William Layher HORRORS of the EAST Printing Dracole Wayda In

William Layher

HORRORS OF THE EAST

Printing Dracole Wayda in 15th-century Germany

Summary

This article examines the media history of the printed Dracula pamphlets that began to appear in the wealthy imperial cities and trade centers of southern and central Germany in the final years of the 15th century. These pamphlets publiciz- ing the extreme and unusual cruelties committed by Vlad T¸ epes¸ (‘the Impaler’) in Wallachia and Siebenbürgen entertained a readership hungry for news of the exotic and threatening East. New evidence is presented here confirming the existence of a previously unknown fifth written account (perhaps a broadside from around 1470?) that served as a source for the printed pamphlets. In addition, this article considers why these shocking accounts began to appear in print in 1488, some twelve years after Vlad T¸ epes¸ had been killed. I argue here that the pamphlets invoke the twin notions of Peinigung ‘torment’ and arbitrary cruelty that were so characteristic of the Turkish threat in the late 15th century. By articulating a functional equivalency between Vlad T¸ epes¸ and the Sultan, the pamphlets show Dracula to be a figure who has ‘crossed over’ to the Other side.

In the autumn of 1488 a series of printed pamphlets recounting the gruesome deeds of Vlad III of Wallachia — otherwise known as Vlad Dracula — began to appear in the wealthy merchant cities of Bavaria, Franconia, Saxony and Elsace. The first of these was printed in Nuremberg on October 14, 1488, with a second edition, pirated by a different Offizin in Nuremberg, appearing in the final months of that year. Other editions were printed in Bamberg (1491), Leipzig (1493), Augsburg (1494), again in Nuremberg (1499), in Strassburg (1500) and in Lübeck (after 1488).1 The pamphlets are in quarto format, generally consisting of two leaves. Typical features include a brief title and woodcut illustration — often a portrait of Vlad Dracula (see image 1), although some editions show Vlad

1 See Dieter Harmening: Der Anfang von Dracula. Zur Geschichte von Ge- schichten. Würzburg 1983 (= Quellen und Forschungen zur europäischen Ethnologie 1). For complete codicological details see Appendix 1: Editions of Dracole Wayda 1488-1500 (below).

Daphnis 37 2008 12 William Layher seated at a table before a backdrop of impaled victims. The pamphlets open with a thumbnail biography of Vlad III and his rise to power in Wallachia in 1447, but the majority of the text is devoted to a numbingly repetitive account of the repertoire of atrocities Vlad was said to have committed during his reign — episodes of impale- ment, beheading, boiling alive, forced cannibalism, the amputation of breasts, the disembowelment of women, and more. All in all, the text known as Dracole Wayda features some forty-six different scenes of cruelty, torture and murder. Despite compendious (and unfortunately not always rigorous) research into the historical Dracula2 and the late-medieval and early modern sources on his life, the sudden appearance of these pamphlets in Germany in 1488 — twelve years after the prince of Wallachia had died — has never been satisfactorily explained. Why then? Why Nuremberg? Why Dracula? The goal of this essay is to offer some new insights into the transmission of the Dracula texts before 1500, into their historical context, and to explore the affini- ties between Dracole Wayda and other late-medieval prints that engage with the image of the Other.

Historical Context

Vlad III of Wallachia was for much of medieval Europe in the years around 1460 known not as a bloodthirsty villain, but instead as a hero: a valiant defender of the Faith against the marauding Turkish armies and a renowned military commander whose campaign along the Eastern border of the Christian realm saved Europe in its hour of need. Indeed, the need was great, for Christendom was in dire need of a champion. For over a hundred years, beginning in the

2 The authoritative work on the subject is Harmening: Der Anfang von Dracula (fn. 1). Other reputable studies on the life and times of Vlad III include Radu Florescu and Raymond T. McNally: Dracula. A Biography of Vlad the Impaler, 1431-1476. London 1974; Matei Cazacu: L’histoire du Prince Dracula en Europe centrale et orientale (XVe siécle): Présentation, édition critique, traduction et commentaire. Genéve 1988 (= Hautes études médiévales et modernes 61); Radu Florescu and Raymond T. McNally: Dracula, Prince of Many Faces. His Life and His Times. Boston 1989; Stefan Andreescu: Vlad the Impaler. Dracula. Bucharest 1999.

Daphnis 37 2008