Gerard van Swieten - Vienna, Austria
Posted by: 
Metro2
N 48° 12.276 E 016° 21.640
33U E 601096 N 5339936
Gerard van Swieten was the personal physician to Empress Maria Theresa...and he is known for combatting the widespread fear of vampires during his day.
Waymark Code: WMK42D
Location: Wien, Austria
Date Posted: 02/09/2014
Views: 17
This sculpture is one of several on the Monument to Maria Theresa in Vienna. The 1888 larger than life bronze work depicts van Swieten standing in a long overcoat and a vest beneath. A medal can also be seen. He is portrayed as a middle-aged to older man...and a bit chubby and roundfaced. His left hand clasps a book to his belly while his right hand gestures as if he is explaining something in conversation. The artist is Caspar von Zumbusch.
Wikipedia has an additional photo of this sculpture (
visit link) and informs us:
"Gerard van Swieten (May 7, 1700 – June 18, 1772) was a Dutch-Austrian physician.
Van Swieten was born in Leiden. He was a pupil of Herman Boerhaave and became in 1745 the personal physician of the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa. In this position he implemented a transformation of the Austrian health service and medical university education. He founded a botanical garden, a chemical laboratory and introduced clinical instruction. Since 1745 he was also librarian for Maria Theresa in what was then the Imperial Library.
As reformer
Beside his medical activities, Gerard van Swieten was also active as a reformer. Especially the censorship was organized in a different way under his direction. He drove out the Jesuits that were in charge of the censorship before and carried out a centralization of the censorship that was only partly successful. He also tried to use scientific and rational aspects for the judgement of literature.
Vampires
Gerard van Swieten on the memorial to Maria Theresa, ViennaEspecially important is his part in the fight against superstition during the enlightenment, particularly in the case of the vampires, that were reported from villages in Eastern Europe in the years between 1718 and 1732. After the last of the wars against the Turks in 1718 some parts of the land, e.g. Northern Serbia and a part of Bosnia, went to Austria. These parts were settled with refugees that had the special status of duty-free farmers. But for that they had to take care of the agricultural development and secure the frontier. Because of that the reports about the vampires reached for the first time German-speaking area. In the year 1755 Gerard van Swieten was sent by Empress Maria Theresa to Moravia to investigate the situation relating to vampires. He viewed the vampire myth as a "barbarism of ignorance" and his aim was to eradicate it.
His report, Abhandlung des Daseyns der Gespenster (or Discourse on the Existence of Ghosts), offered an entirely natural explanation for the belief in vampires. He explained the unusual states in the graves with possible causes such as the processes of fermentation and lack of oxygen which was a reason for preventing decomposition. Characteristic for his opinion is this quotation from the preface to his essay of 1768: “… that all the fuss doesn't come from anything else than a vain fear, a superstitious credulity, a dark and eventful imagination, simplicity and ignorance among the people.'”