Baron Munchausen

Baron Munchausen is a fictional German nobleman created by the German writer Rudolf Erich Raspe in 1785. The character is loosely based on a real baron, Hieronymus Karl Friedrich, Freiherr von Münchhausen. The real-life Baron fought for the Russian Empire in the Russo-Turkish War of 1735–1739. He became a minor celebrity within German aristocratic circles for telling outrageous tall tales based on his military career.

About Baron Munchausen in brief

Baron Munchausen is a fictional German nobleman created by the German writer Rudolf Erich Raspe in 1785. The character is loosely based on a real baron, Hieronymus Karl Friedrich, Freiherr von Münchhausen. The real-life Baron fought for the Russian Empire in the Russo-Turkish War of 1735–1739. Upon retiring in 1760, he became a minor celebrity within German aristocratic circles for telling outrageous tall tales based on his military career. Raspe adapted some of the stories into literary form, first in German as ephemeral magazine pieces and then in English as the 1785 book. The fictional Baron’s exploits, narrated in the first person, focus on his impossible achievements as a sportsman, soldier, and traveller; for instance: riding on a cannonball, fighting a forty-foot crocodile, and travelling to the Moon. Intentionally comedic, the stories play on the absurdity and inconsistency of Munchhausen’s claims, and contain an undercurrent of social satire. The book was a major international success, becoming the core text for numerous English, continental European, and American editions that were expanded and rewritten by other writers. Versions of the fictional Baron have appeared on stage, screen, radio, and television, as well as in other literary works. Though the Baron Munchusen stories are no longer well-known in many English-speaking countries, they are still popular in continental Europe.

Thecharacter has inspired numerous memorials and museums, and several medical conditions and other concepts are named after him. The Baron’s story was first published in Oxford by a bookseller named Smith in 1783. The author never acknowledged his authorship of the work, which was only established posthumously. The story was published in English by Smith, and was soon translated into other European languages, including a German version expanded by the poet Gottfried August Bürger. In 1785 the book was published by Smith in Oxford, and in 1787 by the bookseller’s publisher, the London-based publisher, William Morrow and Co. The first illustrations of the character, perhaps created by Raspe himself, depict the Baron as slim and youthful, although later illustrators have depicted him as an older man, and have added the sharply beaked nose and twirled moustache that have become part of thecharacter’s definitive visual representation. He was a younger son of the \”Black Line\” of Rinteln-Bodenwerder, an aristocratic family in the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg. His cousin was the founder of the University of Göttingen and later the Prime Minister of the Electorate of Hanover. He started as a page to Anthony Ulrich-Wolfenbüttel, and followed his employer to the Russia during theRusso-Austro–Turkish War in 1739, and became a cornet in the Russian cavalry regiment, the Brunswick-Cuirassiers.

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