Berlin museum to drain the blood of visitors at new ‘Nosferatu’ exhibition
Berlin‘s Nationalgalerie will soon play host to a rare marriage of horror and healthcare. As part of its new Phantoms of the Night: 100 Years of Nosferatu exhibition – opening on December 16th – the gallery plans to work closely with the German Red Cross, which will be conducting blood donations on site.
The exhibition is set to explore the legacy of Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, the influential German expressionist filmmaker best known for his 1922 silent horror film Nosferatu, a loose adaptation of Bram Stoker’s vampire novel Dracula.
Nosferatu was made against the wishes of Florence Stoker, the Dracula author’s wife. She ended up suing Murnau for copyright infringement after the film was released and very nearly succeeded in destroying all of the original reels too. Thankfully, she lost interest before getting that far. If she had succeeded, that iconic image of Count Orlock standing at the top of the stairs, his shadow hauntingly elongated, wouldn’t have had the era-defining impact that it did.
Phantoms of the Night: 100 Years of Nosferatu explores the film’s diverse range of influences on cinema and pop culture. Indeed, the film has inspired everything from The Simpsons and Spongebob Squarepants to Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre.
In a statement, the museum notes how Murnau was revered in Europe’s avant-garde circles: “André Breton considered Nosferatu a key surrealist work, and sketches for the set design, for example, include motifs that call to mind etchings by Francisco de Goya.”
Visitors looking for a more tangible vampiric experience will even be able to feel themselves being drained of blood, although it will certainly go to a good cause. Phantoms of the Night. 100 Years of Nosferatu at the Nationalgalerie Berlin runs from December 21st, 2022, to January 12th, 2023.
