Author Thomas Elsaesser discusses the gestation of F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu in review of the film Shadow of the Vampire by E. Elias Merhige, a fictionalized account of the making of Nosferatu.

Elsaesser touches on the historical events occurring around the period that Nosferatu was made, including the recovery at the end of World War I and the Spanish flu epidemic and famine that hit Germany in the winter of 1919-20, killing more civilians than the war had. Elsaesser connects these, and other events to the film and Murnau using a 'small worlds' or 'six degrees of separation' theory.