The Ghost-Seer

The Ghost-Seer – From the papers of the Marchioness of O**

Author	Friedrich Schiller
Country	Germany
Language	German
Publication date	1787 to 1789

File:Arthur von Ramberg gez, Schiller-Galerie, Friedrich von Schiller, Sammelbild, Stahlstich um 1859, Der Prinz aus Der Geisterseher, Konrad Conrad Geyer gestochen.jpg

The prince, engraving about 1859

The Ghost-Seer (full title: Der Geisterseher – Aus den Papieren des Grafen von O**; literally, The Ghost-Seer – From the papers of the Count of O**) or The Apparitionist is an unfinished novel by Friedrich Schiller. It first appeared in several instalments from 1787 to 1789 in the journal Thalia, later appearing as a three-volume book in its own right. Although it remained unfinished, its audiences were the largest for any of Schiller's work during his lifetime. The readership was attracted by its elements typical of the time, such as necromancy, spiritualism and conspiracies.

Structurally and stylistically it is not a single story, but tells of a Jesuit secret society trying to convert a Protestant German prince to Catholicism and bring him to the throne back home in order to bolster its own power base. Writing of the Prince's fate, Schiller shows him as the key to the conflict between passion and morality, passion and duty. The work's passages on religious and historical philosophy show Schiller's Enlightenment ideals, with his critique of religion and society to the fore, though a deeper exploration of Immanuel Kant was to follow later. Due to the novel's slow formation and the author's antipathy to it, it was not planned from start to finish and its style and structure is not uniform throughout, ranging from rhetorical prose, to theatrical prose, to dialogues reminiscent of Don Carlos, to the popular elements of Gothic fiction.

It is thought that Johann Georg Schröpfer may have provided the inspiration for the novel.

Plot

Introduction

File:Canaletto (II) 023.jpg

St Mark's Square, Venice)

The work is narrated in the first person by the 'Graf von O**' (Count of O**). It describes the story of a German prince visiting Venice at carnival time. Right at the start of the work, the Count stresses that this story might sound incredible, but that he had witnessed it with own eyes. Furthermore, he talks of his disinterest in deceiving the public as "at the time these pages will tread into the world, I will not be and will neither win nor lose by the account given."

Other Versions

In 1922, The Ghost-Seer was completed by horror novelist Hanns Heinz Ewers, however Ewers' version was not well received by literary critics.

Bibliography

Friedrich Schiller, The Armenian, or The Ghost Seer…, 2 voll., translated by W.. Render, C. Wittington, 1800.

External links

• The Ghost-Seer at Project Gutenberg