Johann Müller von Mühlenfels

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Johann Müller von Mühlenfels , also Müllenfels, (* around 1578/79 in Wasselnheim , † June 30, 1606 in Stuttgart ) was a German alchemist at the court of Duke Friedrich von Württemberg, who was a believer in alchemy .

After an apprenticeship as a barber (which also included surgical craft at the time) in Eßlingen, Mühlenfels went on a journey to Hungary, Silesia and Italy. In Florence he met the alchemist Daniel Rapolt, who later worked as a laboratory assistant at the Duke of Württemberg and Landgrave Moritz von Hessen-Kassel and introduced him to alchemy. In Prague he won the favor of Rudolph II , among other things with magic tricks, which supposedly proved him to be bulletproof, and with goldmaking . The emperor even ennobled him in 1603. For his alleged knowledge of gold making, he received large sums of money (such as from Joachim Ernst von Brandenburg-Ansbach ) and offers from various princes, which brought him to the service of the Duke of Württemberg in 1604, who paid him well. He had his laboratory in Kirchheim unter Teck , and he received an estate and castle in Neidlingen , in which he later also set up a laboratory. Officially, however, he was court servant and court alchemist. In 1605 he traveled to Spain (where he supposedly had contacts with an adept who was privy to the secrets of gold making) and Italy.

He was executed on the orders of the Duke in 1606 for fraud, perjury and treason (and not for fraudulent gold making) following an affair involving the famous alchemist Sendivogius . According to the Duke, Mühlenfels had imprisoned him in Neidlingen on his own initiative in order to elicit his secrets or to get rid of a competitor, and then let him escape to Prague by persuading him that the Duke had ordered his imprisonment. It is more likely that the duke himself was behind it and was looking for a scapegoat in the affair that drew wide circles up to the emperor. The fact that Mühlenfels was not making any progress with his gold making and that his frauds were becoming more and more apparent made the duke's decision easier.

Mühlenfels was the last, but not the only, alchemist executed in Stuttgart. Georg Honauer had this fate ten years earlier . Convicted gold makers were also threatened with the death penalty elsewhere, for example in Brandenburg this happened to Domenico Manuel Caetano and in Saxony to Johann Hektor von Klettenberg .

literature

personal data
SURNAME Müller von Mühlenfels, Johann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Müller von Müllenfels, Johann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German alchemist
DATE OF BIRTH around 1578
PLACE OF BIRTH Wasselnheim
DATE OF DEATH June 30, 1606
Place of death Stuttgart