Eine venezianische Nacht (1914)

At the center of the story is Anselmus Aselmeyer, a German student of philosophy traveling for educational purposes. When he arrives in Venice, the eccentric house servant Pipistrello intercepts him and leads him to his employer’s inn. There, Aselmeyer witnesses the wedding of the corpulent oil merchant Mestre Mangiabene and the Marchesina dei Bisognosi. This beautiful young noblewoman, though impoverished, loves someone else: a young officer. The following night, these experiences and their protagonists return to the young student in a wild nightmare, with love and passion, jealousy and murder as its central ingredients. For instance, the young officer appears to him, only to be stabbed by Pipistrello when he approaches the Marchesina. When the bride asks Aselmeyer, the young German, to help sink her lover’s body in the water, it is the sinister, grotesque-faced house servant Pipistrello who, dancing around him with monkey-like movements like a dervish, makes the dead man rise again in four copies. To make matters worse, Aselmeyer then has to face this officer homunculus in four duels. Anselmus Aselmeyer is so deeply trapped in his seemingly endless nightmare that he fails to notice the completely drunk groom being deposited right beside him on his inn bed. Shaken by the previous night, Anselmus flees the eerie inn in a panic the next morning. His final glance falls on a passing gondola. On board are the bride, the groom, and the young officer.