Haunted Tegel
The Spuk von Tegel is a case of Poltergeist spook in Tegel , then a suburb of Berlin , in 1797, which found its way into German literary history.
Spooky
The starting point is a report in the Berlinische Blätter by the Enlightenment Officer Friedrich Nicolai from November 1797. As a result, inexplicable nocturnal rumbling had been noticeable for some time in the house of head forester Schulz in Tegel, mainly on nights with moonlight.
These events were made known by Oberforstmeister von Burgsdorff of the Gesellschaft Naturforschender Freunde zu Berlin , where it was decided to conduct a ghost hunt to clear up the matter, as reports of the ghost began to circulate in the Berlin audience.
This ghost hunt then took place on September 13th and October 2nd, 1797. The noises sounded at midnight in a corridor in which there was also an iron chest, but only when nobody was in the corridor. During the first visit, the noises were heard, but the origin could not be determined. a. because the door of the adjoining "lodging room" in which the company was staying could only be opened with a delay. The second time, after entering the corridor, a piece of wood was found wrapped in a garden string on the chest. All perceived noises could be reproduced with the help of this wood and the chest as well as a wet thumb sliding over the wood of a door, after which a protocol was written and the ghost was considered cleared up.
Nicolai and his opponents
This in itself trivial case of a Poltergeist phenomenon would have been forgotten had it not been taken up by Goethe. In the spring of 1791 Nicolai had suffered from nervous disorders, as a result of which he literally saw ghosts. At that time, these disorders were treated successfully by applying leeches to the buttocks, according to Nicolai. That too would have been without consequence had Nicolai not felt compelled to report to the Berlin Academy of Sciences about his disturbance and its treatment in 1799 . In this essay, Nicolai also mentions Tegel's ghost.
1775 Nicolai had a pleasure of Young Werther named parody on The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe wrote that the enraged Poet Laureate immediately with a bad poem (Nicolai at Werther's grave) acknowledged. Nicola's treatise on the treatment of ghost vision by leeches in the anus now offered a welcome target and Goethe took the opportunity to make Nicolai as a “proctophantasmist” (rump spirit seer) both ridiculous and immortal in the Walpurgis night scene of Faust I, printed in 1808 . This is where the reference to Tegel's ghost appears:
PROKTOPHANTASMIST:
You are still there! No, that is unheard of.
Get out of here! We have cleared up!
The devil's pack, it doesn't ask for any rule.
We're so smart, and yet Tegel is haunted.
How long have I not come out of the madness,
And it never becomes pure; that's unheard of!
On this a few verses later Mephistopheles :
MEPHISTOPHELES:
He's about to sit down in a puddle, that's
the way he soulacts,
And when leeches eat his rump, He
is cured of spirits and of spirits.
The fact that the Tegel spook was now part of the German literary canon prompted Ludwig Bechstein to include it in his German book of legends , published in 1853 . Bechstein's account is, however, inaccurate, as it was not haunted in Tegel Castle , but in the old forester's shop, which no longer exists today, near the castle. In addition, according to Bechstein, Nicolai would have been the owner of the castle, which at the time was owned by Wilhelm von Humboldt . The source of the other details mentioned by Bechstein, for example the visible, multiform appearance of a ghost, is not known.
The version by Bechstein was also adopted by Johann Georg Theodor Grasse in his book of legends of the Prussian state .
This haunted story is not to be confused with the local legend about the "haunted mill in Tegel". It is a slightly modified version of the legend of the "smashed witch" by Rathenow .
literature
- Gisela Griepentrog (ed.): Berlin sagas. vbb, Berlin 2010, p. 147 f. (The ghost in Tegel)
- Richard Hennig : The modern belief in ghosts and ghosts. A critique and explanation of the spiritistic phenomena. Schultze, Hamburg 1906, p. 185 f.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Gero von Wilpert : The German ghost story. Motif, form, development (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 406). Kröner, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-520-40601-2 , p. 100.
- ^ "About the nocturnal rumble in Tegel (1½ mile from Berlin)." Berlinische Blätter, November 1797, No. 6, pp. 161–179
- ↑ Meeting on February 22, 1799. Also in the New Berlin Monthly Journal published by Nicolai : Example of an appearance of several phantasms. No. 203, May 1799, pp. 321-360
- ↑ Example of the appearance of several phantasms, p. 6
- ↑ Faust I, verse 4144 ff.
- ↑ French soulager , "facilitate", "relieve", "liberate"
- ^ Ludwig Bechstein: German book of legends. Meersburg and Leipzig 1930, p. 250, online
- ^ Johann Georg Theodor Grasse: Book of legends of the Prussian state. Carl Flemming, Glogau 1868/71, Vol. 1, p. 217, No. 250. Correspondingly in Griepentrog: Berliner Sagen 2010, p. 145 (Der Poltergeist)
- ↑ Griepentrog: Berliner Sagen 2010, p. 145 f.
- ^ Adalbert Kuhn : Märkische Sagen und Märchen. Reimer, Berlin 1843, p. 143, no.134a