A dark rainy night, a medical laboratory, candlelight, body parts - and a vision of a creation meant to found a new species. That is the key moment in Mary Shelley’s novel "Frankenstein", published 200 years ago, in early 1818. For many people this story marks the beginning of the Gothic horror genre. "Frankenstein" has its origins in Ingolstadt. Now, to mark the anniversary, the city has gone in search of the monster’s traces among old stone walls and narrow streets. And it proves that the story can do more than just shock us - it's also very topical.

Why Ingolstadt?

Ironically Shelley had the horror start at a spot that - nowadays at least - couldn't be more idyllic. The late baroque building of the former Institute of Anatomy in Ingolstadt still stands, calm and dignified. Behind it, in the herb garden, groups of visitors are strolling around. The gardener is weeding the flowerbeds.

However, just a few meters away, corpses were being ritually dissected more than 200 years ago, says tour guide Maria Pilz. In what was the anatomical theatre of Bavaria's first university, pioneering medical work was done. In the gallery medical students - and also townspeople - could observe the professor, in top hat and tails, listening to violin music and instructing his assistants in how to dismember the bodies of criminals or soldiers. Until then, only a few people had dared to dissect dead humans. The fear of the church's anger was too great. Word about this practice in Ingolstadt soon spread beyond the region. 

Perhaps that is how Mary Shelley heard about this university, even though she had never visited Ingolstadt. In 1816, the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his future wife Mary spent the summer near Lord Byron on the shores of Lake Geneva, in Switzerland One cold and rainy evening,  Byron challenged each member of the circle to write a ghost story. Mary, then only 19, chose Ingolstadt as the starting point of her tale.

At the time the former Institute of Anatomy had been closed for years. The university and all its students had been moved to Landshut, and later to Munich.Nonetheless, Shelley had her protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, study medicine in Ingolstadt and develop the idea of creating artificial life.

How Frankenstein is fueling tourism

Our present-day guide can only guess in which street Frankenstein might theoretically have had his small apartment and in which graveyard he would have dug up the body parts for his creature. But that bothers neither the tourists nor even some residents. They flock to trace the monster’s footsteps on guided mystery tours through the city at dusk, even though  Jürgen Amann from the Ingolstadt tourist board admits that these guided tours are mainly slapstick events. "Certainly there are some who turn up their noses and say that we shouldn't deviate an inch from the story", he says. But he views it differently: "The main point is to spin a good yarn."

That doesn't mean that the program has no serious aspects. Yes, they hand out monster blood (a liqueur), monster pills (peppermint drops) and Frankenstein ice cream (a bright blood-red berry sherbet). But they have also recognized that Frankenstein's vision of creating a new, better life is more relevant than ever. That is why they've elaborated on the topic, taking it further, even where it might wound Ingolstadt and its residents. The city’s theatre, for example, organized a futurological congress in which people involved in science, research, technology and art discussed the fusion of man and machine for three days. Robots danced ballets and zombies wandered through apocalyptic post-nuclear deserts. Autonomous driving, killing and thinking - all are topics that not only concern this city, heavily involved in the automotive industry, but that can also be linked to Frankenstein's - that is, Mary Shelley's - vision of the future.

Artificial life - the subject couldn't be more topical

Furthermore, the tourist board is deliberately launching the anniversary with a focus on youth and originality: with 3-D street art in front of the venerable town hall and with improvisational theatre on the subjects of women's rights and free love. At the end of the year, the program will become serious once again: historian Theodor Straub will talk about Frankenstein's fantasy that man could be the creator and take God's place - and how that vision failed in the 20th century - just as the fictional story of Victor Frankenstein and his monster predicted.

 

(Sophie Schmidt, dpa)