Germany: Monsters, Myths, and Mysteries
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INVESTIGATIVE FILES JOE NICKELL Germany: Monsters, Myths, and Mysteries ocated in the heart of Europe, each write a ghost story" (Hindle 1992). Germany has had a more pro- Mary Shelley would subsequently Lfound impact on the history of write in her Author's Introduction that the continent than any other country. the two poets had discussed rumors of According to one source: "From animation experiments and speculation Charlemagne and the Holy Roman that "galvanism" (electricity) might rean- Empire to Otto von Bismarck's German imate a corpse. With such thoughts in Reich, Nazism and the rise and fall of mind, she retired after "the witching the Berlin Wall, no other nation has hour" but did not sleep. Instead, her molded Europe the way Germany has— imagination led her to see—"with shut for better or for worse" (Schulte-Peevers eyes, but acute mental vision"—"the pale et al. 2002, 17). Today, freed of its own student of unhallowed arts kneeling post-World-War-II division, Germany beside the thing he had put together." leads in the effort to unite Europe. She continued: "I saw the hideous phan- In October 2002, I made my second tasm of a man stretched out, and then, visit to Germany, this time to speak at on the working of some powerful the biannual symposium of the engine, show signs of life, and stir with European Council of Skeptical Organi- an uneasy, half-vital motion. Frightful zations and to conduct an investigations must it be; for supremely frightful would workshop for German skeptics at the be the effect of any human endeavor to Center for Inquiry-Europe in Rossdorf. mock the stupendous mechanism or the I was also able, with the untiring assis- Figure 1. Ruins of Frankenstein Castle atop Creator of the world" (Shelley 1831). tance of the centers Executive Director, Magnet Mountain. Mary does not state how she adopted Dr. Martin Mahner, to spend the taken its name from this ruined fortress the name Victor Frankenstein for the remainder of the sixteen-day trip inves- (figure 1), which is otherwise linked to monster's creator. However, Radu tigating a number of myths and legends, monster and bodysnatching tales. Florescu in his In Search of Frankenstein only a few of which, alas, can be dis- Most accounts of die fictional cre- (1975, 45-62) makes a convincing case cussed in this investigative travelogue. ation of Frankenstein's monster rely on that it was inspired by Burg Mary Shelley's own version of events. It Frankenstein (i.e., "castle of the Franks' Frankenstein Castle was a dark and stormy night in 1816. She rock"). Located about seven kilometers The great monster story and pioneering (tJien Mary Godwin) and her future hus- from Darmstadt, the ruins are those of work of science fiction, Mary Shelley's band, poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, were at a castle originally built on a smaller 1818 novel Frankenstein, may have the Swiss villa of another famous English scale about 1250. Florescu points out poet. Lord Byron, togeuSer with two oth- that Mary and her lover Shelley had Joe Nickell is CSICOP's Senior Research ers. They had been reading French trans- earlier visited the region, traveling Fellow and author of numerous investiga- lations of German ghost tales when by boat down the Rhine in 1814. tive books. Byron suddenly proclaimed, "We will They must surely have known they were 2 4 March/April 2003 SKEPTICAL INQUIRER in "Frankenstein country" and probably novel" (Johann 2002). Also, some of spied die castles distinctive double-towers Mary Shelley's admirers resent the silhouetted atop the mountain. implications of the evidence, that her It is even possible they visited the cas- use of a real-life model calls into ques- tle itself or, in any event, learned from tion her originality (Clerici 2002). their German traveling companions its However, great writers have frequently legends. These include the tale of Knight relied on sources while adapting them to Georg von Frankenstein and a dragon- their creative purposes. like monster that had terrorized the If it is true that Dippel and Franken- vicinity. Sir Georg was a real person stein Castle were sources for Mary whose tomb in the nearby village of Shelley's novel, it seems fittingly ironic Nieder-Beerbach bears the date of his that in recent years "monsters" have death in 1531. Although he siew the returned to the castle. No, Martin creature—probably only a snake (die Manner and 1 saw no strange creatures exaggeration being attributable to his when we prowled the ruins and sur- popular identification with St. George rounding forest, but throughout the the dragon slayer)—it succeeded in region we did encounter posters and ads piercing his armor below the knee and so for spooky goings-on, emblazoned poisoning him (Florescu 1975, 53-69). "Halloween/burg Frankenstein." Other legends relating to Burg (Martin notes that Halloween—not a Frankenstein concern an alchemist, German tradition—was established by Johann Konrad Dippel (1673-1734). Americans, there still being American Although not a descendant of the Fran- army facilities in nearby Darmstadt.) kensteins, Dippel had been born in the castle and at university registered as a res- Alien Hybrid? Figure 2. Alleged "alien hybrid" in Saxony. ident of "Franckensteina." However, after In a cabinet in a small natural-history period of the world's history abnormal two years marked by "scandalous behav- museum in Waldenburg, Saxony, is a creatures or monstrosities, both human ior," he was forced to flee at night due to strange curio (figure 2) that one writer and animal, have existed from time to a "serious incident," rumored to have has termed "Germany's greatest mys- time and excited the wonder of involved bodysnatching from a local tery" (Hausdorf 2000). It is die fetus mankind." The births of monsters were cemetery. Subsequently, Dippel turned to of—well, that is the question: what is it? explained in superstitious, often super- alchemy and claimed to have discovered a Could it be—as some UFOIogists natural, terms. They might be thought secret formula by which he transmuted insist—an alien hybrid? to presage calamities and disasters, or be silver and mercury into pure gold. He also considered as evidence of Divine wrath. sought to produce an elixir of life, and to Known locally from its strange that end conducted experiments in distill- appearance as the "chicken man," the Some believed them the result of mating ing blood and the boiled residue of bones. fetus can be traced to the year 1735 with animals (Thompson 1968). when it was stillborn in the Saxonian A widespread popular notion was In his eventual medical thesis at the village of Taucha. It was to have been the that—along with birthmarks or other University of Leiden (1711) Dippel fourth child of Johanna Sophia defects—they were caused by some- focused on his previous chemical exper- Schmiedt, who was in the eighth month thing the mother saw or touched during iments and animal studies. He practiced of her pregnancy. She was twenty-eight her pregnancy (DeLys 1989). In fact, vivisection on animals and came to and her husband Andreas, "a hunch- in the case at hand, Mrs. Schmiedt's believe that the body was an inert mass back," ten years her senior. Two years patient history recorded her own animated by a spirit that could be trans- later, in 1737, Leipzig physician apparent explanation, that she previ- formed into another corpse to reanimate Gottlieb Friderici autopsied the pre- ously had had a very frightening it (Florescu 1975, 63-86). served fetus and published a report, encounter with a marten (an animal The parallels between Mary Shelley's illustrated with two copperplate engrav- related to the weasel). character, Victor Frankenstein, and ings and titled "Monstrum Humanum In mentioning diis, one writer sug- Konrad Dippel, the alchemist, are strik- Rarissimum" ("Most Rare Human gests that the recollected marten was only ing, as Florescu (1975, 86) observes. Monster") (Mullcr 1999; Monstrum a "cover memory" for an extraterrestrial Not everyone accepts the evidence, 1994; Ausscrirdisches 2002). encounter and that die deformed fetus however. One source cautions that the Dr. Friderici concluded that the term was an alien/human hybrid. Supposedly lack of substantiated information about "monster" was appropriate because of it resembles the small "grays" (Ausserir- Dippel's life "leaves much room for the fetus's divergence from normal disches 2002) but die comparison is doubt, and many of the traits attributed human anatomy. According to one trea- poor. For example, whereas that alleged to him may postdate Mary Shelley's tise on monsters, "From the earliest type of humanoid is portrayed with a SKEPTICAL INQUIRER March/Apt.l 2003 25 large head, it lacks the bizarre bulbous Museologist Ulrike Budig was most January 30, 1933, they began to inflict growth of the fetus. And whereas the helpful, unlocking the cabinet's glass their Nazi ideology of racism and state grays have a "distinguishing characteris- doors so we could examine and photo- supremacy on targeted groups: especially tic: black, wraparound eyes" (Huyghe graph the specimen from various angles. Jews, but also Gypsies, homosexuals, the 1996), the fetus instead possesses "very We learned that genetic tests had mentally ill, dissenting clergymen, and round eye sockets" (Ausserirdisches 2002 been conducted by experts in Berlin and many others. These began to fill Dachau, [emphasis added]). Heidelberg (Monstrum 1994). They the first concentration camp, which was One source claims of the fetus that studied the chromosomes using Com- established March 20. "nothing in either its interior or exterior parative Genomic Hybridization, an The camp also became the site of hor- configuration corresponds to that which analytical method developed in 1993.