Burg Frankenstein is a hilltop castle about 5 km south of Darmstadt in Germany. As the name suggests, the castle and its folklore are widely believed to have been influential upon Mary Shelley, though this theory is controversial. The castle was built before 1250 by Konrad Reiz von Breuberg, who made it into a territory subject only to the Emperor and henceforth adopted the family name Frankenstein. In 1292 Count William II. of Katzenelnbogen forced to open the castle[1]. Although it was at one time a sizeable fortress, today only two towers and a chapel remain. Because of territorial and religious disputes between the Catholic Frankensteins and the Lutheran landgraves of Hesse-Darmstadt, the family in 1662 eventually sold their possessions around the Castle to the landgraves and retired to their possessions in the Wetterau. The German alchemist and natural philosopher Johann Conrad Dippel (1673-1734) was born and lived at Castle Frankenstein. He is known to have sometimes added 'Frankensteinensis' to his signature, indicating his birth place, not any relation to the Frankenstein family. The folklore of the region accuses him of body snatching, a crime not unknown amongst anatomists, and claims that he attempted to bring the dead to life, though how much these stories have been retro-actively influenced by the Frankenstein myths is hard to say. The Shelleys were known to have travelled through the region on their way to visit Lord Byron in Geneva, where Mary Shelley would create her opus during a scary story telling session on a stormy night. It is widely believed that she must have visited the castle and heard the local folklore, though she is not known to have ever made any mention of having done so.
Notes and references
- ^ http://www.graf-von-katzenelnbogen.de/ The History of the County of Katzenelnbogen and the First Riesling of the World
Literature
- Art. "Frankenstein", in: Hessen, hg. v. Georg W. Sante, Stuttgart 1960 (= Handbuch der historischen Stätten Deutschlands, 4. Bd.), S. 117
- Nieder-Beerbach, in: Georg Dehio, Handbuch der Deutschen Kunstdenkmäler: Hessen, bearb. v. Magnus Backes, 1966, S. 622
