“Wake Not the Dead” (original: “Laßt die Todten ruhen”) was written by Ernst Raupach and first appeared in Minerva: Taschenbuch für das Jahr 1823 (1822). Ernst Benjamin Salomo Raupach (1784-1852) was a German dramatist, preacher, and university professor.

“Wake Not The Dead” begins with Walter, a Burgundian lord, pouring out his lamentations for his dead wife Brunhilda. She was beautiful and passionate and they had loved each other intensely, but before their “phrenzied passion”¹ could subside she died. Walter recovered and married Swanhilda, who had a much milder temperament than Brunhilda. Swanhilda bore Walter two children, but eventually Walter begins to pine for Brunhilda, ignoring Swanhilda. She sees the change in her husband and tries to win his affections again, but “the more she endeavoured to regain his affections, the colder did he grow, -- the more intolerable did her caresses seem, and the more continually did the image of Brunhilda haunt his thoughts.”² Walter begins spending nights at Brunhilda’s grave, whispering, “Wilt thou sleep forever?”³ One day at the gravesite Walter encounters a sorcerer. The sorcerer scorns Walter’s grief and tells him that Brunhilda, were she to return, would not be happy, but Walter is besotted with his image of Brunhilda and begs the sorcerer to restore her to him. The sorcerer warns Walter, “Wake not the dead,” but also tells him to meet at the gravesite the next night at midnight. The next night Walter begs the sorcerer to bring Brunhilda back, and after making Walter wait for another day the sorcerer casts a spell and resurrects Brunhilda. Walter spends as much time with Brunhilda as he can, even though she is changed. She is more beautiful and charming than ever, but Brunhilda refuses to allow him to touch her:

"What!" exclaimed she, "is it fitting that I who have been purified by death from the frailty of mortality, should become thy concubine, while a mere daughter of the earth bears the title of thy wife: never shall it be. No, it must be within the walls of thy palace, within that chamber where I once reigned as queen, that thou obtainest the end of thy wishes, -- and of mine also," added she, imprinting a glowing kiss on his lips, and immediately disappeared.⁴

Walter returns home and divorces Swanhilda; although, Swanhilda knows what Walter has done. She returns home to her father, leaving the children behind. Walter installs Brunhilda in his castle and is blissfully happy, but his servants loathe and fear Brunhilda. Because she needs fresh human blood “from the veins of youth.” to maintain her unlife she begins preying on children, draining their youth and energy until they die. The locals soon suspect Brunhilda and abandon the area around the castle, and Brunhilda is left with only Walter’s children to feed upon. Walter is heartbroken at their deaths, but Brunhilda is not sympathetic. With no one else left to feed upon, Brunhilda turns to Walter. He grows weaker, but one day while walking in the woods a strange bird drops a sweet-smelling root at his feet. He picks it up and tries to eat it, but it is extremely bitter and he casts it aside. But the next time Brunhilda tries to drink his blood, her breath, which causes him to fall into a deep sleep, has no effect on him, and so when she bites his chest he feels it. Only then does he realize what Brunhilda has done, and he flees from her. But run as he tries, she always finds him. Walter eventually finds the sorcerer, who tells him that his only recourse is to kill her by stabbing her through the heart with a dagger. With the sorcerer’s help, Walter does this, but as Brunhilda dies she says, “Thou too are doomed to perdition.”⁵ The sorcerer then makes Walter swear never to think of her with love, for if he does he is doomed. Walter goes to see Swanhilda, who agrees to take back until he tells her what happened to their children. Walter returns to his castle, but on the way there runs into a beautiful woman out hunting. He takes her back to the castle, and within a week they are married. But on their wedding night the woman turns into a serpent who crushes him to death, and his castle is enveloped in a fiery blaze as a voice cries out, “WAKE NOT THE DEAD!”⁶

“Wake Not The Dead” has a realistic psychological element: Walter’s inability to accept Brunhilda’s death and his unwillingness to settle for Swanhilda and be happy with her. But “Wake Not The Dead” is essentially a horror story. It is a kunstmärchen, and in some respects begs comparison with the work of Ludwig Tieck (who was for a long time credited with writing “Wake Not the Dead”), but it is less successful than Tieck’s work. Unlike the straightforward and simple language of Tieck’s kunstmärchen, “Wake Not The Dead” is told with complicated and old-fashioned syntax, with statements phrased like “I felt for her who now sleepeth beneath this sod.”⁷ Raupach’s use of language produces well-written (if not quotable) prose, but it does not engage the reader as immediately as the narrative language of Tieck’s stories. It distances the reader from Walter’s emotional restlessness and his obsession with his dead and then undead wife. Raupach further includes narratorial asides about “Unfortunate Walter!”⁸ which were likely meant to emphasize his eventual doom but only interrupt the story’s momentum. Lastly, the story is too long for its plot and could easily have been more economically told while preserving the most horrific elements.

“Wake Not The Dead” does not have the fame of other early nineteenth century vampire stories. Because it was translated into English in 1823, only four years after the publication of Polidori’s “The Vampyre,” “Wake Not the Dead” was given much less attention by the English-reading public, and it continues to be much less known. Critics have called it the first modern vampire story, but this is too generous. It has many of the fairy tale trappings of the kunstmärchen and does not make use of modern settings or modern characters, as “The Vampyre” does. Brunhilda is also a much more traditional vampire than Ruthven. “Wake Not The Dead” seems much more influenced by other works than “The Vampyre” was. There are elements of traditional German vampire folklore as well as elements of schauerroman (see: The Gothic), a genre popular in Germany when Raupach wrote “Wake Not The Dead.” It may be that he was trying to cash in on the popularity of the genre by writing a similar story. But if so he was not successful, for although there is blood, gore, and horror in “Wake Not The Dead” there is not enough of any to satisfy the average reader of the schauerroman and too much for readers of fairy tales.

Interestingly, there are significant similarities between “Wake Not The Dead” and Théophile Gautier’s “Clarimonde.” Gautier may have written his story as a commentary on Raupach’s work and a revision of his take on the Fatal Woman vampire character.

Print: Andrew Barger, The Best Vampire Stories 1800-1849: A Classic Vampire Anthology. Bottletree Books, 2012.

Heide Crawford, The Origins of the Literary Vampire. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016.

¹ “Wake Not the Dead,” in Popular Tales and Romances of the Northern Nations (London: W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 1823), 236.

² “Wake Not the Dead,” 239.

³ “Wake Not the Dead,” 239.

⁴ “Wake Not the Dead,” 253-254.

⁵ “Wake Not the Dead,” 283.

⁶ “Wake Not the Dead,” 291.

⁷ “Wake Not the Dead,” 240.

⁸ “Wake Not the Dead,” 257.