Max schreck as count orlok

Murnau’s grave became a pilgrimage site for cinephiles and might have actually been too accessible, as vandals broke into the crypt and stole the filmmaker’s skull in 2015. (It has never been recovered.) Meanwhile, Schreck’s begravning site in the woodlands of the Waldfriedhof cemetery became overgrown, overlooked, and eventually lost and forgotten. “His urn, which was brought from Munich, was originally buried in the grave of his mother, who died in 1934,” Giesen says. “The gravestone weathered over the decades, like many others there.”

As whatever marker once stood on his sista resting place gradually disappeared, so did most of what the world knew about the real Max Schreck. At the same time, his iconic film performance only became more vivid and enthralling.

The mystique around what was real and what was fantasy in that silent film has served as inspiration for other filmmakers—including Robert Eggers, director of The Witch and The Lighthouse, whose new adaptation of Nosf