11 May: Baron Münchhausen

This date in 1720 saw the birth of Karl Friedrich Hieronymus Freiherr von Münchhausen, on whom the fictional Baron Münchhausen was based. 10 things you might not know:

1. The real baron was born in Bodenwerder, Electorate of Hanover. He was a younger son of an aristocratic family in the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg. His cousin, Gerlach Adolph von Münchhausen, was the founder of the University of Göttingen and later the Prime Minister of the Electorate of Hanover.
2. Karl Friedrich Hieronymus Freiherr von Münchhausen had a military career – he served with the Russian army against the Turks, rose to the rank of Rittmeister (Captain) in the Russian cavalry and retired in 1760 to become a country gentleman. He was known in general as an honest man, although he was given to telling tall tales at parties about his life as a soldier, hunter, and sportsman, incorporating stories from other sources, such as folk tales.
3. He married twice. His first wife was Jacobine von Dunten. They were married in 1744; she died in 1790. They had no children. In 1794, Münchhausen married Bernardine von Brunn, who was 57 years younger than him. Soon after the wedding, he was taken ill and the couple spent the summer of 1794 in the spa town of Bad Pyrmont. According to the gossip of the time, Bernadine spent her time going to balls and flirting with other men; and nine months later, she had a daughter, who Münchhausen declared was not his and spent the last years of his life in divorce proceedings and alimony litigation, until he died on 22 February 1797.
4. Author Rudolf Erich Raspe published a collection of short stories based on the kinds of tall tales the Baron told. It was called Baron Munchausen’s Narrative of His Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia. The stories in Raspe's book are told in first-person, with the note: "the Baron is supposed to relate these extraordinary Adventures over his Bottle, when surrounded by his Friends". The book was published anonymously in London in 1785. Other writers jumped on the bandwagon and published similar collections, most of which had nothing whatever to do with the stories the real Baron told.
5. Even so, some readers made the connection and the real Baron gained the reputation of being a notorious liar and was nicknamed 'Lügenbaron', the Lying Baron.
6. Decades before Terry Gilliam's film in 1988, French film-maker Georges Méliès made a movie based on the Baron's exploits in 1911. It was called Baron Munchausen's Dream, and wasn't particularly true to the Raspe book. It was a short film about a surreal Dream the Baron had when drunk. An earlier Georges Méliès film, made in 1902, A Trip to the Moon, may also have been based on the Baron's adventures.
7. So what sort of escapades did the Baron get up to? His adventures include going to the Moon in a Hot air balloon, fighting a forty-foot Crocodile, meeting the goddess Venus, riding on a cannonball, being swallowed by a giant fish, saving himself from drowning by pulling on his own hair, getting a wolf to pull his sleigh, and using laurel tree branches to fix his horse when it is accidentally cut in half.
8. Some snippets about Terry Gilliam's film: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen was the third of an unofficial trilogy representing the three stages of man: youth, middle age and old age, the others being Time Bandits and Brazil. It was Uma Thurman's film debut, although some of her later work actually hit screens before Gilliam's film did. She played Venus. The title role was played by John Neville, at least in part because he was a big Monty Python fan and was keen to work with Gilliam. According to the credits, the King of the Moon was played by Ray D. Tutto. There's no such person. It's the English translation of the Italian “Re di Tutto” which means “King of everything” - how the character introduces himself to the Baron. The role was actually played by Robin Williams, who agreed to do it for free and uncredited, since by the time they came to casting that role, the budget for the film had run out.
9. In 1951, British doctor Richard Asher proposed the name Münchausen Syndrome for cases of patients lying about their illnesses. Other doctors criticised the suggestion on the grounds that it trivialised the condition and that the historical Baron never suffered from it. Nevertheless the name stuck and even spawned the names of two related syndromes: Munchausen syndrome by proxy, in which people invent illnesses and symptoms for people they are caring for, and Munchausen by Internet, in which people go online and lie about being ill.
10. In 2004, a fan club calling itself Munchausen's Grandchildren was founded in Kaliningrad, Russia. Their exploits included collecting items which they claimed provided historical proof of the Baron's tall tales. These include a skeleton of a sperm whale, which they said was the very cetacean in whose belly the Baron was trapped. In 1994, a main belt Asteroid was named 14014 Münchhausen in honour of both the real and the fictional Baron.

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