Alessandro Cagliostro

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Giuseppe Balsamo,
who called himself Count of Cagliostro

Count Alessandro von Cagliostro ( pseudonym for Giuseppe Balsamo [dʒuˈzɛppe ˈbalsamo]; * June 8, 1743 in Palermo , †  August 26, 1795 in San Leo near Urbino ) was an Italian occultist , alchemist and adventurer. As a talented con man , quack and a charlatan , he managed again and again to gain the trust of influential contemporaries and exploit them. Cagliostro pretended to be the enterprising founder of an Egyptian Freemasonry , which is considered to be the forerunner of the Memphis Misraïm rite .

Life

youth

Cagliostro was born the son of a Sicilian craftsman and bankrupt in the poor district of Albergheria, Palermo , where he also grew up.

At a young age he joined the local order of Fatebenefratelli in the monastery of Caltagirone , which was dedicated to nursing the sick. As an assistant to the monastery pharmacist, he acquired his first pharmacological knowledge, which was later useful for his “miracle cures”. However, he was expelled for misconduct and rejected by his relatives.

to travel

Cagliostro was received in the best circles of society and lived, surrounded and admired by beautiful women, as a successful impostor and impostor at the expense of his contemporaries. When he finally got into conflict with the authorities, he fled Sicily. According to his own statements, he traveled to Greece , Egypt , Arabia , Persia , Rhodes , where he allegedly took lessons in alchemy and related sciences from the Greek Althotas, and finally to Malta . There he introduced himself to the Grand Master of the Order of Malta as Count Cagliostro. From this, whose interests also lay in alchemy, he received recommendations for the famous houses of Rome and Naples , where he now traveled. He also gave the impression of being a gold maker.

Lorenza Feliciani

In Rome, Cagliostro married the beautiful but unscrupulous Lorenza Feliciani, with whom he traveled to many parts of Europe under various names . He visited London and Paris in 1771 and sold love potions, youth elixirs, beauty mixtures, alchemical powders, etc., and made high profits from his trade. After further trips on the continent, he returned to London.

"Egyptian Freemasonry"

Bust of Giuseppe Balsamo by Jean-Antoine Houdon , 1786

Cagliostro became a Freemason in London on April 12, 1777 in the French-speaking lodge L'Espérance . Later he invented an Egyptian rite and founded new lodges himself on its basis. His Egyptian Freemasonry was henceforth part of the system of his impostures. Contrary to the regular masonry, he took the view that women should be admitted to the boxes on an equal footing. The first lodge, intended mainly for wealthy and noble women, was donated in The Hague in 1775 . Cagliostro's wife Lorenza Feliciani became Grand Master. Regardless of their religious affiliation, men were only admitted if they were Freemasons or had the necessary assets. Cagliostro fled from The Hague to Brussels after a short time because of scams with lottery tickets. He later reappeared in Venice as Count Pellegrini. In 1779 he found access to the Courland nobility in Mitau , where he succeeded in offering his androgynous masonry to the ladies and introducing parts of the Courland nobility into his adoption boxes until Countess Elisabeth von der Recke succeeded in figuring out his game.

Petersburg

In Saint Petersburg , too, in 1780 he tried to introduce his Egyptian masonry and, under the protection of Catherine II, to popularize his system. This plan failed, however, because the Countess von der Recke was able to warn the Tsarina. Thereupon Cagliostro succeeded in exposing Cagliostro as a charlatan at a spiritual séance in the apartment of Prince Gagarin . The tsarina took the incidents as an opportunity to write the three ridiculous comedies The Siberian Magician , The Deceiver and The Blinded , in which the frauds and impostures of Cagliostro were carried over to the entire Freemasonry.

Warsaw

In Warsaw , Cagliostro pretended to be the Grand Kophta of the Egyptian rite , which enabled him to gain access to gullible Masonic lodges. Invented by Cagliostro, irregular Egyptian high degree - Freemasonry Memphis Misraim is still practiced in some countries. Cagliostro was initially successful in Warsaw and, as part of his Egyptian ritual, also carried out spiritual sessions with underage girls as a channel medium until his magical and alchemical operations and sleight of hand were exposed there in 1780 and he had to flee Warsaw.

Teacher of occultism in Strasbourg

In 1781, Cagliostro worked in Strasbourg as a teacher of occultism and successfully as a magical healing artist. Johann Caspar Lavater went from Zurich to Strasbourg specifically because he wanted to check whether his treatment method was similar to the method of the exorcist Gaßner . In Strasbourg, at that time the stronghold of mystical masonry, Cagliostro gained the favor of Cardinal and Archbishop Louis César Constantin de Rohan-Guéméné and entered the French court, where he replaced Franz Anton Mesmer . Cagliostro set up an Egyptian lodge, the system of which was later partially implemented in Basel in the rectified Scottish rite .

Lyon

In October 1784 he founded the mother lodge of his Egyptian masonry called La sagesse triomphante in Lyon . In 1785 his system became known in Paris and the Duke Montmorency-Luxembourg took over the role of Grand-Maitre-Protecteur in the lodge founded there . In 1785 Cagliostro was invited to a convent of the Philalethites to present his system. Cagliostro tied this wish to the condition that the Philalethites had to burn all their archives beforehand and acknowledge his “only true Egyptian masonry”. But in 1786 he had to leave France because of his involvement in the collar affair.

Judgment and death

When Cagliostro tried to gain a foothold in Rome after the collar affair and founded a new Egyptian lodge there, he was arrested by the papal police on December 27, 1789. In order to save his head, during his trial before the court he made a treasonous deal with the organs of the Roman Inquisition by making a propaganda-effective confession: he accused the Illuminati (read: Freemasons) of having misled him. Allegedly, the Illuminati in a country house in Frankfurt am Main made him an Illuminati and, without his knowledge, one of the twelve grandmasters of the Illuminati. The Masonic-Illuminati intentions were primarily directed against France, for which large sums were made available in European banks. According to Cagliostro, the Freemasons were the hidden initiators of the French Revolution , and he, Cagliostro, who posed as the Illuminate and never belonged to the Illuminati Order, was one of the backers. His remorseful hoax, exploiting the Church's fear of Freemasons and radical Enlightenment and revolutionary aspirations, saved his head, and while he was sentenced to death for heresy , sorcery, and Freemasonry , the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1791 .

Cagliostro was imprisoned in Castel Sant'Angelo . His wife was banished to a monastery. The Inquisition confiscated the esoteric, alchemical manuscript The Most Sacred Trinosophy . Cagliostro died in 1795 in the prison of the fortress of San Leo near San Marino after two strokes, which he suffered in quick succession. He was buried in San Leo.

reception

literature

Giuseppe Balsamo, copper engraving from Alexandre Dumas : Memoirs of a Doctor
Cagliostro, drawing by Pierre Méjanel

Movie

In 1920 the Austro-German historical silent film drama The Count of Cagliostro was created . Directed by Reinhold Schünzel, who also played the title hero.

1943 Münchhausen (UFA anniversary film with Hans Albers in the title role); here Count Cagliostro appears in a supporting role, played by Ferdinand Marian .

In 1973 the story of Cagliostro was filmed in three parts as part of the four- part adventure on ZDF , with Jean Marais in the lead role. This film is based on the novel Joseph Balsamo by Alexandre Dumas.

Since 1929 ( Cagliostro - love and life of a great adventurer , director: Richard Oswald ) there have also been other films in which Cagliostro appears as a person, but mostly as an opaque charlatan in a supporting role. So Hayao Miyazaki leaves the antihero Lupine III in the 1970s. Meet a more modern Count Cagliostro in The Castle of Cagliostro . In Arsène Lupine (2004) the master thief meets Cagliostro's magical widow. The 2001 American drama, The Queen's Necklace , revolves around the Necklace Affair, a fraud scandal at the French court in 1785/1786 with Christopher Walken as Cagliostro.

music

Johann Strauss (son) wrote the operetta Cagliostro in Vienna , which premiered in 1875. The Cagliostro-Walzer (Op. 370) by Strauss also comes from this work.

musical

The possible involvement of Count Cagliostro in the collar affair found its way into the musical Marie Antoinette by Michael Kunze and Sylvester Levay . In this work, which premiered in Japan in 2006 and was performed at the Musical Theater Bremen in 2009 , he also takes on the role of emcee .

literature

Fiction

Web links

Commons : Alessandro Cagliostro  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl RH Frick: Light and Darkness. Gnostic-theosophical and Masonic-occult secret societies up to the turn of the 20th century. Part 2. Licensed Issue Approved. Marix-Verlag, Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 3-86539-044-7 . P. 157.
  2. ↑ See Reinhard Markner: Cagliostro's Initiation: His 1777 Grand Lodge Certificate Rediscovered, in The Square, Sept. 2019, p. 23, accessed on September 24, 2019.
  3. ↑ a b c d Eugen Lennhoff, Oskar Posner, Dieter A. Binder: Internationales Freemaurer Lexikon. FA Herbig Verlagsbuchhandlung GmbH, Munich 2000, p. 166.
  4. ^ A b Karl RH Frick: Light and Darkness. Gnostic-theosophical and Masonic-occult secret societies up to the turn of the 20th century. Part 2. Licensed Issue Approved. Marix-Verlag, Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 3-86539-044-7 . P. 157 ff.
  5. ↑ a b c d Karl RH Frick: Light and Darkness. Gnostic-theosophical and Masonic-occult secret societies up to the turn of the 20th century. Part 2. Licensed Issue Approved. Marix-Verlag, Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 3-86539-044-7 , p. 160 ff.
  6. ↑ a b Horst E. Miers: Lexicon of Secret Knowledge (= Esoteric. Vol. 12179). Goldmann, Munich 1993, p. 131.
  7. ^ Karl RH Frick: Light and Darkness. Gnostic-theosophical and Masonic-occult secret societies up to the turn of the 20th century. Part 2. Licensed Issue Approved. Marix-Verlag, Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 3-86539-044-7 . Pp. 162-163.
  8. ↑ Eugen Lennhoff, Oskar Posner, Dieter A. Binder: Internationales Freemaurer Lexikon. FA Herbig Verlagsbuchhandlung GmbH, Munich 2000, p. 167.
  9. ↑ Johannes Rogalla von Bieberstein: The myth of the world conspiracy. In: Gerd-Klaus Kaltenbrunner (Ed.): Secret Societies and the Myth of the World Conspiracy (= Herder Library. 9569, = Initiative. 69). Herder, Freiburg (Breisgau) et al. 1987, ISBN 3-451-09569-6 , p. 24.
  10. ^ Iain McCalman: The Last Alchemist. The story of Count Cagliostro. Insel, Frankfurt am Main / Leipzig 2004, ISBN 3-458-17199-1 , p. 291 ff.
personal data
SURNAME Cagliostro, Alessandro
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Balsamo, Giuseppe (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian alchemist and impostor
DATE OF BIRTH June 8, 1743
PLACE OF BIRTH Palermo
DATE OF DEATH August 26, 1795
Place of death San Leo