niklas stephenson

BLOODBURSTS describes the true story of Fritz Haarmann, The Werewolf of Hannover. Haarmann who was accused and convicted of raping and mutilating the bodies of up to twenty-four young men in Hannover, Germany between the years 1918 and 1924. Evidence he had sold the victims clothes and their ground up bodies to a local restaurant was overwhelming. His trial lasted fourteen days and resulted in his execution by the guillotine.

Inspiration for "Bloodbursts" comes from exhaustive research into Haarmann’s story and the concept I found in Albert Camus’ The Stranger, a novel that explores “the nakedness of man faced with the absurd,” through the character Meursault, who committed senseless, unmotivated murder. Haarmann had a lot against him. Sexually abused as a child, diagnosed with multiple psychological disorders, and a homosexual in a time when homosexuality was a crime, he struggled through an absurd (the quality of condition of existing in a meaningless and irrational world) era in German history.

I seek not to glorify the atrocious acts of Haarmann; rather, to examine how the absurdity of life can provide the “motive” for heinous criminal behavior. "Bloodbursts" is fiction based on facts. It’s a story of horror, an attempt to explain the acts of a killer, faced with the absurd, from his perspective.