Hieronymus von Münchhausen: The Real Baron Rudolf Raspe Branded a Liar

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Hieronymus Karl Friedrich von Münchhausen was born in 1720 in the Electorate of Hanover to a landed family at Bodenwerder; a cousin was prime minister of Hanover and helped found the University of Göttingen. He followed a duke to Russia as a page, was commissioned a cavalry officer in 1739, fought in the Russo-Turkish War and retired as a captain in 1760. From Baltic German officers in Riga he picked up the habit of telling deadpan, absurd hunting and war stories, and at his dinners in Bodenwerder guests understood them as satire from a man known for his honor. Rudolf Erich Raspe, a scholar who sold gems from the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel's collection to pay debts, fled a theft warrant in 1775 to England.

In 1785, broke in Cornwall, Raspe anonymously published the tales in English under the Baron's name. Publisher G. Kearsley added writers and illustrations, and poet Gottfried August Bürger's German version made the real man the Lügenbaron, the Baron of Lies. His libel suit failed, he stopped hosting, and at 73 he married Bernardine, 53 years his junior, whose child born after a spa summer led to a public divorce. He died in 1797 without an heir. Gustave Doré's 1862 illustrations fixed the beaked nose and twirled mustache, and the name moved into film, radio, medicine and philosophy.

• Many of the tales were older folklore, including stories from Heinrich Bebel in the early 1500s.
• Georges Méliès made a Munchausen short in 1911, and Terry Gilliam filmed the Baron in 1988.
• Jack Pearl's 1930s radio Baron made "Vas you dere, Charlie?" a national catchphrase.
• Physician Richard Asher named Munchausen syndrome in 1951, using the anglicized spelling.
• Philosopher Hans Albert's 1968 Münchhausen trilemma is named for the tale of pulling himself out of a swamp by his own hair.