There is an opinion that in 1814, an unknown young sixteen-year-old Englishwoman, Mary Godwin Shelley, who was traveling in Germany, visited Frankenstein Castle.

Impressed by the romantic ruins and the legends heard in the vicinity of the castle, she wrote the book “Frankenstein, the New Prometheus” - a horror novel that not only immortalized the name of the aspiring writer, but also predetermined the fate of the German castle for centuries to come.

And in the USA, where already in the 20th century. Shelley’s book was filmed many times, “Frankenstein” became synonymous with “nightmare.”

The main character of the book, Victor Frankenstein, is an extravagant naturalist who experiments with the dead. From dismembered corpses, he assembles a real monster - a huge humanoid monster that comes to life when a powerful discharge of electricity is passed through its body. However, the creepy creature is not capable of living among people. It has no soul and everything human is alien to it. As a result, Frankenstein's monster brutally deals with the family of his creator, and after the death of the scientist he dies...

Frankenstein is the northernmost of the castles and fortress ruins on the western side of the Odenwald, located at an altitude of 370 m. It was first mentioned in 1252 in the marriage certificate of Konrad Reitz von Breuberg and his wife Elisabeth von Weiterstadt.

However, by the middle of the 13th century. it has already been built and inhabited. Therefore, most historians believe that the construction of this fortress began in the first quarter of the century. Today, the family nest of the von Frankenstein barons is a pitiful sight. Only a small chapel from the middle of the 15th century has been completely preserved. to the left of the main entrance to the castle grounds. It is interesting that throughout its long history no one has ever attacked the inhabitants of the fortress. In the surviving archives there is no mention of a single siege or battle under its walls.

Knowing this, the current deplorable state of the once proud feudal estate, surrounded in a circle by a stone barrier several meters high, seems especially strange.

One of the legends born today partly explains the state of things as follows. One of the self-proclaimed scions of the Frankenstein family, the doctor and alchemist Johann Conrad Dippel, conducted experiments with nitroglycerin in one of the castle towers. And one day, either through carelessness or inexperience, he dropped a flask with this dangerous nitroether. A terrible explosion occurred, which almost completely destroyed the tower where his laboratory was located. It was as if it was only by a miracle that Dippel survived. By the way, modern experts in local folklore also accuse the unlucky alchemist of desecrating graves and stealing corpses for their secret experiments to find the elixir of immortality. In fact, historians have not found documentary evidence that Konrad Dippel lived and worked in Frankenstein after his studies at the University of Giessen. As for the story with the exploding nitroglycerin, this is completely outright fiction or an anachronism. If only because Dippel died in 1734, and nitroglycerin was first synthesized by the Italian chemist Ascaño Sobrero only in 1847.

And yet, how could it be that the powerful fortress walls and towers were practically razed to the ground, when, as is well known, Frankenstein was not subject to enemy attacks? And the treasure hunters of former times and dishonest castle caretakers are to blame for everything. In the 18th century Rumors persistently spread that fabulous riches were hidden in the dungeons under the citadel (in reality, the Frankenstein family did not have significant savings). Sooner or later, this led to treasure hunters digging through the entire area like moles, and then began to destroy the outer wall and break through the vaults of the basements. By mid-century, the approaches to Frankenstein, like its first defensive ring, were largely destroyed. What the vandals began with picks and spades was continued by the unscrupulous wife of one of the then caretakers of the castle. She managed to sell everything that could be taken out, removed, broken and torn away from the family nest of the ancient knightly family. Thus, the entire furnishings of the rooms and halls disappeared. Even wooden stairs and floor beams were dismantled, and roof tiles and tin fastenings were torn off. The destruction was completed by the peasants of the surrounding villages, dismantling them and taking them literally stone by stone for their construction needs.

Only from the middle of the 19th century. people began to show interest in the ruins of Frankenstein as a historical heritage. Grand Duke Ludwig III ordered the restoration of the castle. True, during that very first restoration, more was destroyed than preserved. After all, there were no real specialists then. Therefore, when restoring the stone buildings on the top of the mountain, serious mistakes were made. For example, the tower through which visitors enter the complex has acquired an additional floor. And the residential tower acquired a previously non-existent roof.

In the late 60s early 70s. In the 20th century, interest in the mountain and the ruins on it began to grow again. This was caused by various reasons. Firstly, in 1968, the American magazine Life published a letter from a certain David Russell, in which he suggested that Shelley was inspired to write her famous novel by visiting Frankenstein Castle. Secondly, in 1975, historian Radu Florescu drew a parallel between Frankenstein’s monster and the already mentioned doctor, theologian and alchemist Konrad Dippel, who was actually born in the castle in 1673. Not far from the mountain at that time there was a US military base, and with easy the hands of Americans greedy for everything mystical began to organize festivals on the ruins of the fortress on the eve of Halloween. Today they are the largest in Germany! Costume shows attract fans of this kind of celebrations from all over the country and from abroad. For three weeks on weekends, you can only climb to the ruins on foot. The police are blocking all approaches to the mountain, and hordes of people who want to tickle their nerves and stand up to the nomadic ants in continuous chains rush to the top. Throughout the evenings, the surroundings of Frankenshine are filled with wild screams, the rattling of chains and the grinding of coffins. And until dawn, devils, witches and zombies reign supreme on the mountain.

For two centuries now, the monster created by Victor Frankenstein has been haunting the consciousness, but few people know who the prototype of the hero of the novel was.

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Two centuries ago, the world saw the release of an amazing novel by an anonymous author, “Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus,” dedicated to the English journalist and fiction writer William Godwin. This anarchist, in his work “Inquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Morals and Happiness,” called on humanity to free itself from the tyranny of the state, the Church and private property so revered in the West. The tribute to Godwin was written by his loving daughter Mary.

The authorship of the short work, which instantly became a bestseller and caused mortal boredom among critics, was established five years later. In 1831, Mary Shelley, née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, published a significantly revised edition of the book under her own name.

From the preface, readers gleaned information about the creation of this work of English classical literature.

The summer of 1816 in Europe was somewhat similar to today. The weather was often inclement, due to which three of the “English literature team” George Byron, John Polidori, Percy Shelley and his girlfriend (don’t think wrong - future wife) 18-year-old Mary Godwin sat for a long time at the fireplace.

Don't think we're joking! High English society at one time spread dirty rumors about Mary, Byron and Shelley. Should we stoop to the level of British gentlemen and their backbiting gossips?

In the absence of gadgets, the company amused itself by reading aloud scary German fairy tales in French, which is more understandable to the enlightened English. At some point, Byron invited everyone present to write their own terrible fairy tale.

In Mary's head, travel impressions from stories about the inhabitants of Castle Frankenstein (Burg Frankenstein) in the Odenwald mountains, conversations about the experiments of Dr. Darwin (the grandfather of the founder of Darwinism) and an ominous dream about a revived artificial creature were mixed. However, Mary still kept silent about something.

In 1975, the Romanian historian Radu Florescu (1925-2014), one of the first to point out the connection between the fictional “Dracula” and the real ruler of medieval Wallachia, opened up about a German alchemist. The book he wrote was called “In Search of Frankenstein”.

The future anatomist, doctor, alchemist, theologian and mystic Johann Konrad Dippel was born into a priest's family on August 10, 1673 in Castle Frankenstein. From childhood he showed interest in religious issues, studying theology in Giessen and philosophy in Wittenberg. However, in Strasbourg, the young studious led such a riotous life that, as they say, he was expelled from the city for some kind of bloody brawl.

In 1697, a young preacher, who lectured on astronomy and palmistry, published the opus Orthodoxia Orthodoxorum, and a year later his next work was published, in which the 25-year-old Dippel smashed the papists, rejecting the dogma of Catholic atonement and the effectiveness of church sacraments.

He signed his works with different pseudonyms: most of them Christianus Democritus - in honor of the ancient Greek philosopher Democritus, Ernst Christian Kleinmann and Ernst Christoph Kleinmann.

It should be noted that the German surname Kleinmann (literally translated “little man”) resembles the Latinized form Parvus, that is, “baby”. This pseudonym was chosen for himself by the Social Democrat and obese Russian Jew Israel Lazarevich Gelfand, who played a mysterious role in the Russian revolutions a century ago.

Like the Russian philosopher from the Little Russian Cossacks Grigory Skovoroda, Johann Dippel led a wandering life. This “European dervish” squandered his property on alchemical experiments, and then went to get a medical diploma in Leiden.

But as soon as this practicing physician published the treatise “Alea Belli Muselmannici” in Amsterdam in 1711, he was immediately expelled from Holland. Having moved to Denmark, Dippel was soon forced to leave it too, because he again began sending philippics to the saints. True, he first had to sit on the prison gruel.

He ended his earthly days in Sweden, where he treated the sick with great success and managed to publish a heretical pamphlet.

The most accurate description of him was given by the main authority of Russian mystics of the early 19th century, Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling (1740-1817): “Dippel was a great clever man, but at the same time stubborn, proud, ambitious and bilious Zoilus (named after the ancient Greek unfriendly critic. - Ed.) ; he was not afraid of anything in the whole world; perhaps he wanted to become a minister of cult, and it seems to me that in this status he could turn the base into the highest. Thus he united mystical morality with the creed of our modern theology, and with it all sorts of oddities. In fact, he was a strange mixture!"

Despite the fact that in various non-fiction books about the life of Mary Shelley Dippel is mentioned as the prototype of Victor Frankenstein, most literary scholars tend to consider the connection between the alchemist and the hero of the novel to be far-fetched.

In the diary that Mary Shelley kept during her trip to Germany in 1840, when she again passed along the road from Darmstadt to Heidelberg, where 22 years earlier she allegedly heard stories about Dippel, the writer never remembers either him or Frankenstein.

Today, every child knows that Frankenstein is a monster assembled from various parts of human bodies and brought to life by the creator with the help of lightning and electricity. This is one of the most popular images, which is often mentioned in cinema: from 1909 to 2007, 63 films were made about it.

But knowledgeable people know that Frankenstein is not a monster, and few people know that the author of the story about the revived monster was the fragile, sophisticated 19-year-old girl Mary Shelley. Her work was written as a bet and marked the beginning of a new literary genre - the Gothic novel. The writer “put” into the hero’s head her thoughts and experiences that arose as a result of her difficult life ups and downs.

Let's find out more about all this...

British writer Mary Shelley

The future creator of the story about a terrible monster was born in London in 1797. Her mother died 11 days after Mary was born, so her older sister Fanny was essentially raising the girl. When Mary was 16 years old, she met the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Despite the fact that Percy was married, he fell in love with a young girl and persuaded her to run away from her father's house to France. Soon the money ran out and the lovers had to return home. Mary's father was outraged by his daughter's actions.

Percy Shelley - British poet

To complicate matters, Mary was pregnant. Percy Shelley, in turn, had no intention of getting a divorce, which is why the 17-year-old girl became the object of caustic attacks from society. Due to her worries, she had a miscarriage. At first, Mary and Percy lived in love and harmony, but the girl was very offended by the “liberal” views of her common-law husband, namely his love affairs.

Lord George Byron is an English poet.

In 1817, the poet's legal wife drowned in a pond. After this, Percy and Mary officially got married. The children Mary gave birth to died one after another, driving the woman into despair. Only one son survived. Disappointment in family life gave rise to feelings such as loneliness and despair in Mary Shelley. Her monster hero will then experience the same thing, desperately in need of understanding from those around her.

Mary Shelley - English writer.

Percy Shelley was friends with the more famous poet George Byron. One day, Mary Shelley, her husband and Lord Byron, gathered around the fireplace on a rainy evening, talking about literary topics. They ended up arguing over who could write the best story about something supernatural. From that moment on, Mary began to create a story about a monster, which became the world's first Gothic novel.

Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus was first published anonymously in 1818 because editors and readers were prejudiced against women writers. It was not until 1831 that Mary Shelley signed her name to the novel. Mary's husband and George Byron were delighted with the woman's work, and she won the argument.

in fact, Frankenstein Victor is an inquisitive scientist whose curiosity played a cruel joke on him. His story was described in the novel “Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus” by Mary Shelley.

Young student Victor Frankenstein decides to try to defeat the old woman death and revive the dead body. He secretly collects pieces of unclaimed bodies and even tries to select beautiful facial features. In the original, the monster was not carelessly sewn together with threads from multi-colored pieces: the creator carefully selected the parts, trying to ensure that the pieces of skin did not differ in color.

Still from the film "Frankenstein", 1931

The method of revival (lightning strike and a huge charge of electricity that started the heart) is also incorrect: Mary Shelley avoided any mention of the method of revival. Researchers of the novel believe that this is not a matter of the author’s ignorance of the peculiarities of the process, but of the text itself: the scientist carefully studied the works of famous alchemists: Albertus Magnus, Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus. Apparently, the girl meant that the creation of the monster was facilitated not by banal electricity, but by some alchemical processes.

And finally, the revived monster in the original was not a stupid and obedient executor of the master’s orders. He had a cognitive mind that learned and very quickly understood the world around him, realizing that people would not tolerate a dead man assembled from pieces near them. Even Victor himself admitted that he could not look at the creation of his hands, but he could not kill him. Therefore, he fled, not even deigning to give a name to his creation. But the creature he created has not come to terms with this state of affairs: it rushes in pursuit of the student, holding him responsible for its existence.

There is an opinion that the prototype for the mad creator was the German scientist and alchemist Johann Conrad Dippel, whose ancestral castle was called Frankenstein. He claimed that he created a special oil from the blood and bones of animals - the elixir of immortality. Also among his works, notes were found on boiling human parts to create an artificial creature (homunculus) and on attempts to transfer the soul from one body to another. Sometimes Johann Conrad added Frankenstein to his surname, which gave reason to suspect Mary of using his image.

They say that Frankenstein is one of the first science fiction stories in European literature. This, to put it mildly, is not true, since science fiction requires at least minimal attention to the technical side of the matter. Mary Shelley does not even hint at how the hero came up with the main secret of science - the transformation of inanimate matter into living matter. The story of Frankenstein is perceived as an allegory of a scientist's responsibility for his developments. In the twentieth century, scientific activity was put at the service of the military, so this aspect of the story acquired particular relevance.

The most powerful shock from reading this book is that the scientist Victor Frankenstein did not calculate something and his monster turned out to be evil, bloodthirsty - a killing machine. The whole story is a variation on the theme of unspoiled nature and treacherous society. While the monster is away from people, he calmly does selfless good deeds. As soon as he tries to make contact, people reject him, and his soul gradually hardens. Despite obvious literary miscalculations, the story has become an integral part of the European cultural heritage and has dominated minds for almost 200 years. I wonder why? First of all, because the theme “Frankenstein and Society” allows for a huge variety of interpretations and interpretations. The cult status of any work (including the Bible, for example) is based primarily on the possibility of different interpretations.

What happened to the characters in this dispute?

According to legend, it was Byron who gave Mary the idea to write Frankenstein: “Let each of us write a scary story.” Then Byron will say about Mary’s story: “I think this is an amazing work for a girl of nineteen.”

But what is written, as we know, is destined to come true. On July 8, 1822, the yacht on which Shelley was sailing from Livorno was caught in a hurricane of unprecedented force. Only ten days later the poet’s body was thrown ashore by the waves. In Byron's presence it was burned at the stake. The urn with the ashes was buried in the Protestant cemetery in Rome. On the tombstone is carved the inscription: "Percy Bysshe Shelley - the heart of hearts." The next year, on July 23, Byron equipped a ship on which he went to fight for the freedom of Greece. In this country, where democracy was born for the first time on earth, the 35-year-old genius was struck down by swamp fever.

Mary alone outlived them all. We owe it to her that Shelley's unpublished works came to light. She herself wrote several books. But only Frankenstein remained a truly unattainable masterpiece.

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Children Ludwig Frankenstein [d] And Wolf Frankenstein [d] Role plays Colin Clive, Peter Cushing, Boris Karloff, Joseph Cotten, Kenneth Branagh, James McAvoy and many others

Victor Frankenstein- the main character in Mary Shelley’s novel “Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus” (1818), as well as a character (who also appears under the names Henry Frankenstein, Charles Frankenstein, Doctor Frankenstein or Baron Frankenstein) many book, dramatic and cinematic adaptations of its plot.

Characteristic

In the novel, Victor Frankenstein, a young student from Geneva, creates a living creature from dead matter, for which he collects the likeness of a person from fragments of the bodies of the dead, and then finds a “scientific” way to revive him, implementing the concept of “creating life without women”; however, the revived creature turns out to be a monster.

Frankenstein as a character is characterized by a desire for knowledge not limited by ethical considerations; Only after creating a monster does he realize that he has taken a vicious path. However, the monster already exists beyond his desire, it is trying to realize itself and holds Frankenstein responsible for its existence.

Frankenstein and the monster he created form a Gnostic couple, consisting of the creator and his creation, inevitably burdened with evil. Reinterpreted in terms of Christian ethics, this pair illustrates the failure of man to take on the functions of God, or the impossibility of knowing God through reason. If we consider the situation in a rational way, then it transforms into the problem of the scientist’s ethical responsibility for the consequences of his discoveries.

Some sources suggest that the prototype of Frankenstein was the German scientist Johann Conrad Dippel (1673-1734), born in Frankenstein Castle.

In other works

The multiplicity and ambiguity of interpretations generated by these images of Frankenstein and his creation created the preconditions for constant attempts to comprehend and rethink them in various artistic forms - first in the theater and then in cinema, where the plot of the novel went through several stages of adaptation and acquired new stable motifs , which were completely absent from the book (the theme of brain transplantation as a metaphor for soul transplantation) or were outlined but not developed (the theme of Frankenstein’s Bride). It was in the cinema that Frankenstein was made a “baron” - in the novel he did not have a baronial title, and could not have had it, if only because he is a Genevan (after the Reformation, the canton of Geneva did not recognize titles of nobility, although formally noble families remained).

In popular culture, there is also a frequent confusion between the images of Frankenstein and the monster he created, which is mistakenly called “Frankenstein” (for example, in the animated film “Yellow Submarine”, rich in images of popular culture). In addition, the image of Frankenstein gave rise to many different sequels - various sons and brothers appeared, performing under the names Wolf, Charles, Henry, Ludwig and even daughter Elsa.

Indirectly (and in some episodes, openly) the idea of ​​​​creating living things from non-living things, just like Frankenstein created the monster, is found in the film “Ugly Science” and the remake series “Miracles of Science”. This is shown in the very first episode, where the guys were inspired to create an artificial woman by the film “

Please answer, who is Frankenstein?“It’s easy! - any person will tell me, “this is a monster made from the dead!” The comrade will say, and will be completely confident that he is right. But, nevertheless, the abstract “any person” is absolutely wrong. The monster “from the dead” is not actually Frankenstein. So who is Frankenstein then?

Now this word has been given the common meaning of “an ugly, very ugly person.” But in fact, Frankenstein was originally the surname of the main character of Mary Shelley’s novel, Victor. The character in the book “Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus,” a young student from Geneva, was an incredibly talented man who, with the help of solutions on the verge of chemistry and alchemy, revived a creature grown from separate pieces of carrion. The creature that was supposed to be human turns out to be a real monster and kills its creator. The novel was published in one thousand eight hundred and eighteen, but its popularity has not faded to this day.

Victor Frankenstein himself and the monster created by his brilliant mind became confused due to the abundance of films, plays and books that appeared after the release of this novel. The authors paraphrased the one and only Victor Frankenstein into Henry, Doctor and Baron, thereby popularizing only the surname. Personally, it seems to me that the monster became Frankenstein due to ordinary human carelessness. Let's say a child is looking at the alphabet. A system like “a picture, a caption under it.” Let's say, a drawn long-beaked bird and the caption “stork”. Also on the poster is the ferocious face of the “demon” and the signature “Frankenstein”. They believed it. They forgot that there was a bad word written on the fence, and there was firewood underneath it.

The image of Victor and his creation is a couple burdened with evil. A kind of recognition of human imperfection and the inability of the human mind to compete with God. After all, Frankenstein actually tried to take on the responsibilities of the Almighty - to create a creature “in his own image and likeness.” For which he received what he deserved. Moreover, if you think about the work in a more realistic way, it illustrates the problem of taking responsibility for your discoveries and actions.

Even though Victor Frankenstein He is very talented and smart, he destroys himself precisely with curiosity - his thirst for knowledge is not limited by any ethical prohibitions. Moreover, the hero realizes that the creation of man by the scientific method is a sinful thing from the point of view of Christian morality. But, nevertheless, Victor follows a sinful, but scientific path.

Frankenstein, who in the film visited morgues in search of missing parts, certainly understood the ugliness that would result from the experiment. And he was not deceived - after “adding up” all the parts of the creature’s body, he could not contain his fear:

“How to describe my feelings at this terrible sight, how to portray the unfortunate person I created with such incredible difficulty? Meanwhile, his members were proportionate, and I selected beautiful features for him. Beautiful - Great God! The yellow skin was too tight around his muscles and sinews; the hair was black, shiny and long, and the teeth were white as pearls; but even more terrible was their contrast with the watery eyes, almost indistinguishable in color from the sockets, with dry skin and a narrow slit of a black mouth.<…>It was impossible to look at him without shuddering. No mummy brought back to life could be more terrible than this monster. I saw my creation unfinished; it was ugly even then; but when his joints and muscles began to move, something more terrible came out than all Dante’s inventions.” (Translation by Z. Alexandrova)

Having seen the horror he himself created, Frankenstein did not destroy it, which means, in turn, a huge craving for science. Victor was guided by good intentions and seriously wanted to revive people.

In cinema, which so popularized the image of Frankenstein, from nineteen hundred ten to two thousand seven, sixty-three films were made with direct mention of the Monster.

In each of the paintings the creature appeared completely different. In the novel, the “demon” was grown from pieces of flesh, while in the cinema, the body was made from the dead in the morgue. In the same films, the monster was revived with the help of lightning - in fact, Mary Shelley “raised” the character with the help of alchemical solutions. In addition, the television crews made the creature stupid, with the intelligence of a five-year-old child, unknowingly committing murders and speaking in syllables. The writer’s demon read fluently, spoke coherently and thought quite well. That is, he was equal in intelligence to the average person. And all his murders were not only meaningful, but also justified - the monster did not kill anyone for nothing.

But, alas, the image became widespread precisely thanks to films.