Sulzbacher Musenhof

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The Sulzbacher Musenhof or Sulzbacher circle was around 1670 by the Wittelsbach Christian August , the first Duke of Pfalz-Sulzbach , at his residence Sulzbach reasonable Musenhof . The center of this group of scholars and writers was the poet and polyhistor Christian Knorr von Rosenroth . Characteristic for the circle was the pronounced interest in alchemy , theosophy , and Kabbalah , and Sulzbach was a center of the early Gold and Rosicrucians especially in the 1760s and 1770s .

history

On his educational trip , Duke Christian August met the naturalist and philosopher Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont , son of the Flemish polymath Johan Baptista van Helmont , and invited him to Sulzbach. Presumably at Helmont's suggestion, Christian Knorr von Rosenroth was called to the court in Sulzbach, where he was appointed court councilor and at times even was the duke's chancellor. The appointment of the three less orthodox theologians Justus Brawe , Clamerus Florinus and Johann Jakob Fabricius as pastors also goes back to Helmont . The radical spiritualist and mystic Johann Georg Gichtel , who was friends with Fabricius and lived with him, stayed at times in Sulzbach.

This theology, heretical in the eyes of a Lutheran orthodoxy and of course also of the Jesuits in nearby Neuburg an der Donau , whose representatives were denounced as Quakers , Weigelians and generally as heretics and sectarians, also included a tendency towards chiliasm (Knorr expected due to numerical magic Speculations the end of the world for the year 1860) as well as a magical medicine fed from Paracelsian sources that sought to cure illnesses through the application of "internal spirit powers" (see for example Helmont's rise of Artzney art of 1683), from where only one little way to the Gassner cures brought about by exorcisms of sick demons .

In addition to the openness to unorthodox theology, one of the hallmarks of the Sulzbacher school is the - also practical - interest in alchemy and the Kabbalah , expressed here as a connection between Jewish mysticism and Christosophy . The main work in this direction is Knorr's Kabbala denudata , which appeared between 1677 and 1684. This collection of treatises and transcriptions of Hebrew texts contains a partial translation of the Book of Zohar in Latin as well as translations of texts by Isaak Luria and Moses Cordovero . The Kabbalistic material is subjected to a Rosicrucian-Christosophical reinterpretation, whereby Adam Kadmon is identified with Jesus Christ and the top three Sephiroth with the Christian Trinity .

Part V of the first volume exerted a particular influence, under the title Compendium Libri Cabbalistico Chymici, Aesch Mezareph dicti, de Lapide philosophico, an authentic Jewish Kabbalistic guide to gold making. However, according to Gershom Scholem's investigation, it is indeed a Hebrew text, but it is influenced by modern magical literature such as by Agrippa von Nettesheim . Overall, it is a "syncretism ..., as it was about a learned Italian Jew of the Renaissance in 16th century is most likely to be expected. "

In a second phase in the second half of the 18th century, the Sulzbach city physicist Bernhard Joseph Schleiss von Löwenfeld formed the central point of a circle in which the peculiar amalgamation of alchemy, theosophy, Kabbalah and marginal theology founded by Knorr and Helmont was renewed and consolidated . At that time, Sulzbach was one of the centers of the early Gold and Rosicrucians and concepts from the Knorr and Helmont building found their way into the teachings of this group, namely the meaning of Kabbalah. In the Compass of the Wise , a basic script of the Gold and Rosicrucians, reference was made to Knorr's Kabbalah denudata . The importance of a mystical interpretation of the Revelation and Gospel of John , as it was formulated in Knorrs under the pseudonym Christian Peganius in 1670 published Actual Declaration on the Visions of the Revelation of St. John , is reflected in the Gold and Rosicrucian oath of the Apostle John and the facility of the “heavenly tabernacle”.

The work of the pastor, miracle healer and exorcist Johann Joseph Gaßner , who was invited by Schleiss to Sulzbach to practice his cures there, and who he defended against Lavater's criticism , also belongs to this continuity . The teachings of the Sulzbach school also included healing through exorcism, i.e. the expulsion of sick demons from the body by a priest-magician with the help of certain formulas. Through Schleiss the exorcism found its way into the teaching of the Gold and Rosicrucians.

The lines of tradition emanating from the Sulzbach School therefore extend on the side of the occult-esoteric tradition via the Gold and Rosicrucians to the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia , and from there via the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn right into the occultism of the 20th century. And on another side, according to Hans Grassl, about Baader and Schelling , the pre-romanticism of the 18th century to the exponents of the Munich romanticism in the literary tradition of modernism.

Printing houses

The interest in Kabbalah and Judaica in general led to the desire to be able to print Hebrew texts in an adequate form. Knorr's and Helmont's interest in Hebrew is also evidenced by what is probably the first book printed in Sulzbach, namely Helmont's Kurtzer draft of the actual nature alphabet of the Holy Language: According to its instructions, one can also make deaf bores understand and speak from 1667. In this one by Knorr Introduced little work, Hebrew is presented as the original Adamite language and the foundation of a Hebrew language society is suggested, since only increased knowledge of Hebrew is able to unlock the “wonderful secrets of both nature and morals”. Goldmaking is one of these wonderful secrets. Armed with a thorough knowledge of Hebrew and the wisdom of Solomon, the adept would be able to obtain gold “with little expense from a much closer ophir ” (meaning the alchemist's laboratory).

Already on May 12, 1664, the printer Abraham Lichtenthaler from Stein bei Plößberg and from Ingolstadt received a printing privilege in Sulzbach. Lichtenthaler was supposed to work a lot for the Nuremberg publisher Endter, who published numerous alchemical, iatrochemical and secret scientific writings. After Lichtenthaler's death, his son Johann Jakob Lichtenthaler continued the printing business. In 1708 he became a court book printer and in 1732 his son Georg Abraham Lichtenthaler (1684–1736) took over the printing press. After the death of his son Georg Abraham Lorenz Lichtenthaler (1711–1780), his nephew Johann Esaias von Seidel took over the printing company in 1785, which under his direction grew into a publishing company that was important for Bavarian intellectual life.

As a further printer, Johann Holst from Stade settled in Sulzbach, until 1683 typesetter at Lichtenthaler. Moses Bloch, head of the Jewish community in Sulzbach, also ran a small printing company which, after Bloch's death in 1693, was continued by his sons Feistel and Samuel and then by Ahron Fränkel, who came from Vienna.

literature

  • Christian Knorr von Rosenroth: Poet and scholar at the Sulzbacher Musenhof. Festschrift for the 300th anniversary of death. Edited by the literature archive and the city of Sulzbach-Rosenberg. Sulzbach-Rosenberg 1989, ISBN 3-924350-16-7 .
  • Karl RH Frick : The Enlightened (Part 1). Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, Graz 1973, ISBN 3-201-00834-6 , pp. 317–338.
  • Hans Grassl: Departure to Romanticism. Bavaria's contribution to German intellectual history 1765–1785. Beck, Munich 1968, pp. 102-114, 418-424.
  • Klaus Jaitner: The Sulzbacher Musenhof in the history of European ideas. In: Eisenerz and Morgenglanz. History of the city of Sulzbach-Rosenberg. Vol. 2. Book & Art Publ. Oberpfalz, Amberg 1999, pp. 635-657.
  • Volker Wappmann: Jews, Quakers, Pietists: the Irenik of the Sulzbacher Kreis (1651–1708). In: Union - Conversion - Tolerance. Edited by Heinz Duchhardt and Gerhard May. Mainz 2000, pp. 119–138.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Scholem: Alchemy and Kabbalah. Quoted in Frick: The Enlightened (Part 1). Graz 1973, p. 329 ff.
  2. ↑ Translation: Aesch mezareph or, purifying fire: a chymico-kabalistic treatise collected from the Kabala denudata of Knorr von Rosenroth. Translated by a Lover of Philalethes, 1714. Preface, notes and explanations by "Sapere Aude" [= William Wynn Westcott ]. Theosophical Publishing Society, London & New York 1894
  3. ↑ The Compass of the Wise, described by a relative of the inner constitution of the real and right Freymäurerey. Ed., With notes, an attribution and preface ... by Ketmia Vere. Ringmacher, Berlin 1779.
  4. ↑ Frick: The Enlightened (Part 1). Graz 1973, p. 335.
  5. ↑ Frick: The Enlightened (Part 1). Graz 1973, p. 336 f.
  6. ↑ Christoph Reske: The book printers of the 16th and 17th centuries in the German-speaking area based on the work of the same name by Josef Benzing . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2007, ISBN 978-3-447-05450-8 , p. 913 ff.