He was truly a Prince of darkness. Vlad III Draculea (1431– 1476/77), called “the Impaler”, is one of the best-known figures from the late medieval South-Eastern Europe. As a template for Bram Stoker’s vampire count Dracula is, since 1897, world famous. However, the historical Prince Draculea has with the blood-sucking vampire only the lust of murder in common. The Irish author brought the army leaders with the centuries-old vampire myth is rather random.
“We want to be the historical Dracula and to Vlad,” say the Giessen Eastern Europe historian Thomas Bohn and Albert Weber. You manage a research project, which has carried out the historical sources to the in Wallachia, in present Romania’s ruling Prince. Two of the four volumes of the “Corpus Draculianum” have now been presented.
funded by the German research Edition documented more than two and a half centuries of European and Oriental Dracula Lore. In archives in Spain, Istanbul and the Vatican, the team of researchers combed through years of letters, reports and notes. “The majority of libraries and archives in Eastern Europe, is been a long burned – what we have access to it, are no more than two, three percent of the actual sources,” says the scientist. Your Edition contains, together with the texts to be translated in 76 languages, from Old Turkic up to medium high-German, Polish or old Church Slavonic.
What is the historical reality and what is legend? The Giessen scientists will have to solve a difficult task. Because by the Ottoman Advance in Europe in the 15th century. Century were the old notions of Order and vassal relations in the Balkans falter. In order to secure his reign in Wallachia, joined Vlad in diplomatic wire rope files with multiple pages. First of all, an ally of the Turkish Sultan, he followed in 1460, the crusade call of Pope Pius II against the Ottomans. His goal was to give his country the Nimbus of a “in front of the Auer of Christianity”.
Turks, the Turban on the head was nailed
Because of its preferred method of execution of the voivode of Wallachia received the nickname of “the Impaler”. Vlad’s pronounced cruelty, according to the scientists, part of his strategy to hold on to Power and to insure its respective Alliance partners Loyalty. So he left his enemies alive impale. Turkish envoys who refused to remove cover, let Vlad the Turban on the head of nail.
At the same time, but it was in the 15th century. To back a century, according to Weber, is quite common, and political opponents with trumped-up stories in a particularly bad light. Vlad, it were mainly the Ottomans and Hungary, which were disturbed by his constant side-switching and to disavow him.
to be able to yourself for the first defender of the Catholic Christianity, stylize, like the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus horror stories about Vlad spread. For the Ottomans, Vlad was a traitorous rebel. Orthodox sources and interpretations of Vlad’s conversion to Catholicism as treason. For the Ottomans controlled Greeks, he represented a resistance fighter. West European chroniclers and publisher of scary stories made under the impression of the Turks up to the end of the 17th century. Century for the dissemination of gruesome stories.
Wallachian national hero or sadistic tyrant? Today In Bucharest waving protesters Dracula-Banner-and -figures is made with the late medieval princes in Romania, policy: to protest against the widespread corruption in the country. Because Vlad was an avowed opponent of bribery and has – you guessed it – corrupt officials piles.
His fierce struggle against the Ottoman Empire brought him the reputation of a Türkenfeinds, which is why Vlad on Transparent looks in addition to President Erdogan gloomy in the crowd. The nationalist party PRU is wearing the Prince in their arms.
“Corpus Draculianum. Documents and Chronicles of the Wallachian Prince Vlad the Impaler 1448-1650” appears in the publishing house Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden,
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