Some checking prior to writing this article led to another couple of dates being listed. In Stoker’s Notes for Dracula the date 1853 is given and the publication Chambers's Repository of Instructive and Amusing Tracts listed, other sources suggest that it was printed in 1854. The use of this date is understandable as the Internet Archive has the publication listed as 1853. However if you look into the online scan of the publication it clearly has the printing date as 1854 but this does not necessarily reflect the publication date. I am sticking with 1853 but we must also remember that this is the translation, the story states “Translated from the German”. The illustrative image at the head is from Chambers’s Repository. John Edgar Browning suggests in Horror Literature through History that the original was "first published in German as “Der Fremde” by Karl Adolf von Wachsmann in Erzählungen und Novellen (1844), then in installments in the popular literary magazine Würzburg Conversationblatt (May--June 1847)" (2017, p158).
The content of the story is, however, most remarkable. It pre-empts Dracula in a couple of ways and has a slight Vernian element to it. It begins with a group of travellers. The Knight of Fahnenberg had inherited estates in the Carpathians and he travelled with his beautiful daughter Franziska. There was also the young aristocrat Baron Franz von Kronstein, Fahnenberg’s nephew and Franziska’s companion Bertha.
Franziska is quite an arrogant young lady and disdainful of the affections that Franz holds for her. He is described as an incredibly handsome youth but she prefers men of action, such as Bertha’s betrothed the Castellan of Glogau, Knight of Woislaw. Woislaw, a scarred warrior and who has lost one hand, is away fighting the Turks. In fact she actually would prefer such a man, even if he were to abuse her, than someone she deems as effeminate.
It is winter and they find themselves stalked by starving wolves. They make a break and, despite their guide’s reticence, head towards the ruins of Klatka (which are on fahnenberg’s estates) and get just outside them when the wolves catch them. A Stranger appears, placing himself between the company and the wolves, and somehow causes the wolves to stop. A wave of his hand causes them to slink back into the forest. The stranger then vanishes into the ruins (for some reason the company do not pursue him to find out who he was but continue on their way).
So, at this point we have the vampire (for that is who the stranger is) with an affinity for wolves and a setting of the Carpathians. It is some time after the first encounter that the newcomers explore the ruins. Just after sunset they meet the stranger again and, though he doesn’t give them a name, he is invited to visit them. We get the following dialogue:
"You wish it ?--You press the invitation?" asked the stranger earnestly and decidedly.
"To be sure, for otherwise you will not come," replied the young lady shortly.
"Well, then, come I will!" said the other, again fixing his gaze on her. "If my company does not please you at any time, you will have yourself to blame for an acquaintance with one who seldom forces himself, but is difficult to shake off."
It is easy to suggest that this is a form of needing an invitation, in fact later he apologises for coming unannounced but makes a point of reminding that he was invited. He gives his name as Azzo von Klatka and is given a description that suggests a grey complexion and contemptuous, piercing grey eyes. Though he arrives at dinner time he does not partake and suggests he relies on a liquid diet!
His predation is on Franziska who has a repeated “dream” of him coming to her and kissing her neck, just where a cut appears that never seems to heal. She becomes weaker and weaker (with symptoms that sound consumptive) and he becomes more rosy of complexion as time passes. He only visited when the moon shines and later we hear that vampires “were deceased persons, who had once served as nourishment to Vampires, or who had died in deadly sin, or under excommunication; and that whenever the moon shone, they rose from their graves, and sucked the blood of the living.”
This is told to us by Woislaw when he visits Bertha. He protects the Baron, who was challenging the vampire to a dual, by shaking the creature’s hand. Because he has a mechanical hand (our Vernian aspect of the tale) he has a more than human strength in his grip and the vampire mistakes him for one of his own kind, assuming that Woislaw wishes to feed on the Baron. This mistaking the knight for a vampire due to his perceived preternatural strength was something that had happened previously to him whilst in Hungary.
He gets Franziska to pursue her own cure – though he does not explain the circumstances or the fact that Azzo is a vampire until afterwards. He takes her to the vampire’s grave as the sun sets with an hour before the moon rises. He tells her to descend into the crypt, whilst he prays upstairs, and there “…you will find, close to the entrance, a coffin, on which is placed a small packet. Open this packet, and you will find three long iron nails and a hammer. Then pause for a moment; but when I begin to repeat the Credo in a loud voice, knock with all your might, first one nail, then a second and then a third, into the lid of the coffin, tight up to their heads.”
Whilst she does this, Azzo struggles in his coffin and blood seeps out, which the girl must rub into her wound to heal it (and, presumably cure the infection).
Over all it is a rich and fulfilling tale, predating Stoker.
4 comments:
In the German original, "Der Fremde," by Von Wachsmann, the story doesn't take place in the Carpathians—the words for Carpathia and Carpathians (Karpaten) aren't mentioned even once! Instead, the story takes place in "den Krainer Gebirgen"—the mountains of Carniola, a former Austro-Hungarian region whose capital was Ljubljana—in present-day Slovenia, some hundreds of kilometers from Carpathia! I'm not sure how the notion arose that the story takes place in Carpathia, but every source online seems to repeat it. And sure enough, the English so-called "translation" (which, BTW, is considerably abbreviated) sets the story in the Carpathians, an error that has been repeated again and again ever since.
Donald, that's really interesting. Thank You.
I think the Carpathians stand as a pre-Stoker reference (in the way that it pre-dates in the English mis-translation and the fact that Stoker references it in his notes).
It would be really interesting to see a translation done of the full German text.
Many thanks for stopping by and giving us that information, greatly appreciated.
Thank you!
By the way, if there is anyone who wants to have a go at translating the full German text of "Der Fremde," it can be found, in the old "Fraktur" typeface, in Wachsmann's works here (https://bit.ly/2JyrIPe). I didn't read that version, however—I learned of it only recently. When I went in search of the German original (after reading "The Mysterious Stranger" in The 5th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories), I found it in Die Totenbraut: Deutsche Vampirgeschichten des 19. Jahrhunderts, Edition Spiegelberg, 2016, where it gives the date of the story as 1843. The introduction to that volume has an interesting remark about that date: it says that the story first appeared in Lilienbuch: Taschenbuch historisch-romantischer Erzählungen für 1844, but adds that that volume appeared in bookstores ("in den Handel kam") in 1843! So the date confusion somewhat parallels that of the first appearance of the English version of the story, as mentioned above.
I didn't compare the English version that I read in Fontana to the original English version in Chambers; and I didn't compare the German version that I read to the Fraktur version above (or the version that appeared in Lilienbuch that I cited—I didn't look for it even, at least not yet!). So there could be some discrepancies (hopefully minor) between the more modern editions that I read and the originals.
The English translation in Fontana was very artfully done. Though it omitted words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and even entire pages that were in the German version, the English translation was seamless. Most of the omissions were not essential, but there was one delightful passage in the German that was unfortunately omitted: in it, the vampire's horse has been placed in the same stable as the horses of his victim's family—and the horses bucked and reared in fright even though the vampire ("Azzo von Klatka") was nowhere near! I thought that that was a rather nice touch.
One last remark about the Carpathians vs. Carniola: I'd read online in the French Wikipedia article about Wachsmann the misleading remark that "Il est notamment l'auteur de L'étranger des Carpathes (1844)"—interpreting that to mean that the story had been translated into French in 1844, leading me to theorize that the French version was the source of the error that the story took place in the Carpathians. Wrong! I went in search of the French translation, and found it published by Le Castor Astral, 2013. Per the introduction, the story there was translated "pour la première fois en langue française" (for the first time into French)—thus compounding the (false) notion, at least among French readers, that the tale takes place in Carpathia instead of in Carniola!
more great info, many thanks
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