Ilsa Haupstein was a Nazi scientist and a devoted follower of Grigori Rasputin.
History[]
Childhood[]
Born in June 7, 1919,[1] Ilsa Haupstein was born in a nondescript house in the countryside east of Berlin, the third and youngest daughter of a mid-level country bureaucrat and a good German housewife. Even as an infant, Ilsa never cried. As a youth, Haupstein demonstrated great gymnastic skill: by age thirteen, she had trained in the most advanced facilities, won every major competition, and was considered the greatest gymnast Germany had ever produced. However, her athletic career was cut short in 1933 after sustaining great injuries during a dismount from uneven parallel bars; investigation later proved this was the result of sabotage, with the saboteur found mysteriously dead soon after.[2]
The Third Reich[]
In 1936, at seventeen years of age, Haupstein took a position as secretary to the undersecretary of high-level Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler. Six months later, her superior died under mysterious circumstances and Ilsa was promoted in his place. She soon caught the attention of Himmler, who put her through a series of grueling tests and brought her into his Occult Bureau in March 1937.[2] Under Himmler, Ilsa met Herman von Klempt, Karl Ruprect Kroenen, and Leopold Kurtz.
Project Ragna Rok[]
Eventually, Haupstein was recruited for Project Ragna Rok, which officially launched in March of 1944.[2] In October of that year, she led a delegation to recruit Vladimir Giurescu for the war effort; she was seduced by Giurescu, discovering that he was a vampire and could be healed from any ailment through a specific ritual. As a member of Project Ragna Rok, Haupstein became a highly devoted follower of a Russian mystic, who used the alias "The Master". She along with Kroenen and Kurtz formulated a plan to create a device to unleash the power of the Ogdru Jahad.
On December 23, 1944, on Tarmngant Island, Rasputin performed a ritual;[1] though not immediately successful, Rasputin believed that what took place had set in motion the waking of the Ogrdu Jahad. Then and there, Haupstein realized the Master's true identity as Grigori Rasputin – seeing a vision of flame spelling his true name above his head – and pledged herself to his service, as did Kurtz and Kroenen.[2]
Rasputin then told Haupstein, Kurtz, and Kroenen, that Germany was no longer safe for them, and that the true purpose of the ritual was to bring about a herald of his new age. He informed them that the fall of the Third Reich was upon them, and told them to cryogenically freeze themselves inside a castle in Norway until he needed their services again. Haupstein was then told she was betrayed, and that Vladimir Giurescu, her lover, had been executed. On May 7, 1945, with the impeding surrender of the Nazi forces, Haupstein, Kurtz, and Kroenen froze themselves in cryogenic suspension in Norway.[2]
The Giurescu Affair[]
- Main article: Wake the Devil
In May 1994, in a failed attempt to release the Ogdru Jahad, Rasputin was killed by Hellboy, the very creature that he had brought to Earth back in 1944. Soon after this, Haupstein and the other members of Project Ragna Rok begin to thaw and revive. The group awaited a signal from Rasputin, which came in the form of Roderick Zinco – a businessman who applied his wealth to the revival of Project Ragna Rok.
Immediately, Ilsa set out to resurrect Giurescu using the vampire ritual that he had used so many times before so that they could be together again. She discovered that Hans Ubler, who was once once trusted a member of Heinrich Himmler's inner circle, had smuggled Giurescu's body out of Germany. Haupstein then broke into Steinman's wax museum, shot him to death in cold blood, and reclaimed the vampire's body. Then aided by several Neo-Nazi thugs, including the cyborg brute Unmensch, presumably supplied by Roderick Zinco, Haupstein succeeded in transferring Giurescu's body to the lower caverns of castle Giurescu. However, before the resurrection ritual could be completed, Haupstein was attacked by Hellboy who burst through the roof of the castle. Fortunately for her, the demon fell through the floor during a battle with Unmensch.
Death[]
Before she and Giurescu could be reunited, Haupstein was contacted by Grigori Rasputin's ghost. Taken away from Giurescu's castle by Rasputin, Ilsa learns that would be unable to stand alongside him during storm brought about by Ragna Rok while in her mortal form. To remedy this, Rasputin requested the Baba Yaga to have her servant Koku presented Haupstein with an iron maiden that killed hundreds of maiden. Told by Rasputin enter the iron maiden so her spirit can inhabit it while her human body died, Ilsa willingly enters the iron maiden.
However, as Rasputin later learned in the events of the Conqueror Worm, Haupstein did not endure her physical death and the event only served to fuel Vladimir Giurescu with her blood while her lifeless body became a vessel for Hecate after her previous corporeal form was destroyed by Hellboy. Soon after, during the events of Darkness Calls, Ilsa's corpse was removed from the iron maiden by Igor Bromhead and sealed away alongside Giurescu's skeleton to render Hecate powerless.
In other media[]
Ilsa von Haupstein, as portrayed by Bridget Hodson in Hellboy (2004).
Ilsa appeared in Guillermo del Toro's 2004 film Hellboy, under the name Ilsa von Haupstein and portrayed by Bridget Hodson. In the film's storyline, also having romantic feelings for Rasputin, Ilsa was granted eternal youth by the sorcerer to continue their work. After Rasputin was sucked into the Ogdru Jahad's realm, Ilsa and Kroenen work to bring him back to their reality years later around the time that an upcoming eclipse would allow them to finish what they began decades ago. However, the scheme to use Hellboy to free the Ogdru Jahad failed and Ilsa remains by a dying Rasputin's side as they are crushed to death by the latter's "god" Behemoth.
Vanessa Eichholz plays the part of Ilsa in the 2019 Hellboy film.[3]
Trivia[]
- The name "Haupstein" consists of two German words: "Haupt" can mean "head" as well as "main" or "most important" while "Stein" is the German word for "stone"; therefore, her name could be thought to mean "stone-head" as in "cool-headed", refering to her unemotional character