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Dr. Alexander S. Burns @kabinettskriege.bsky.social · 23h

The nature of Eastern European borderlands, the biological realities of decomposition, peasant folk beliefs, and concerns about remarriage after the death of a partner combined to create the vampire legends of the 18th and 19th centuries.

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Dr. Alexander S. Burns @kabinettskriege.bsky.social · 23h

He also continued a relationship with his wife, and collected unpaid debts by threat of force. As a result, his corpse was posthumously beheaded and burned in public.

While not being called a vampire, Kasparek was a man comfortable on both sides of a border. 24/25

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Dr. Alexander S. Burns @kabinettskriege.bsky.social · 23h

For Bohn, the story of Polish/Hungarian horseman, Michał Kasperek (Mihály Kaszperek) is this missing link. In the Polish/Hungarian border region of Spiš, in 1718, a Polish wine merchant died unexpectedly, but returned to life, haunting and biting his servants. 23/25

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Dr. Alexander S. Burns @kabinettskriege.bsky.social · 23h

Stories of vampires would be harder to crack down on. European rulers struggled with these questions stretching into the 19th century.

Thomas Bohn argued that there is a "missing link" between the medieval and early modern belief in revenants, and the 18th century vampires. 22/25

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Dr. Alexander S. Burns @kabinettskriege.bsky.social · 23h

Maria Theresa responded by ordering that exhumations cease, except where ordered by secular, rather than church, authorities. The scourge of vampirism seemed to dissipate as a result.

The vampiric threat haunted the Austrian frontiers, as folktales clashed with the state. 21/25

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Dr. Alexander S. Burns @kabinettskriege.bsky.social · 23h

Van Swieten, who would inspire Bram Stoker's van Helsing, quickly got the heart of the matter. There was no reason to expect quick decay of a corpse, especially in buried in winter ground. The physical condition of supposed vampiric corpses seemed to be a natural process. 20/25

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Dr. Alexander S. Burns @kabinettskriege.bsky.social · 23h

The local church authorities in Olmütz granted permission for staking. Maria Theresa, scandalized, ordered her personal physician (and medical military reformer) Gerard van Swieten, to investigate the case. 19/25

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Dr. Alexander S. Burns @kabinettskriege.bsky.social · 23h

For twenty years, the vampire question produced a huge number of books in German speaking lands and across Europe. Then, in 1754, a miracle healer named Rosalia Polakin died in Hermersdorf in Moravia, and vampire accusations began. 18/25

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Dr. Alexander S. Burns @kabinettskriege.bsky.social · 23h

The villagers concluded that Arnold Paole must have been feeding on local cattle, which were then consumed by the new victims, transmitting vampirism to them. While doubtless pleasing the local villagers, the commission's conclusions annoyed Austrian army reformers. 17/25

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Dr. Alexander S. Burns @kabinettskriege.bsky.social · 23h

These military men concluded that a number of the villagers who had died were indeed in "vampiric condition," (Vampyrenstand) and ordered that those in such condition were to be executed via stakes, burned, and ashes scattered over water. 16/25

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Dr. Alexander S. Burns @kabinettskriege.bsky.social · 23h

Glaser reported these findings to Botta d'Adorno, the vice-commandant in Belgrade, who organized a secondary commission, consisting of five army officers: a Lt. Colonel, Ensign, and three military surgeons. 15/25

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Dr. Alexander S. Burns @kabinettskriege.bsky.social · 23h

The villagers would not budge and demanded that the vampires be exhumed and executed. Consenting to an exhumation, Glaser discovered that those who died earliest were in a perfect state of preservation, while those who died later had partially decomposed. 14/25

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Dr. Alexander S. Burns @kabinettskriege.bsky.social · 23h

According to the villagers, in the Turkish lands, "Vampires were everywhere, in great strength." Glaser began to investigate the deaths and concluded that the deaths were a result of malnutrition and extreme Eastern Orthodox fasting. 13/25

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Dr. Alexander S. Burns @kabinettskriege.bsky.social · 23h

Lt. Schnezzer sent a military doctor, Imperial-Contagions-Medicus Glaser, who ignored the vampiric assertions of the villagers. According to the villagers, both of the young women who had initially died were infected during their time on the Turkish side of the border. 12/25

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Dr. Alexander S. Burns @kabinettskriege.bsky.social · 23h

The matter was considered closed, until around 6 years later, villagers in Medveđa once again began to die under mysterious circumstances. 13 villagers died after brief illnesses, and their deaths were reported to Lt. Colonel Schnezzer, the local Austrian army officer. 11/25

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Dr. Alexander S. Burns @kabinettskriege.bsky.social · 23h

Without involving the Austrian government, the local hajduk officer in the village of Medveđa, Gorshiz Hadnack, exhumed, staked, and burned Pavle. For a time, the vampire threat receded.
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Dr. Alexander S. Burns @kabinettskriege.bsky.social · 23h

Also in 1725, about 200 km to the south, a Serbian militiaman or "hajdú" (hajduk) nicknamed "Arnaut Pavle" (Paul the Albanian), fell off of a haycart and broke his neck. For forty days Pavle, who claimed to have been attacked by a vampire, haunted his village, killing 4. 9/25

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Dr. Alexander S. Burns @kabinettskriege.bsky.social · 23h

Blagojević was staked and burned, and Frombald reported the following to Vienna: viewed the freshly exhumed body of [Petar Blagojevich] Not without astonishment, I saw some fresh blood in his mouth, which, according to local belief, he had sucked from the people he had killed." 8/25

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Dr. Alexander S. Burns @kabinettskriege.bsky.social · 23h

The villagers assured Frombald that this was standard procedure: and had occurred before when the Turks still ruled the area. Upon exhuming the body, they found no signs of decomposition, and fresh blood, the villagers supposed, from his victims, flowing from his mouth. 7/25

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Dr. Alexander S. Burns @kabinettskriege.bsky.social · 23h

Even Blagojević's widow reported that the dead man had come to her in the night, demanding his shoes. The villagers demanded their new Austrian governmental official: Kameralprovisor Ernst Frombald, along with the local priest, attend Blagojević's exhumation. 6/25

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Dr. Alexander S. Burns @kabinettskriege.bsky.social · 23h

Petar Blagojević, a Serbian peasant who lived in the village of Kisiljevo near the military border, died in early 1725. Then, 3 months later, 9 deaths rocked his village in the course of two days. The dying villagers claimed that Blagojević had attacked them in the night! 5/25

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Dr. Alexander S. Burns @kabinettskriege.bsky.social · 23h

While revenants have been part of folklore since the middle ages, two new "vampire" cases shocked Europe in the 1720s and 30s: that of Petar Blagojević and "Arnold Paole" (Arnaut Pavle). Compared to the aristocratic Dracula and Orloc, these men were of humble origins. 4/25

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Dr. Alexander S. Burns @kabinettskriege.bsky.social · 23h

Our story begins in the aftermath of Prinz Eugene of Savoy's victory at Belgrade in 1717. After this victory and the resulting Treaty of Passarowitz, the Austrian government now ruled part of Serbia and northern Bosnia: it had to control a porous borderland with refugees. 3/25

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Dr. Alexander S. Burns @kabinettskriege.bsky.social · 23h

In the 1720s folktales of supernatural events combined with the tensions of a military borderland to create a new type of spook: The Vampire.

Vampires, and the responses of locals and governments to the threat of their presence, would in the imagination like wildfire.
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Dr. Alexander S. Burns @kabinettskriege.bsky.social · 23h

With Halloween upon us, did you know: Vampires turn 300 this year?

This year, 2025, marks the 300th anniversary of vampires haunting public imagination in Europe.

Read on for the origins of Orloc, Dracula, and of course, Nandor.
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