Baron von Münchhausen in the Baltic World

• In Event: Cultural Narratives in the Baltic: Legends and Heroes

Abstract

Baron von Münchhausen was both a real historical figure (a loquacious aristocrat from Bodenwerder in Hanover) and later a collectively imagined figure of legend and fable in the stories related by Rudolf Erich Raspe and others from the 1780s. In the 1785 version, Raspe’s stories open with the Baron’s improbable adventures in the Baltic world, as he ventures through northern Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Kurland, Livonia, on to St. Petersburg. He encounters marvels and undertakes superhuman exploits while riding his “superb Lithuanian horse.” While his later travels take him across the globe to Ceylon, Africa, and the Ottoman empire, and even beyond to the moon (twice), close textual analysis of the Baron’s alleged experiences around the Baltic Sea reveals much about the place of the Baltic world in the European imaginary of the late Baroque. The conclusions contribute to a better understanding of the formation and evolution of identity in the Baltic space.

Short Bio

Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius is professor of history at the University of Tennessee. He is the author of The German Myth of the East: 1800 to the Present (Oxford, 2009) and War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity, and German Occupation in World War I (Cambridge, 2000). He was president of AABS in 2010-12.

Author

• Vėjas Gabriel Liulevičius, University of Tennessee