc.

The following part is about vampirism and traces the vampire in documents and books from Glaser, Flückinger and Ranft and onwards, so here are e.g. examples of the original reports on vampires (in the photo below the report on the presumed vampiress Dorothea Pissin in Banat in February 1753 is shown). The relationship to bats and the fictional vampire are explored, including some of Stoker's notes for Dracula. In the final part the cinematic Dracula is traced through posters and film stills.

In the catalogue each part is introduced with an essay, and every item is described and explained in detail. The catalogue also contains a tabular overview of the German tales about Vlad Dracula, some source texts, and a bibliography.

Obviously this is the way to do it, as I can hardly imagine that anything like this exhibition has been put together before! The catalogue itself is not only stunningly beautiful, but well written and researched, and can be used as a comprehensive resource on Vlad Tepes, Balkan, and both the historical and fictional vampires.

It is, of course, written in what appears to be the lingua franca of this subject: German, but everyone can enjoy the illustrations. To understand the context, you must however read the text.

Even when it comes to the souvenirs there is more class to this extraordinary exhibition than the plastic souvenirs we are used to. The pendant shown along with the catalogue in my photo above is 22 ct gold plated! So I think it is fair to say: Forget about Hollywood, wax museums and the usual Halloween plastic. In stead look to the people at Schloss Ambras and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna for inspiration. They have certainly set a new standard for approaching and presenting Dracula and the history of vampires.

The Birth of the Vampire

Michael Pickering whom I mentioned here, presented a talk on the subject of The Birth of the Vampire in Vienna couple of days ago. According to this notice, 'By investigating reports of bodies believed to be those of vampires in eighteenth-century Serbia, I hope to enunciate some of the ways in which the vampire was constructed within, and ultimately became a product of, learned discourse in the so-called Age of Reason. My research takes me to the frontiers of the Hapsburg Monarchy in the winter of 1731-32, when Austrian military officials sanctioned the exhumation and destruction of bodies found to be in an uncorrupted state. The reports issued from the medical investigations of these cases quickly found their way into scholarly documents, initiating the so-called vampire debate of the 1730s. My general inquiry, I hope, serves to contextualize this temporally localized debate within a broader structural shift that sees the body change from a conduit of supernatural knowledge to a site of scientific knowledge. It is perhaps for this reason that long after the scholarly vampire debate subsided, and Serbia had been once more absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, that reports of the burning of dead bodies in Moravia ignited such a heated response on the part of the political establishment in 1750s Vienna.'