by Lisa Lampert-Weissig
In progress for edited volume
The lives and work of and Hanns Heinz Ewers (1871-1943) and George Sylvester Viereck (1884-1962) have many interesting... more
The lives and work of and Hanns Heinz Ewers (1871-1943) and George Sylvester Viereck (1884-1962) have many interesting parallels and intersections. Both were extremely well known in their day. Viereck was hailed as a Wunderkind upon publication of his first volume of poetry, Nineveh, in 1907, the same year that he published his novel, House of the Vampire. While his poetic reputation waned rather quickly, he remained in the public eye as an interviewer, journalist and publisher who had connections to many prominent figures, including Theodore Roosevelt and Sigmund Freud. Ewers was also prolific, creating poetry, novels, films, travel writing and countless essays; he was the most translated author of the Weimar Republic.
Both writers were known for their flouting of traditional morals and we can see the influence of the “decadence” movement and writers like Swinburne and Wilde on their work. When they are now mentioned, however, it is often for their support for Hitler’s National Socialist regime. Viereck was imprisoned in the U.S. during WWII for his pro-German views; Ewers was an early member of the Nazi party and was involved in the creation of pro-Nazi propaganda. When Ewer’s controversial earlier writings were scrutinized (and banned) by the Nazis, he nevertheless fought his expulsion from the party.
Ewers and Viereck actually crossed paths in the United States during the First World War when they worked together in attempting to rally support for Germany and against Great Britain. Ewers was later interned by the U.S. government for his activities. One important product of Ewers’ sojourn in the U.S. is his novel, Vampir (1922). The novel is the third in a trilogy that includes Ewers’ most well known work , Alraune, the story of a deadly beauty born of a diabolical artificial insemination. The novels feature the exploits of Frank Braun, a reckless and ambiguous protagonist with strong autobiographical connections to Ewers. In my essay I will read Vampir against Viereck’s House of the Vampire, which I believe is an influence on it. I am interested in the ways in which both novels develop a vampire figure who is deeply problematic and dangerous, a user of others’ lives and bodies, but who is at the same time admirable, representative of an elite power for which sacrifice is justified.
In House of the Vampire Reginald Clarke, the psychic vampire, preys upon young artists, draining them of their talent, and, in the case of protagonist Ernest Fielding, of their very minds. But at the same time that Clarke displays a corrupting evil reminiscent of Wilde’s Dorian Gray, Clarke is also the embodiment of genius, particularly artistic genius (a characteristic also resonant with Wilde’s work). He is compared to Homer, Shakespeare, Balzac, Napoleon and even to Jesus Christ as a figure that can reshape the world through his ability to absorb and distill the creative essence of those around him.
Ewers’ Vampir is set up in such a way that it is not until the end of the novel that the reader, along with the protagonist Braun, realizes that Braun himself is a vampire. Braun has suspected throughout the novel that his German-Jewish lover, Lotte Lewi, has been draining him of blood and energy, but, in fact, Lotte has been sacrificing herself to him and through him to the German Fatherland. World War I has made the entire world athirst for blood and Lotte sacrifices herself to her lover and, through him, to the greater cause of Germany.
My essay will provide the background necessary to understand the intersecting lives and art of these two authors and then compare the vampire figures in their novel to try to arrive at an understanding of the most challenging element of each of their biographies: the embrace of Nazism that seems, at least on the surface, to be completely out of step with their unconventional lives and views and the philo-semitism that they each at one time espoused.
I will argue that the ambivalent figure of the vampire in their works, a figure who is both destructive, but also worthy of sacrifice. In this way the vampire can be seen as a metaphor for their approach to National-Socialism as an evil necessary for awhat they saw as an overriding greater good, the survival of Germany
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