Undead
The undead are fantastic beings who embody people who have already died, who physically continue to be among the living or who return to them. Undead come from mythology , folklore and religion . As survivors, they are in a physical and mental state between life and death . In the horror genre , the undead are depicted as vampires , zombies or revenants .
Undead in popular belief, fairy tale and religion
Tales of the undead belong to the narrative expressions of the culturally and historically widespread belief in the dead . In cultures such as Christian ones, which deny the finality of death, they are an expression of the belief that the living have relationships with the dead beyond the grave. The idea of living corpses and restless dead is - although there is no evidence from the sources - associated with Germanic- medieval conceptions. In contrast, the Christian view is that the returning dead will find their eternal rest in peace with God after their redemption . The reasons for the restlessness of the dead are mostly to be found in earthly transgressions, neglects or lasting ties to this world . In the world of the living the dead look for unfulfilled demands, deliver messages, atone or take revenge for a debt that has not been paid for. The deliberate or accidental disturbance of the peace of the dead by the living is also a frequent cause of their appearance. These causes also result in the undead's ambivalent traits in relation to the living and their mostly hostile, annoying, aggressive and dangerous behavior towards them. The danger of the dead is based on their special powers.
The idea of an undead can differ from that of a ghost or other spirit beings in that the latter is viewed as physically dead and only mentally or emotionally active forms of life, while the undead, on the contrary, is usually imagined as spiritually and emotionally dead, only physically present shadow beings become. The living dead appear physically as theriomorphic (animal-like) and anthropomorphic (human-like) figures.
A common form of the undead is the vampire , which occurs in its classic form in southern Romania, Greece and Serbia, while it is hardly known in Transylvania , the alleged homeland of the novel and film character Dracula .
In the Yoruba -Religionen, such as the Voodoo , faith alludes of sorcerers dominated zombies a major role. In other mythologies, however, the undead act independently of external powers that control them. From Russian mythology comes the figure of Koschei , who keeps his soul separate from his undead body.
Undead can harm the living in a number of ways. The best known is the blood sucking of the vampires. According to the oldest reports, the undead revenants are said to have strangled their victims and spread diseases and epidemics. Other undead, so-called stoolers , crouch on the living and allow themselves to be carried until their victims collapse, exhausted or dead. A common motive is that a person approaching an undead receives a sharp slap or a permanent mark on his body. In addition to the undead that rise from their graves, there was also the after-eater in European popular belief , a dead lying in the grave, who from there can suck the survivors' vitality through orifices and also draw them to their death.
There was a story about the German magician Agrippa von Nettesheim, which was already widespread during his lifetime, that he had resuscitated the corpse of a dead man to camouflage a crime in such a way that it walked as undead across the market square for a while, where he finally fell over and for everyone visibly "died" again.
A special form of the undead is embodied in the late romantic story Das kalte Herz by Wilhelm Hauff of Holländer-Michel and his victims, who already reach an undead state before their physical death by replacing their heart with a stone and thus the ability to humanity and compassion to lose.
Modern adaptations
The most diverse types of undead appear as fictional characters in fantasy literature as well as in mass media such as films and computer and console games . The undead figures known from various mythological contexts are often ascribed very different properties in the various media developments; there is no general classification of such play and entertainment characters. Often it is black magicians or necromancers who create or summon the undead. Often they appear in hordes of lower undead such as zombies, ghouls or walking skeletons who threaten, attack or must be defeated by the game, film or novel heroes. A special form of the undead is the lich , a powerful black magician who willingly chooses the undead existence as a form of immortality in order to devote himself more intensively to the study of magic.
Sometimes the term "undead" is taken up in life sciences and cultural studies and used from various perspectives to illuminate the tension between life and death in the real world.
See also
literature
- Helmut Fischer : Dead, dead. In: Rolf Wilhelm Brednich (ed.): Encyclopedia of fairy tales. Concise dictionary for historical and comparative narrative research. Volume 13: Search - Seduction. de Gruyter, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-11-023767-2 , Sp. 788-801.
- Angelika Franz, Daniel Nösler: beheaded and staked. Archaeologists on the hunt for the undead. Theiss Verlag, Darmstadt 2016, ISBN 978-3-8062-3380-3 .
- Peter Kremer: Where horror lurks. Bloodsuckers and headless horsemen, undead, werewolves and revenants on Inde, Erft and Rur . PeKaDe, Düren 2003, ISBN 3-929928-01-9 .
- Markus Metz, Georg Seesslen: We undead! About posthumans, zombies, botox monsters and other forms of survival and under-life in Life Science & Pulp Fiction . Matthes & Seitz Berlin, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-88221-563-2 .
- Thomas Schürmann: The after-consumption belief in Central Europe . Elwert, Marburg 1990, ISBN 3-7708-0938-6 .
- Wolfgang Schwerdt: Vampires, revenants and undead. On the trail of the living dead . Past Publishing, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-940621-39-9 .
- Wolfgang Seidenspinner: Living corpse. In: Kurt Ranke (ed.): Encyclopedia of fairy tales . Concise dictionary for historical and comparative narrative research . tape 8 : Clergy – Maggio. de Gruyter, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-11-014339-9 . , Col. 815-820.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Harlinda Lox: Death. In: Rolf Wilhelm Brednich (ed.): Encyclopedia of fairy tales. Concise dictionary for historical and comparative narrative research. Volume 13: Search - Seduction. de Gruyter, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-11-023767-2 , Col. 696-712 (here: Col. 702 f., “5.2. T. as a transition to another Dasein”).
- ^ Sascha Westphal ( epd film ): review of Das kalte Herz. September 23, 2016, accessed on November 25, 2017 (film review of Das kalte Herz (2016) by Johannes Naber ).
- ↑ Markus Metz, Georg Seesslen: The undead and how to get there. Suggestions for the critical design of a new discourse. In: dies .: We undead! About posthumans, zombies, botox monsters and other forms of survival and under-life in Life Science & Pulp Fiction. Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-88221-563-2 , pp. 7-38.
