The Daily Mail report that seminal director Fritz Murnau’s embalmed head has been detached from his body and stolen from his mausoleum in Stahnsdorf, Germany.
Cemetery warden Olaf Ihlefeldt discovered the theft when making his regular rounds of the grounds. The Daily Mail reports:
“He found the head missing as he slid the lid of the coffin away while investigating minor damage he had spotted on mausoleum number 22. ” ‘The body is still in pretty good condition,’ he said”
“Murnau’s head was still recognisable and had its hair and teeth, he added, ‘the last time I saw it’. ..
“Murnau’s ‘Nosferatu’ was and remains one of the most important milestones in cinema.
“Based upon Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel ‘Dracula’, it told the story of Count Orlok of the undead, and its moody scenes and clever camera angles influenced generations of fans and filmakers alike.
“But death was at the heart of the movie and death has continued to stir the passions of vampire lovers ever since it was made in 1922.
“Indeed, his own death in 1931 aged 41 was enough to elicit some fascination of its own: openly homosexual, he was engaging in oral sex with his 14-year-old Filipino houseboy on the Pacific Coast Highway at Santa Barbara when he lost concentration and slammed into a telegraph pole.
“His corpse was embalmed and placed in a metal coffin, and the following year it was shipped to Germany for burial in Stahnsdorf’s south-west cemetery.”
read the entire piece here:
A previous post at O=II detailed claims that Albin Grau aka “Frater Pacitus” of the Collegium Pansophicum and then Fraternitas Saturni inserted encoded occult messages and working magical symbols into the visual content of Nosferatu
http://zeroequalstwo.net/fortean-times-looks-into-occultists-impact-on-horror-classic-nosferatu/
Yes, this is very distressing. Stahnsdorf is a very large cemetery and would have been easy enough for these miscreants to break in after hours and commit their vandalism and grave robbing. We are hoping that the German federal police take appropriate measures to find & prosecute the criminals, as well as recover Murnau’s remains.