Christian Rosencreutz

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The grave of Christian Rosenkreuz, depicted as "Philosophenberg". (1604 indicates the predicted event, not the release date.)

Christian Rosencreutz , also Christian Rosenkreutz , Christianus Rosencreutz or Christian Rosenkreuz , is a literary figure and creation of the evangelical theologian Johann Valentin Andreae . As a literary fiction, Christian Rosencreutz is the initiator of an - also literary - order that was supposed to inspire a comprehensive general reformation of living conditions and the sciences in the Christian spirit.

Most of Andreae's contemporaries in the 17th century erroneously considered Rosencreutz to be a historical person and the founder of an ominous secret society in which one could acquire alchemical or even magical knowledge. In the 18th century, the order of the Gold and Rosicrucians , who no longer saw Christian Rosencreutz as the founder of the order, but only as one of his invisible superiors in the past, followed this tradition , while the order was portrayed as much older. For the first time, “Rosicrucians” became real visible persons, namely the members of the Order of Gold and Rosicrucians. The conception of the Rosicrucians, as a tightly organized earthly order that is alchemical and magical, was adopted by English freemasons and spiritualists in 1865 , who founded the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia .

The name Christian Rosencreutz was first mentioned around 1614 in the anonymous work General and General Reformation, the whole wide world. mentioned. The Fama Fraternitatis was first published in 1614 by Wilhelm Wessel in Kassel in an anthology that contained further tracts. This treatise is an excerpt from a work by the Italian satirist Traiano Boccalini (1556–1613), which originally appeared in Venice in 1612 . The German translation included with the Fama Fraternitatis comes from Wilhelm Bidenbach.

Research today suggests that this document and others (for example Confessio Fraternitatis RC and Ad Eruditos Europae ( Latin ; German edition: Confession or confession of the Societte and Brothers' Creation RC to the Scholars of Europe ), both Kassel 1615) all come from one Tübingen circle of acquaintances originate, in whose center the Württemberg theologian Johann Valentin Andreae (1586-1654) was. Also in 1616, in the Chymische Hochzeit by the same author, Rosenkreutz assumed a central position. After this report, he experienced trials, initiations, dangers and wonderful salvations in allegorical poetry. Already in the first writings (earlier versions of the Chymic Wedding may have been handwritten as early as 1604) Andreae undertook to personify the esoteric community through the figure of the legendary Rosenkreutz, who has occupied esotericists ever since. Soon after the sensational books were published, Andreae declared that he had invented the figure.

Rosenkreutz 'portrayed views are in a line of development of Neoplatonism , Kabbalah , alchemy , Paracelsism and a Protestant Christianity renewing itself from the spirit of mysticism and show satirical and utopian features.

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Harald Lamprecht: New Rosicrucians. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2004, p. 41.
  2. ↑ Harald Lamprecht: New Rosicrucians. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2004, p. 298.
  3. ↑ Harald Lamprecht: New Rosicrucians. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3-525-56549-6 , p. 19, pp. 22-23.
  4. ↑ Carlos Gilly : Cimelia Rhodostaurotica. The Rosicrucians as reflected in the manuscripts and prints created between 1610 and 1660. In de Pelikaan, Amsterdam 1995, ISBN 90-71608-06-9 , p. 68.
  5. ^ KO Schmidt: The Rosicrucian Way. 2nd edition, Drei Eichen Verlag, Ergolding 1990, ISBN 3-7699-0505-9 , p. 12 f.