The Real Munchausen
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The real Baron Munchausen was born to the Hanoverian nobility in 1720. After fighting the Turks as a soldier of fortune with the Russians, he retired to his estates, to cultivate his reputation as a teller of fantastic tales.
A German version of the stories was published in the early 1780s. Soon afterward, one Rudolph Erich Raspe--curator of a coin collection who fled to London when caught with his fingers in the till--compiled an English-language version of the tales, which was published anonymously in 1785.
Raspe’s rendering of Munchausen’s stories soon became the stuff of children’s schooling in Europe. By some accounts, however, the real-life baron died in grief at having been publicly branded a monumental liar.
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