Wenzel Seiler

Johann Wenzel Seiler , also Wenceslaus and Seyler (* around 1648 probably in Prague ; † 1681 in Vienna ), was an Austrian alchemist .

Life

Seiler's father Zacharias was the artillery steward and died in Vienna in 1652 as a result of burns in a fireworks display. Seiler was originally an Augustinian monk in Brno who fled the monastery in 1671 after being caught with a prostitute (as she was called in the monastery's official reports). Then he was at Schloss Feldberg in the alchemical laboratory of Karl Eusebius von Liechtenstein (1611–1684). Via the mediation of Count Franz Ernst von Paar (died 1672), who was a believer in alchemy, the former Austrian envoy in Spain , with whom he had already been in contact as a friar in Brno, he came to the Viennese court and began experiments in the laboratory in the Hofburg .

In 1675 he married with the permission of Pope Maria Crembsl, with whom he already had a child. After the death of his wife in 1677, he married the widow of Baron von Savarian a few months later.

Seiler carried out an alleged transmutation (conversion into gold ) at the Viennese court in 1675 and was then made Knight of Reinburg in 1676. In 1677 he is said to have turned a large medal , the so-called alchemical medallion , into gold (before the eyes of Emperor Leopold I ). This object is exhibited in the coin cabinet of the Vienna Art History Museum. The medal is made of a gold- silver - copper - alloy with enriched at the surface of gold, probably by etching with nitric acid . Seiler made a good living from gold making and was promoted to the status of imperial baron in 1678 and chief mint master of Bohemia in 1679 . In 1681 he died of a fever in Vienna .

Johann Joachim Becher , who himself worked as an alchemist and believed in gold making, wrote an investigation report on the case of Seiler's goldmaking , which was published in London in 1680 at the instigation of Robert Boyle (Magnalia naturae). Boyle had received messages from Seiler from the imperial ambassador Wallenstein as early as 1677 and was very interested in the case. Seiler was not the only alchemist who made a career at the Viennese court, where, like other princes, alchemy hoped for financial relief. In 1670, the Italian alchemist Giuseppe Francesco Borrhi appeared there, but was arrested for heretical views, and Leopold I's father, Emperor Ferdinand III. , who spent a lot of money on alchemy, made the alchemist Johann Konrad Richthausen the Baron of Chaos .

literature

Lawrence Principe: Wenzel Seiler (Seyler) in: Claus Priesner , Karin Figala : Alchemie. Lexicon of a Hermetic Science, Beck 1998

Web links

Individual evidence

^ The chemists Robert Strebinger and W. Reif from the TH Wien examined the medallion in 1932, published in Mitt. Numismati Ges. Wien, 16, 1932, 209
↑ At that time he was in less esteem at the court and even had to leave Vienna in 1676, which is why he tries to portray the competitor Seiler in a bad light in his report. B. writes that he would squander his fortune and that his wife died of syphilis, which she infected Seiler with

personal data
SURNAME	Seiler, Wenzel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Seyler, Wenzel; Seiler, Wenceslaus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Austrian alchemist
DATE OF BIRTH	around 1648
PLACE OF BIRTH	unsure: Prague
DATE OF DEATH	1681
Place of death	Vienna

[1] The chemists Robert Strebinger and W. Reif from the TH Wien examined the medallion in 1932, published in Mitt. Numismati Ges. Wien, 16, 1932, 209

[2] At that time he was in less esteem at the court and even had to leave Vienna in 1676, which is why he tries to portray the competitor Seiler in a bad light in his report. B. writes that he would squander his fortune and that his wife died of syphilis, which she infected Seiler with