More than a century after its medieval centre served as the backdrop of Nosferatu, a new Oscar-nominated remake is putting this Gothic city back on the map. I gasp. A gaunt vampire with menacing fingernails on the prow of a schooner looms before me, sending a chill up my spine.
I'm standing before the Wassertor gate in Wismar , a windswept gabled and red-brick Gothic city on northern Germany's Baltic coast. I had been wandering the cobblestone streets leading from the harbour towards the city's medieval, Unesco-inscribed centre, when my eye caught the small plaque bearing a stylised vampire that stopped me in my tracks.
I've come to Wismar to trace one shadow of Germany's dark past — the legacy of my German Jewish grandfather, Berthold Levi, who left behind a secret love child when he escaped Nazi Germany in But in retracing his steps and visiting my half-cousins, I've stumbled upon another shadow: that of Count Orlok, a vampire who terrorised these very streets more than a century ago.
That's because Wismar isn't just a fetching medieval city; it's also the legendary setting of director FW Murnau's masterpiece Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror. Soon after I come face to face with the pint-sized vampire, my half-cousin Katharina leads me towards two other markers commemorating where Murnau shot some of cinema's most haunting scenes in this 13th-Century city: one at the sprawling Marktplatz square, where an ornate pavilion-like tower rises overhead; and another near the modest Holy Spirit Church , home to a beautiful garden.
The vampire, mesmerised by Hutter's blood and a photograph of his wife Ellen, follows him back to the fictional "Wisborg" Wismar , where he spreads plague and death until Ellen sacrifices herself, luring the vampire into the lethal rays of dawn. The film's success, however, came at a cost. Stoker's widow sued the production company for copyright infringement and German courts ordered every copy of Nosferatu to be destroyed.
