Yes Virignia There Was A Frankenstein

[mitsuki lover]

I know this is late for Halloween,but it is kind of interesting nevertheless.
I was watching the History Channel on Sunday and they had a special on
Mary Wollestonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein.The special went into detail
about where she got her inspiration for the character and story of
Frankenstein.
Turns out just about everything,with the exception of the Monster was based
on reality.
Fact 1:There was an actual Frankenstein family and an actual Castle Frankenstein.The Frankensteins were a German noble family whose family seat was near the present day city of Dortmund,Germany.Mary Shelley and her husband,the poet,Percy Bysshe Shelley are said to have seen Frankenstein's castle while barging the Rhine river.
Fact 2:Frankenstein and Dracula have a connection(the real Frankenstein and Dracula).The most famous member of the Frankenstein family was a
Sir Georg Frankenstein,Sir Georg was the mortal enemy of Vlad Tephis(sp?)
the ruler of the Principality of Wallachia in what is now Translyvania,Romania.Vlad Tephis(sp?)is known in English as Vlad The
Impaler or better as Dracula,meaning son of the Dragon.His father was known as Dracul or the Dragon and so Vlad was known as Dracula or Son of the Dragon.
Fact 3:The mad scientist character of Victor Von Frankenstein was based on several well known scientists of the 17th-early 19th centuries whose experiments Mary Shelley could have read about.The most famous of these scientists was Giovanni Galvani from which we get the term Galvanism/Galvanic etc.His researches into static electricty along with those of his nephew were part of Mary Shelley's inspiration for Victor Von Frankenstein's own experiments.
Fact 4:The grave digging.This apparently was a common enough practice in
the period that Shelley was writing Frankenstein.Scientists would sometimes either go out themselves and dig up corpses or hire men to do it for them.
Sometimes they opted for smuggling cadavers from one country to another.

[Peanut]

Hmm...interesting, I remeber hearing something about the whole experiments of static electricity thing inspiring her to write the book, but I didn't know their was an actual family named Frankenstein (nor did I know they knew Dracula...). On a side note...this thread has brought back all those depressing memories of what I felt after finishing reading Frankenstein...such a sad book...

[Doubleshadow]

Some of this is news to me, some of it is information I already I knew. Regardless, I love insights into how people used to live. It reminds me that planet Earth has always been this messed up.

[Yahshua]

Interesting facts and I don't know that.

[mitsuki lover]

Well the Germans were enemies of Vlad the Impaler so I wouldn't say the Frankensteins knew him in a friendly way.
Interesting out of the stormy night in Italy that produced Frankenstein came two other horror stories.One by Lord Byron and one by his personal physican.Both were about vampires and both were said to be mediocre.

[That Dude]

Interesting stuff.

[mitsuki lover]

Yep.Truth is really stranger than fiction alright.