Rudolph Raspe and The Surprising Adventures of Baron Münchhausen

Who's Who in the Munchausen Story - I

The Baron
Hieronymus Karl Friedrich, Freiherr Von Münchausen (aka Baron Munchausen), Bodenwerder, Hanover (1720- 1797) served in a Russian regiment and fought against the Turks. After the wars he retired to his country estate and nightly in the local alehouse regaled his friends, including the young Rudolf Raspe, with stories of his supposed adventures as a soldier, hunter, and sportsman. The Baron died in 1797 and a monument was erected in his memory in front of the Town Hall in Bodenwerder where it stands to this day.

The adventures of the world's greatest liar has inspired many movies, the most notorious being Josef von Baky's Münchausen, made in Germany during World War II. This spectacular production, instigated by propaganda minister Josef Göbbels, was scripted by Jewish screenwriter, Erich Kastner, under the pseudonym of Berthold Bürger. Kastner's work had been banned by the Nazis so after the film was released, Hitler ordered that Kastner should receive no further commissions.

The Writer
Rudolf Erich Raspe: Hanover, Germany. (1737 -1794) author of Baron Münchausen's Narrative of his Marvellous Travels. He studied philology and natural sciences at the universities of Göttingen and Leipzig. While a professor at the Collegium Carolinum, Kassel, he stole a collection of gems and coins (of which he was custodian) and hightailed it to England with the German police in hot pursuit.

So impressed were the British intelligentsia by Raspe's academic prowess that they elected him a Fellow of the Royal Society. Among his works were: a paper on The Bones and Teeth of Elephants and other Animals found in North America; a treatise, German Volcanoes; an Essay on the Origin of Oil Painting and dissertations on ancient Gaelic poetry (the legends of Oisin).

On discovering Raspe was selling stolen gems and coins, the Royal Society dismissed him. He then worked as a mining expert but quickly got fired because he was caught seeding a promising mining prospect with enriched ore. And so he hit the trail again - this time to Ireland where gold had just been discovered in the Wicklow Mountains.

While in Dublin, Raspe persuaded a printer, Peter Byrne, to publish his stories of the Baron. Byrne too was to come to a sticky end. He was hanged for publishing what the British considered seditious literature, including Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man (published in 1792, the same year that he published the Munchausen story). Because the British crown had purloined all gold mining rights in Wicklow, Raspe, still bitten by the mining bug, set off for Kerry where he tried his hand at copper mining. He died of a fever in 1794 and was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave in Killegy churchyard, Muckross village, Killarney, County Kerry.