Philipp Soemmering

Philipp Sömmering (* in the 16th century; † February 7, 1575 in Wolfenbüttel ) was a German alchemist and fraudulent gold maker. He called himself Therocyclus .

Sömmering was a pastor's son from Tambach and attended the Latin school in Schmalkalden and for three years the monastery school in Gotha . He went to Jena , became a teacher and chaplain, and was ordained by Philipp Melanchthon in 1554 . Then he was pastor near Gotha ( Schönau vor dem Walde and Wipperoda ). He began to be interested in alchemy, studied medicinal herbs in a pharmacy in Erfurt and bought a book by the alchemist Bernard von Trevisan for a high sum of 400 thalers . He teamed up with Pastor Abel Scherding from Hohenkirchen and they entered into a contract with the Duke of Gotha in which they promised to produce gold (with a laboratory in Reinhardsbrunn ), for which the Duke first had to advance around 240 grams of gold. It was here that he came into contact with the cheater couple Anne Marie von Ziegler and her husband Heinrich Schombach. Taking advantage of the chaos of war, Sömmering and Scherding fled Gotha in 1566 with the advanced gold. He went to Bad Sooden-Allendorf to the salt boiler Johannes Rhenanus . Through him he got the order for Duke Julius of Braunschweig to set up a salt works in Bündheim near Goslar and received an audience with the Duke through Duke Jodokus Pellitius' personal physician.

In 1571 he came to Wolfenbüttel with the cheater couple Ziegler and Schombach and another accomplice Sylvester Schulfermann, who came from Lübeck, where he entered into a gold-making contract with the Duke. He was also supposed to advise the duke on mining issues, which he understood nothing about. He also tried, with little success, the manufacture of musket tubes, artificial pearls and medicines. He tried to make the tincture for making gold from alcohol and mercury in the pharmacy in front of the castle in Wolfenbüttel. When he was unsuccessful and prepared to escape, he was arrested in 1574. The machinations of his accomplices also had a negative effect. In February 1575 he was sentenced to death and brutally executed near Schlossplatz. He was tortured, dragged, and quartered with red-hot tongs. His accomplices were also executed.

literature

• A. Rhamm: The fraudulent gold makers at the court of Duke Julius of Braunschweig . Wolfenbüttel 1883
• Heinz Grunow: The trail leads to Wolfenbüttel: Report on the largest criminal trial of the 16th century . Writings on local history, volume 6, Wolfenbüttel 1976
• Georg Schwedt : Chemical experiments in castles, monasteries and museums. Wiley-VCH 2009

Web links

• Braunschweig (and Helmstedt). in: Georg Schwedt, Chemical experiments in castles, monasteries and museums. , Wiley-VCH 2009 on wiley-vch.e-bookshelf.de (Philipp Sömmering and his attempts at gold production in Wolfenbüttel)