confused about Baron Münchhausen

[Martini]

I just combined an edition of Die Abenteuer des Freiherrn von Münchhausen with its work by Gottfried August Bürger, there were about 10 books in this work. When refreshing the book site, the book is now combined with 81 editions, not only by this author, but by another author named Rudolf Erich Raspe, who has also published a Münchhausen story.

Why is that? I understand that there must have been an inaccurate combination of the works by two different authors with similar titles, but why does the combination with the "right" author result in the combination with the wrong one?

[Kim]

It looks like they should all be under Rudolf Erich Raspe. Bürger just translated (and in some editions did add a bit more) but Raspe is the true author.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfrie...

[Martini]

Thanks for the answer, Kim, but I found a different view in the german wikipedia article, which says that the Münchhausen story was originally written by an anonymous author, and that Raspe only translated it to english, which Bürger translated back to german. So Raspe isn't the author either.

But however, that does not explain the strange combination behaviour I mentioned above...

[Alessandra]

The thread title is amusingly appropriate, given the whoppers Münchhausen told.

[Kim]

Both the Rudolf Raspe and Baron Münchhausen articles state that Raspe was the original author. The German article talks about how a lot of the supposed things Münchhausen had done were based on myths and folktales. Raspe put them all together and wrote his book which Bürger then translated.

If you then read the German article on Münchhausen Raspe originally published the book anonymously only later admitting he wrote it.

Bürger never wrote anything from scratch. He only translated and added a little to Raspe's work.

[Martini]

Bürger also created some of the Münchhausen stories, he did not only "add a little": "Das Werk stellt teilweise eine Übersetzung von Raspes Vorlage, teilweise Bürgers eigene Schöpfung dar." (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Fri...)
So we still have two different works, one by Raspe, and an enlarged one by Bürger.
By the way, Bürger's work is specified as the most familiar one.

[Martini]

Alessandra wrote: "The thread title is amusingly appropriate, given the whoppers Münchhausen told."

That was intended ;-)

[Cornelia]

Raspe, a German scholar, wrote the first known book about Münchhausen in English. Bürger translated it later, including editing it and adding more stories. So if you'd like to be correct, the Münchhausen book - regardless which edition from nowadays - should have both names as the authors. It's Bürger's later version, which became famous, not Raspe's first one.