Unfortunately, none of this is helped by the fact that Shelley herself apparently chose to conceal rather than reveal what her actual source material may have been.

But let’s not lose the overall point here, namely, that the inspiration for this story, as with virtually any work of “fiction,” is as rooted in actual life experiences of the author as well as imagination.

Dippel published about a hundreds or so of texts, letters, etc. Show me just one of it, where he used the name Frankenstein. You won’t find any.

Yes, Shelley was in this area. But her diary is very detailed. She stayed in the town of Gernsheim for three hours (this is confirmed by the diaries of her stepsister Claire Clairmont). And it is true that Gernsheim is not far away from Castle Frankenstein, but believe me, I’ve been living in this area my whole life, there is absolutely no way to get from Gernsheim to Castle Frankenstein and back within three hours without a car. Even single way would mean you’re a very fast runner. And Shelley is saying she walked about three hours with Percy, but she is not saying that they visited a castle. And why? Because they did not visit a castle. Sometimes it is that simple.

I don’t know which description of a “castle with a tower” you mean, but if it is by chance the description Prof. Charles Robinson gave in the documentary-series Decoding the Past (and probably in his book), this is ridiculous. If he would have read the passage just about one page longer he would have had to admit that Shelley arrived in Strasbourg the next day after she described this “ruined castle”. This is far, far away from Castle Frankenstein.

If you mean something different, please tell me the quote and/or the source.

Could they have heard the name of Dippel and his story from a tour guide? Well, at first: they didn’t had a tour guide. They were not on holidays, they were on their way back home, nearly broken and so they were spending most of their time on their boat.

Well, true, still she could have heard something about Dippel along their way. But if so, it was obviously not impressive enough to her to write it down in her diary. And by the way, as long as you don’t consider any alchemist as a possible role model for Victor Frankenstein there is nothing reminiscent in Dippels life which could be compared to Victor Frankenstein. That he was a graverobber has been made up. There is not one document or book which was released before Florescu’s that linked Dippel to graverobbing.

Well, so either Florescu and his followers found dozens of new, unknown documents about Dippel which they mysteriously can not show or it is all fabrication.

By the way: there’s no castle in the novel, at least not as part of the plot.

The few “facts” on the Dippel connection, for better or worse, are that, as was common at the time, Konrad Dippel carried the name of his birth-castle Frankenstein as part of his name. That means very little, though, one way or another, because Frankenstein was not an uncommon name. The location of Dippel’s experiments, whether Castle Frankenstein or not, is not known. But even in Shelley’s novella, Victor Frankenstein finds a secluded workplace away from home (wouldn’t you?), so again, not much help one way or another.

Did the Shelleys actually visit Castle Frankenstein and was such a visit recorded in Mary Shelley’s diary? Again, they visited the area and Mary does describe a number of castles there, including a detailed description in her own handwriting of a castle with a tower that is a dead ringer for Castle Frankenstein. Could that have been another castle? Unlikely, but yes, possible. Could they have skipped that castle altogether and simply heard the name and story from a tour guide? Could be.

“Fact” and “fiction” here can never be thoroughly untangled, as is often the case. No matter how “factual” a non-fiction writer attempts to be, bias will often creep in, hopefully tempered with fairness and good judgment. And no matter how “fictional” a novelist may try to be, any thoroughly “created” world theoretically of one’s own making and imagination cannot help but be informed by the reality surrounding the writer, cultural biases and all, for better or worse. This remains no less true no matter how hard an author may try to cover up, expunge or deny any such reality-spawned trail.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, an aristocrat and rabble-rouser as well as a poet, was as well known when he took up with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin as he would ever be in his lifetime, though it is true that most of the literary fame we associate with him would come posthumously after he drowned in 1822 at the age of 29 in a controversial boating accident. It took Mary nine months, from June 1816 until March 1817 to complete “Frankenstein,” during which time Shelley was writing “The Revolt of Islam” in the same household. Shelley had already written and published “Queen Mab” and “Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude,” among others, by then. Mary constantly deferred to him for editing, and his corrections can be seen across her original manuscript, which were all recopied by Mary into a clean manuscript to supply to a publisher. The novel’s original prologue, composed in Mary’s voice, was written in Shelley’s handwriting and the view is widely held that he wrote it for her. It was because Shelley had tantalized potential publishers with the possibility that he was the author of “Frankenstein” that they gave him the time of day in the first place, and he was ultimately successful in getting it published, though anonymously and after three publishers had turned it down, in late 1817.

Mary Shelley herself was always cagey after the fact about her specific influences for “Frankenstein,” but Konrad Dippel is one of a number of probable models for Victor Frankenstein, along with Luigi Galvani and his nephew Luigi Aldini, as I indicated. Dippel, however, who lived in Castle Frankenstein and used the name, was the only model where a direct line can be traced to Mary’s own diary where she describes having visited the castle where he had performed his experiments during the previous summer of 1815. Florescu was indeed the first to demonstrate this over 35 years ago, though some have rejected the idea based on the fact that while Mary does recall distinctive castle details, she does not record either the name of the castle nor the name of Dippel.

Mary Shelley’s husband was no help in getting a publisher for Frankenstein, but it wasn’t despite his fame, because he wasn’t famous at the time. He was almost perfectly unknown, and for good reason: he hadn’t written anything of value up to that point. Frankenstein was the first work of genius to emanate from the Shelley household.

Konrad Dippel is not widely regarded as the model for Dr. Frankenstein. Almost no one regards him as such except the person who suggested the idea, Radu Florescu.