2023-05-14 10:54:12
Descendant of a prolific saga of German executioners, 14 from the 16th centurydetails before assuring that this “does not cause nightmares”, the writer Oliver Potzschas if he were a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, suddenly shows, from the videoconference screen, a glass jar with a cork stopper, with a sticker that reads ‘Mummy’. Inside, a brown powder. “It is a compound of remains of mummies which was believed to have medicinal properties. It was traded in Europe from Egypt and was sold in pharmacies in half of Europe until the beginning of the 20th century”, says the author about one of the themes that he develops in his new black novel historical ‘The Gravedigger and the Black Earth’ (Planet).
But he throws balls off when questioning him about where he got the bottle. “Perhaps they have deceived me, because it smells of chocolate! -smiles-. In some museums and in old pharmacies jars like this one of mumia are still preserved. There are also some with white powder, which they say is made of skulls…”.
In ‘The Gravedigger and the Black Earth’, the body of a renowned Egyptologist appears mummified in a sarcophagus in the Museum of Art History in Vienna. Mummy powder comes to mind because Pötzsch always tries to “explain a somewhat terrifying story by looking for a scientifically based reason.” “Here he was looking for the causes that lead to a possible curse of the mummies and I found it in the possibility that the bacteria in the mummy’s tissues had some healing capacity.”
The young nobles bought mummies to have parties in their palaces where they unwrapped them to find the amulets.
With his previous book, ‘The Gravedigger’s Book’, first installment of this series set in Vienna at the end of the 19th century, Pötzsch (Munich, 1970) convinced 3,500,000 readers. It stars a trio of characters: the gravedigger of the title, Augustin Rothmayer, who writes books on funeral rites and studies the role of insects on corpses; the forensic photographer Julia Wolf, “strong woman of humble origins and an inventor father”, and the Jewish policeman Leopold von Herzfelt, who tries to apply new scientific methods to solving crimes and for which the author was inspired by Hans Gross, judge of instruction that created the first criminology manual. Meanwhile, a serial killer castrates his victims. A being that has something, points out the writer, of Fritz Haarmann, ‘the werewolf of Hannover’, who in the 1920s killed and dismembered 24 children and young people.
The last executioner in my family died at the beginning of the 19th century, but my grandmother, as a child, was called the executioner’s daughter at school.
“Today we say that technology is going too fast: mobile phones, AI… But since 1850 I think it has been going much, much faster, with many inventions in a short time: the telephone, the phonograph, cars, the cinema… and in criminology, advances in fingerprints, ballistics, poisons, blood tests…”, detailed hours before traveling to participate in the Black Valencia festival.
The parties to unwrap mummies
They were also years of fever for egyptology. “I was amazed to discover that young noblemen bought mummies to have parties in their palaces where they were unwrapped to find the amulets and other valuables with which they had been buried.” The novel refers to the discovery in 1871 of the so-called Royal Cache of Deir el-Bahari, with some 40 sarcophagi, most of them for pharaohs, including that of Ramesses II. It was found by the Abd el-Rassul brothers, who started an illegal trade with the discovered pieces that was not uncovered until a decade later. Pötzsch thinks about the current debate on the claim of former colonies of the looted works. “Germany has returned the bronzes to Benin and they were given money to build the museum to display them. But instead they gave them to their king and the people said, do you see what happens? But actually they can do with their goods whatever they want.”
Human zoos and antisemitism
The author sneaks into the plot other embarrassing and infamous practices of the time, such as those known as human zoos. “Reading newspapers of that time I found the reference to an exhibition in the zoo of Vienna of a Matabele caravan, with members captured from a tribe in present-day Zimbabwe“. Its leader, a 25-year-old man named Saidrovuni, serves Pötzsch as a character to blame for the crimes and to put a face to those victims of colonial power.
His policeman Von Herzfelt, a Jew, allows him to show anti-Semitism already in those years. “That and racism are very present in the book, where there is an inspector who is anti-Semitic but is a nice guy. The Germans used pejorative terms to refer to blacks, that’s why I keep the derogatory term they used in the dialogues,’ niger’ (black). Hitler came from Vienna… It is important to learn from the past to face the present,” alert.
spiritism and ghosts
The journalist and television scriptwriter is also used to being asked about his executioner ancestors. “The last executioner in the family died at the beginning of the 19th century, but my grandmother, who died at the age of 94, as a child, was called the executioner’s daughter at school. It takes time to get rid of that ballast. Maybe that took me to write books about an undertaker”, laughs Pötzsch. And perhaps also to choose somewhat terrifying themes for them, such as the vampires in ‘The Gravedigger’s Book’, now the mummies and their curses and, in the third novel in the series, which will be published in the summer in Germany, the ghosts, advances . “At the time, seances were common, people believed in spiritseven the Empress Sisi practiced it, and Conan Doyle, to whom I give a tiny role”.
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