Project Director: Hans Corneel de Roos

Hans C. de Roos

Hans Corneel de Roos (*1956) completed his studies in Political and Social Sciences cum laude in 1982 and since then had a successful career in the public administration and financial business, next to his ongoing activities as a photographer and art researcher. Over the last years, he worked as an image editor and picture rights specialist for a large scientific publisher. Since 1986, he is based in Munich, Germany and has focused on the art history of the last decades of the 19th century. He created the world’s largest academic platform on life and works of the sculptor Auguste Rodin, with an extensive international research programme. 

Since May 2010, he has devoted himself entirely to Dracula research, with astonishing results: He discovered the true place Bram Stoker had in mind for Castle Dracula; he solved the mystery around Count Dracula’s lifetime identity, fruitlessly debated among Dracula experts for 50 years, and the novel’s intended time frame; he discovered the actual site of the Scholomance and he proposed the Dutch psychiatrist and hypnotist Dr. A. van Renterghem as a possible role model for Van Helsing. 

In 2012, he published The Ultimate Dracula, an annotated and illustrated edition of Stoker’s most famous novel. Together with Dacre Stoker, Bram Stoker's great-grandnephew, he wrote Dracula by Bram Stoker - The Travel Guide. From December 2013 till November 2016, he was the acting editor of Letter from Castle Dracula, the official news bulletin of The Transylvanian Society of Dracula. In October 2015, he took the initiative to organise the Fourth World Dracula Congress in Dublin, that was successfully held on 20-21 October 2016 at Trinity College, Dublin.

In January 2014, Hans established that the 1901 Icelandic “translation” of Dracula is not a translation at all, but a radical modification of the novel, created with Stoker’s personal consent; this website was created to announce his English translation of this Icelandic version; simultaneously, a German translation is being prepared.