RASPE, RUDOLF ERICH

born 1737, Hannover, Hanover died 1794, Muckross, County Kerry, Ireland German scholar and adventurer best remembered as the author of the popular tall tales The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. After having studied natural sciences and philology at Gttingen and Leipzig, Raspe worked in several university libraries before being appointed librarian and custodian of the Landgraf's collection of gems and coins at Kassel in 1767. One of the first to interest himself in Ossian, the supposed author of epic poetry discovered in Scotland, and in Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, a collection of old ballads and poems first published in England in 1765, he acquired a scholarly reputation and was elected to the Royal Society in 1769. In 1775, however, he began stealing from the Landgraf's gem collection and had to flee to England to escape arrest. While living there as a fugitive and in need of money, Raspe succeeded in publishing anonymously a collection of humorous and highly coloured stories as related by the braggart Mnchausen (Mnchhausen) on his travels to Russia. Raspe had known the baron in Gttingen, but few of the tales were actually derived from him. In 1786 and again in 1788, the poet G.A. Brger translated into German and considerably enlarged Raspe's tales. Brger's translations served to introduce Mnchausen to world literature, and Raspe's authorship of the original was not revealed until 1847 by Heinrich Dring in his biography of Brger. Becoming involved in a swindle concerned with mining in Scotland, Raspe fled to Ireland in 1791, where he died.