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Dracula: Leben Und Legende
Vlad Draculea starb 1477. Dracula aber lebt weiter. Kaum eine andere Personlichkeit der Geschichte wirft einen so langen und dusteren Schatten in den Phantasien der Menschen. Der durch Dichtung und Filmkunst verzerrte Karpatenfurst mag noch heute manchen aus dem Schlaf schrecken. Uber das historische Vorbild weiss man hingegen in der Regel nur sehr wenig. Heiko Haumann erschliesst mit diesem gleichermassen spannenden und informativen Buch die geschichtlichen Zusammenhange, aus denen Dracula hervorging, erhellt das Phanomen des Vampirismus und erschliesst zahllose Mythen, die sich um den Ahnherrn aller Blutsauger ranken.
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- GenresHistory
130 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 11, 2022
What distinguishes Vlad Drăculeas life from that of other famous historical "villains" is that it was actually interesting. Raised as a hostage by the Ottomans, later fought them and achieved fame as a war hero with his skillful surprise attacks, preserved the independence of his domain, accused of treason before the Pope but got away with a suspiciously light sentence of detainment and then married the daughter of the man who (probably) framed and imprisoned him, who was no one lesser than the king of Hungary, Matthias Corvinus. Even Vlad Drăculeas physical appearance was imposing.
Whether he was as cruel as the pamphleteers of his time suggest cannot be answered conclusively from the sources we have. On the one hand, much of it reeks of propaganda, and he gave plenty of people reason to hate him, the Ottomans by defeating them, the Germans by interfering with their trade, the Hungarians by rivaling their status as defender of Christendom, and the Boyars by checking their power. Basically, he had no friends, besides King Corvinus maybe, which is odd enough. Still, we can't chalk all of it up to propaganda, because the charge of cruelty is so widespread and still pretty specific. He was also charged with cowardice by the Ottomans, but I think that can safely be attributed to the usual disdain of organized armies for more mobile or irregular armies, especially ones that defeat them. His other contemporaries praised both his courage and, at least sometimes, his justice. Lastly, they seem to have been fairly silent on any other vices of his, be it lecherousness, gluttony or greed, so that they singled out cruelty is significant. What we know of his conduct reinforces that there was something to these charges and the image they created. Impalement, as he undoubtedly practiced it, was not such an uncommon punishment back in the Late Middle Ages, but Drăculea seems to have made more liberal use of it than his contemporaries. His style of warfare, while effective, also caused the peasants much grief, as they were ordered to depart their houses with all their cattle and leave into the woods, and destroy their own wells to deny the advancing Ottomans any supplies.
What disappointed me was that the historical section was only roughly half the book, while the rest was a review of Drăculeas cultural reception, which brought back bad memories of The Crimes of Elagabalus or, to a lesser extent, Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World. Thankfully, this review was pretty good in its own right, and I expected it from the title, just not that it would make up half the book. The author talks about vampire myths throughout history, mentioning such creatures as the Lamia, the Strigoi or the Wurdulak, and describes how the very real belief in them influenced how people act. Throughout Central Europe, corpses would be dug up and desecrated to prevent them from haunting the living.
Interestingly, many of the cases he mentions coincide with the times of the great witch hunts, which happens to coincide with the Little Ice Age. I can't blame the author for not raising this point, as it is rather specialized, but I don't think it's a coincidence at all. Rather, based on Wolfgang Behringers research (which I still have to study in detail), I believe both had the climate change as their cause, or more specifically the desperate reaction of superstitious people who tried to avert its consequences. Haumann focuses more on the sense of identity that the folk beliefs in vampirism fostered, in particular by allowing peasants to understand events on their own terms rather than the terms of the Church or the more educated aristocrats.
Later, he describes the evolution of vampire fiction, first stories and novels and then movies. I was surprised that no one cared so much about Lord Drăculea until Bram Stoker published a book inspired by him. Before that, Erzsébet Báthory was the more iconic "historical" vampire. Not only that, before Stoker, no one even considered Drăculea a vampire or anything close. Not even his critics raised this charge, if I remember correctly, or at least the pamphleteers and the Ottomans didn't. What all this fiction did was reinforce the notion of Eastern Europe as backwards, less enlightened but more mysterious than the West (originally, Poles, Balticans and Russians were seen as "northern European", and much of "Eastern Europe" was the Orient).
So in summary, this was a good book which should please both historians and vampire enthusiasts, although it might be a bit too short for either of them.
Whether he was as cruel as the pamphleteers of his time suggest cannot be answered conclusively from the sources we have. On the one hand, much of it reeks of propaganda, and he gave plenty of people reason to hate him, the Ottomans by defeating them, the Germans by interfering with their trade, the Hungarians by rivaling their status as defender of Christendom, and the Boyars by checking their power. Basically, he had no friends, besides King Corvinus maybe, which is odd enough. Still, we can't chalk all of it up to propaganda, because the charge of cruelty is so widespread and still pretty specific. He was also charged with cowardice by the Ottomans, but I think that can safely be attributed to the usual disdain of organized armies for more mobile or irregular armies, especially ones that defeat them. His other contemporaries praised both his courage and, at least sometimes, his justice. Lastly, they seem to have been fairly silent on any other vices of his, be it lecherousness, gluttony or greed, so that they singled out cruelty is significant. What we know of his conduct reinforces that there was something to these charges and the image they created. Impalement, as he undoubtedly practiced it, was not such an uncommon punishment back in the Late Middle Ages, but Drăculea seems to have made more liberal use of it than his contemporaries. His style of warfare, while effective, also caused the peasants much grief, as they were ordered to depart their houses with all their cattle and leave into the woods, and destroy their own wells to deny the advancing Ottomans any supplies.
What disappointed me was that the historical section was only roughly half the book, while the rest was a review of Drăculeas cultural reception, which brought back bad memories of The Crimes of Elagabalus or, to a lesser extent, Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World. Thankfully, this review was pretty good in its own right, and I expected it from the title, just not that it would make up half the book. The author talks about vampire myths throughout history, mentioning such creatures as the Lamia, the Strigoi or the Wurdulak, and describes how the very real belief in them influenced how people act. Throughout Central Europe, corpses would be dug up and desecrated to prevent them from haunting the living.
Interestingly, many of the cases he mentions coincide with the times of the great witch hunts, which happens to coincide with the Little Ice Age. I can't blame the author for not raising this point, as it is rather specialized, but I don't think it's a coincidence at all. Rather, based on Wolfgang Behringers research (which I still have to study in detail), I believe both had the climate change as their cause, or more specifically the desperate reaction of superstitious people who tried to avert its consequences. Haumann focuses more on the sense of identity that the folk beliefs in vampirism fostered, in particular by allowing peasants to understand events on their own terms rather than the terms of the Church or the more educated aristocrats.
Later, he describes the evolution of vampire fiction, first stories and novels and then movies. I was surprised that no one cared so much about Lord Drăculea until Bram Stoker published a book inspired by him. Before that, Erzsébet Báthory was the more iconic "historical" vampire. Not only that, before Stoker, no one even considered Drăculea a vampire or anything close. Not even his critics raised this charge, if I remember correctly, or at least the pamphleteers and the Ottomans didn't. What all this fiction did was reinforce the notion of Eastern Europe as backwards, less enlightened but more mysterious than the West (originally, Poles, Balticans and Russians were seen as "northern European", and much of "Eastern Europe" was the Orient).
So in summary, this was a good book which should please both historians and vampire enthusiasts, although it might be a bit too short for either of them.
February 26, 2017
Die meisten Interessierten wissen, dass die Figur Graf Draculas auf Vlad Draculea Tepes zurückgeht. Doch wie kam es dazu, dass dieser Kriegsherr zum Vampir wurde? Dies erklärt uns Haumann in seinem Werk. Das Buch ist in zwei Teile gegliedert: im ersten lernen wir Tepes und seine Kriege kennen. Davon gibt es viele und diesen Teil fand ich nach anfänglichem Interesse dann doch recht langatmig. Im zweiten Teil geht es um den Mythos Vampir. Woher kommt er, was genau ist ein Vampir und wie schlägt sich der Glaube an Vampire im früheren und heutigen Leben nieder. So arbeitet sich der Autor langsam auf den Kern der Sache zu: Bram Stroker. War er doch der erste, der Tepes und Vampire zusammenfügte und damit den modernen Graf Dracula schuf.
Haumanns Buch ist vor allem zu Beginn nicht ganz leicht zu lesen, dennoch finde ich, dass es sich lohnt. Zumindest für alle jene, die wissen wollen, was hier wirklich gespielt wird. Haumann hat wirklich gute Arbeit geleistet und fügt ein Puzzleteil ins nächste, ausufernd zwar, aber irgendwie muss man ja die Seiten füllen. Ein Tipp für alle Vampirfans auf der Suche nach den echten Vampiren!
Haumanns Buch ist vor allem zu Beginn nicht ganz leicht zu lesen, dennoch finde ich, dass es sich lohnt. Zumindest für alle jene, die wissen wollen, was hier wirklich gespielt wird. Haumann hat wirklich gute Arbeit geleistet und fügt ein Puzzleteil ins nächste, ausufernd zwar, aber irgendwie muss man ja die Seiten füllen. Ein Tipp für alle Vampirfans auf der Suche nach den echten Vampiren!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews