Who Is Baron Munchausen (Baron Münchhausen)?
The nobleman who tells outrageous lies with a straight face
Baron Munchausen is the narrator and hero of The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen: a soldier, hunter, and traveler who tells impossible adventures as his own true experiences, with a completely straight face.
He accidentally leaves his horse hanging from a tower after tying it up in a snowy field, makes a wolf pull his sleigh, fires a gun with sparks from his eye, flies to an enemy fortress astride a cannonball, and pulls himself and his horse out of a swamp by his own hair. As a prisoner, he climbs a bean vine to the Moon after a silver axe, and at sea, a great whale tows his ship. He escapes every tight spot through wild ingenuity, and he describes even his failures with complete confidence.
The character is based on Hieronymus von Münchhausen (1720–1797), an 18th-century German nobleman. The adventures in the book are invented, however, and the real baron is said to have been displeased by it. The cannonball and swamp episodes are often credited to Bürger, who created the German edition.
Episodes featuring this character7
NEWEpisode 1
I Woke Up. My Horse Was on the Steeple.The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
Series premiere. Baron Munchausen falls asleep on a snowy plain and wakes to find his horse dangling from the top of a tower overhead. Theo, a young man out to expose the Baron's lies, is supposed to be noting every contradiction. Instead, his notebook slowly fills with "And then?"
19 pages
NEWEpisode 2
He Shot a Stag With a Cherry Pit. Then...Baron Munchausen: The Stag and the Cherry Tree
Out of flint and out of bullets, the Baron fires with whatever he has on hand, then gets hauled into the sky by a string of ducks. And the desperate shot of cherry pits he fired that day? Years later, it comes back out of the deep forest in a shape nobody saw coming.
19 pages
NEWEpisode 3
Why Won't This Horse Stop Drinking?The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
Baron Munchausen tames a wild horse no one can ride and charges first into an enemy town, but no matter how much the horse drinks at the fountain, it's never enough. Then the Baron looks behind him. *The storytelling frame and bloodless comedy are our adaptation; all the adventures are fiction.
19 pages
NEWEpisode 4
He Rode a Cannonball. No Return Ticket.Baron Munchausen: The Cannonball Ride
To scout an enemy town no one can enter, Baron Munchausen leaps onto a flying cannonball. Only in midair does he notice the flaw in his plan: there's no way back. And later, stranded in a swamp with no one around, he grabs hold of his own hair. *The storytelling frame, the view from the sky, and the bloodless comedy are adaptations.
19 pages
NEWEpisode 5
He Threw an Axe to the Moon. Plan: Beans.Baron Munchausen: The Silver Axe and the Moon
Episode 5 of the series. Held captive and put on bee duty, the Baron sends a silver axe in his care flying to the moon, then answers with a straight face: "Very well. I shall plant a bean." Note: the storytelling frame and its listener, the Head Gardener and the inspection deadline, and the Sultan's appearance are additions made for this adaptation.
19 pages
NEWEpisode 6
Nobody Blew the Horn. It Sang Anyway.Baron Munchausen: The Frozen Horn
On a freezing road home, the signal horn won't make a sound. When Baron Munchausen meets another carriage on a narrow road, he solves it by carrying his carriage and horses past it. But waiting by the fire at the inn is a sound that silences even the talkative Baron. *The storytelling frame and listener, the coachman's personality, the quiet inn scene, and the depiction of the musical notes are adaptations.
19 pages
NEWEpisode 7
Whales Don't Tow Ships. This One Did.Baron Munchausen and the Whale
In the middle of the ocean, the ship slams into "something," and soon a giant whale, rudely woken from its nap, is dragging it across the sea. But the Baron forgot to mention the voyage home, where an even bigger crisis awaits, along with the world's most pompous solution. *Adapted elements: the storytelling frame and listener, the words and actions of the officer and sailors, the scene of raising sail to race alongside the whale, the tea props, and the pulling of the hair to restore the Baron's head.
19 pages