Editing Nosferatu (section)

===World War I===
The idea for making this vampire film saw its genesis in the war-time experience of producer Albin Grau. Grau served in the German army during [[World War I]] on the [[Serbian campaign|Serbian front]]. While in Serbia, Grau encountered a local farmer who told him of his father, who the farmer believed had become an undead vampire. F. W. Murnau, director of the film, also saw considerable action in World War I – not only as a company commander in the trenches of the [[Eastern Front (World War I)|Eastern Front]], but also later in the air after he transferred to the [[Luftstreitkräfte|German air service]]. He survived at least eight crashes. [[Max Schreck]] who portrayed Count Orlok also served in the trenches with the German army. Little is known of his war-time experience, but there are some signs he may have dealt with some form of [[post-traumatic stress disorder]]. Colleagues commented that he preferred to keep to himself. He was known to take long walks in the forest alone, oftentimes disappearing for hours at a time. He once stated that he lived in "a remote and incorporeal world". Thus it is considered that the turmoil of 1920s Germany and the war-time experiences of those who produced the film left their marks on the production of the film.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://alexanderandsonsrestorations.com/vampires-great-war/ |title=Of Vampires and the Great War |date=30 October 2014 |access-date=2 January 2024 |archive-date=12 December 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231212104436/https://alexanderandsonsrestorations.com/vampires-great-war/ |url-status=dead }}</ref>

As [[Lotte H. Eisner|Lotte Eisner]], a dedicated occultist, wrote: "Mysticism and magic, the dark forces to which Germans have always been more than willing to commit themselves, had flourished in the face of death on the battlefields" – these forces were intrinsic to the shaping of cinema's first vampires. Albin Grau himself also linked the war and vampires: "this monstrous [[World War I|event]] that is unleashed across the earth like a cosmic vampire to drink the blood of millions and millions of men". Belial as well is the link between war and contagion, as Orlok is linked directly to the Black Death and many critics have linked ''Nosferatu''{{'}}s disease-bearing rodents to the transmissible sickness associated with [[trench warfare]] in which rats flourished. As noted by [[Ernest Jones]] in his psychoanalytic study of nightmares, vampire legends proliferate in periods of mass contagion.<ref>{{cite book |title=Vampires on the Silent Screen: Cinema's First Age of Vampires 1897–1922 |date=2023 |author=David Annwn Jones |pages=169, 183 }}</ref>