Baron von Mortczinni

Baron von Mortczinni , actually Johann Gottlieb Hermann (born May 16, 1742 in Budissin (today Bautzen ); † 179?) Was a German impostor, author, preacher and teacher.

Life

In 1771 he deserted from the Electoral Saxon army and then traveled around under different names. He initially pretended to be Baron von Eckhardt and claimed to be persecuted as a Hussite. In Wittenberg he became a master of philosophy and a Protestant preacher under the name Friedrich Joseph von Mortczini . From 1779 he passed himself off as Freiherr von Mortczinni . He wrote a travel report about an alleged trip to Italy, which he had copied from another book. In 1782 he preached in Berlin and Stettin and then wandered around as a preacher in Prussia, Poland and Lithuania under further false claims; he claimed to have been appointed professor of mathematics in St. Petersburg and to be a knight of the Order of St. Stephen . In 1784 he was exposed as a swindler and arrested, but he appeared in Copenhagen in 1786 under the name Pallini . After he was again exposed, he spent the last years of his life there as a religion and language teacher and called himself Professor Pöhrmann .

Fonts

• Sensible thoughts about the revealed religion. Zerbst 1781.
• The punishment of youthful carelessness, or incidents of the Count von G ***, a true story. Munster 1786.
• The mystagogue, or from the origin and origin of all mysteries and hieroglyphs of the ancients, derived and sought out by a true Mason. Osnabrück 1789.
• Ground plan for the correct knowledge of the sphere and the planiglob for the youth. Schwerin 1792.

literature

• Christian Jakob Kraus : The spiritual adventurer, or the knight of the holy who drives around as a conqueror in faith and as a virtuoso in preaching. St. Stephen's Order, Baron von Mortczinni. Koenigsberg 1784.
• Johann Georg Meusel : Lexicon of the German writers who died from 1750 to 1800. Volume 9. Gerhard Fleischer the Younger, Leipzig 1809, p. 269.
• Constantin von Wurzbach : Herrmann, Johann Gottlieb . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 8th part. Imperial and Royal Court and State Printing Office, Vienna 1862, p. 391 ( digital copy ).