page_title: Gerard van Swieten
section_title: Vampires
hierarchical_section_title: Gerard van Swieten / Career in Austria / Vampires
caption_attribution_description: Gerard van Swieten on the memorial to Maria Theresia, Vienna
context_page_description: Gerard van Swieten was a Dutch physician who from 1745 was the personal physician of the Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa and transformed the Austrian health service and medical university education. He was the father of Gottfried van Swieten, patron of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven.
context_section_description: Especially important is his part in the fight against superstition during the enlightenment, particularly in the case of the vampires, reported from villages in Serbia in the years between 1718 and 1732.
  Following the conclusion of the Austro-Turkish War in 1718, Northern Serbia and a part of Bosnia came under Habsburg control. Through the settlement of refugees granted Wehrbauer status in the new border regions, vampire stories spread to German-speaking areas for the first time.
  In 1755 Gerard van Swieten was sent by Empress Maria Theresa to Moravia to investigate the situation relating to vampires. He viewed the vampire myth as a "barbarism of ignorance" and his aim was to eradicate it.
  His report, Abhandlung des Daseyns der Gespenster (or Discourse on the Existence of Ghosts), offered an entirely natural explanation for the belief in vampires. He dismissed the claims of unusual circumstances around graves with possible causes such as the processes of fermentation and lack of oxygen being reasons for preventing decomposition. Characteristic for his opinion is this quotation from the preface to his essay of 1768 "that all the fuss doesn't come from anything other than vain fear, superstitious credulity, dark and eventful imagination and simplicity and ignorance among these people." In response to the report, Maria Theresa issued a decree that banned all traditional defences that locals had been using, such as putting accused vampires to the stakes, beheading or burning them.
caption: Gerard van Swieten on the memorial to Maria Theresa, Vienna
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