Johann Joachim Becher

Johann Joachim Becher ( born May 6, 1635 Speyer, † October 1682 in London ) was a German scholar, economist and alchemist. He is considered the most important by far among the English mercantilists.

Life

Cup, born in Speyer, where he spent his youth and visited here the Retscher High School. His father Joachim Becher († 1643) was a Protestant pastor in Speyer and his mother was Anna Margaretha Gauss from a Council Speyer family. From 1650 he traveled throughout Europe, visiting Stockholm, Amsterdam, and perhaps Italy. From 1652 he studied medicine, chemistry and theology at the University of Mainz. 1661, he has just received his doctorate at the same university as a Doctor of Medicine and in 1663 he took over at times, the teaching of his father- Ludwig von Hörnigk. Title of his inaugural lecture was on the reality of Lapis philosophorum or Philosopher's Stone.

He stepped over to the Roman Catholic Church, and professor in 1657, then personal physician and economic advisor to the local Elector and Archbishop Johann Philipp von Schönborn. He designed the Polizeyverordnung for Mainz and plans for locks that should be used in the construction of the Rhine -Danube Canal. In 1664 he was briefly in the service of the Elector Karl Ludwig I. von der Pfalz in Mannheim. 1664-1670 he was a physician and mathematician in the court of the Bavarian Elector Ferdinand Maria and was from there worked as a Bavarian officer at the Imperial Court in Vienna and 1668. During this time, his economic magnum opus Political Discurs that underwent several editions and is republished even more than 100 years after its first appearance was. For a short time from 1669 he worked as an advisor to the Hanauer Count Friedrich Casimir, who ran an economic policy within the meaning of cup. Cup was awarded the contract for the project, a colony Hanauisch India in South America, to found in the area of present-day Guyana. The project, which exceeded the financial capabilities of the moribund by the Thirty Years' War county of Hanau by far and the economic bankruptcy, which the county approached rapidly, resulted in the same year to a coup d'etat of the family against Graf Friedrich Casimir and the dismissal of Johann Joachim Becher. He turned again to Munich, where he was still at the expense of the Bavarian government opened a large alchemical laboratory in the same year.

1670 moved mug in the service emperor Leopold I.. , He exerted a strong influence on its economic, trade and employment policy. The emperor appointed him councilor and member of the commercial college. He designed grand plans to factories and suggested the establishment of an Austro- Indian trading company. Since 1676 he was in Würzburg, Haarlem ( 1677-1679 ) and then worked in London, where he worked with large mining companies. In Holland he wanted to win from the sea sand gold. 1678 he was in Hamburg Heinrich fire. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz prevented that he was called to Hanover. In the same year 1678 he traveled to England and Scotland. In Scotland he visited mines at the request of Prince Rupert of the Rhine, Duke of Cumberland. Later, he traveled for the same purpose to Cornwall, where he lived for a year. At the beginning of 1680, he presented to the Royal Society a text in which he tried to contradict the invention of the pendulum clock from 1657 by Christiaan Huygens to measure time. In 1681 he was in England a patent on the production of the Steinkohleteers, were preserved with the ships. In October 1682 he died in London and was buried in the church of St. Martin-in -the-Fields. Not far away was a few years later Robert Boyle his final resting. His first full-length biography published Urban Gottfried Bucher 1722.

1662 he married Mary Veronica of Hörnigk (* 1642), daughter of the Dean Ludwig von Mainz Hörnigk also. His economic ideas also influenced his brother Philip William of Hörnigk. He worked from 1673 together with Philipp Wilhelm von Hörnigk in Vienna at the trade statistics of the Austrian hereditary lands and Bohemia.

Alchemy and chemistry

Cup was a " colorful personality " at the time of the transition from alchemy to modern chemistry. He examined the nature of the combustion process and thought that the burning of materials a "terra pinguis " would be released. After cup considers air, water and earth were the real elementary principles. The earth itself, he shared again in a terra fluida or merkuralische earth that the substances would lend liquid, fineness, volatility and metallic properties, a terra pinguis or greasy earth, this corresponds to the oily liquid of the alchemists, the oily the substances, sulphurous and flammable would lend property and a terra lapidea or glass-like earth, which stood for the principle of fusibility. The terra fluida he described also as phlogistos. This term in itself was not new and was also used by other about Nicolaus Niger Hapelius (1559-1622), Daniel Sennert and ultimately already in Aristotle - used in a similar context of meaning - here for combustible. 1669 saw the formation of the cup first representative of the alkenes, the ethene by the action of sulfuric acid on ethanol.

It was the model of the three soils and the resulting formulated sentences that took Georg Ernst Stahl (1659-1734) to form the Lavoisier since outmoded phlogiston theory.

In his time in Vienna he developed a method for making gold. With the addition of silver and other secret ingredients to the silt of the Vienna Basin him apparently succeeded in transmutation into gold. His " Everlasting sand mine" but found no backers. It was not until 1934, the gold sands was again tried on a large scale to exploit. The tragedy lies with him ( and other successful gold-makers ) is that they did not recognize that the gold already dispersed in the sand was contained and not created by an alchemical process.

Polymath

In his travels, and his diverse staging emerged a variety of books that reflect his wide range of interests, but a constant focus was on its chemical and alchemical economic plants. His design of a numerically represented Interlingua language is considered the forerunner of the modern idea of ​​machine translation. He described 1683 also a moving heat lift system for watches (almost ) by type of perpetual motion and another system that used the rainwater from the roof of his house. Cup advertised - on the other hand also very practical - for the introduction of potato cultivation in Germany.

His economic writings are compared by Eli F. Heckscher with Adam Smith 's Wealth of Nations: With mercantilism as liberalism of wealth is the focus of economic endeavor; mercantilism but it's primarily a unit formation over medieval particularism and universalism through a strengthening of state power ( the former territorial lords ).

Works

• Aphorisms. Edited by Carl Reinert: suggestions and Sentences of polyhistorian from Speyer ( 1635-1682 ). In: Research Report of the Johann- Joachim- Becher society Speyer eV 2005 ISSN 1430-8193.
• Character, per notitia Linguarum universality. Frankfurt 1661.
• Parnassus Medicinalis illustratus. Or: A new / and such / never seen vormahln animal herbal and mountain - book Sampt the Salernischen school. All in high - Teutscher voice / sowol in Ligata as prose, funny and außführlich described in fourths and adorned with Zwölffhundert figures. 1663rd
• Oedipus chymicus, or Chymischer puzzles Deuter. Frankfurt 1664th
• Political Discurs: From the root causes concerning the establishment and demise of the cities to have countries and Republicken. 1668th digitized and full text in German Text Archive
• Actorum Laboratorii Chymici Monacensis, seu Physicae subterraneae. 2 parts. Frankfurt 1669th
• Methodus Didactica Seu Et Clavis practice Super Novum Organon Philologicum suum, which is: Thorough proof / that the way and means / which schools bißhero into common used / youth to learn the languages ​​... to lead / not sure yet sure Seyen / / answer lauffen / respect of which commonly barren / vain and flow off but the Regulen and nature of the right teaching / learning and art straightway. 1669th
• Discurs From the root causes concerning the happiness and unhappiness. Frankfurt 1669th
• Institutiones chymicae seu Manuductio ad philosophiam hermeticam. Mainz in 1662.
• Epistolae chymicae. Amsterdam in 1673.
• Supplementum in Physicam subterraneam. Frankfurt 1675th
• Psycho Sophia or souls Whiteness: namely, as a every man his soul from viewing himself could obtain all WissenSchafftBilder and whiteness thoroughly and constantly alone. 1678th
• Trifolium Becherianum hollandicum Or The Roman Kayser Lichen Mayestät chamber and Commercien - Rath Dr. John Joachim cup Drey New inventions: Existing in a silk mill and water Schmeltz works ...; AUß the Dutch in the high Teutsche language übersezzet. Zunner, Frankfurt, Main 1679 Digitized edition of the University and State Library Dusseldorf
• Chymisches laboratory or Lower Dische natural termination. 2 vols, 1680.
• Chymischer Glückshafen or Large Chymical concordance. Frankfurt 1682nd
• Foolish whiteness Fashion folly: Or One Hundred as Political ALSs Physicalische Mechanical and Mercantilische Concepten and propositions. Frankfurt, 1682nd ( digitized and full text in German Text Archive )
• Kluger householder, discreet matron, volkommener country - Medicus, as well as well experienced horse and Wiehe doctor PABX a clear and certain handle the household arts. 1685.
• Chymisches laboratory or under - erdische natural termination. Franckfurt. Fievet, 1690 Digitized edition of the University and State Library Dusseldorf

Literature (selection )

• Max Becher Johann Joachim cup economic pedagogical influence. , 1937.
• Urban Gottfried Bucher: The pattern of a useful scholar in the person of Dr. JJ Becher's. Nuremberg in 1722.
• Gerhard Dünnhaupt: Johann Joachim Becher ( 1635-1682 ). In: Personal bibliographies on the printing of the Baroque, Vol 1 Hiersemann, Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 3-7772-9013-0, pp. 428-457.
• Herbert Hassinger: Johann Joachim Becher, 1635-1682: contribution to the history of mercantilism. In 1951.
• Herbert Hassinger: Becher, Johann Joachim. In: New German Biography ( NDB ). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6, pp. 689 f ( digitized ).
• Heinrich Jantzen: Johann Joachim Becher as a theoretical and practical private economist. Dissertation, Cologne 1925.
• Hans Georg Osswald: The groundbreaking educational ideas of Johann Joachim Becher of Speyer ( 1635-1682 ). A contribution to the history of the relationship between business and education. In: Research Report of the Johann- Joachim- Becher society Speyer eV [ Special Publication], Schneider Hohengehren, Baltmannsweiler 2000, ISBN 3-89676-292-3.
• Oppenheim: Becher, Johann Joachim. In: General German Biography (ADB ). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1875, pp. 201-203.
• Wilhelm Roscher: the Austrian National Economics under Emperor Leopold I. In: . Yearbooks of Economics and Statistics, 1864 This lengthy section on mugs, pp. 38-59 (GBS )
• Ferdinand August Steinhüser: Johann Joachim Becher and the individual economy. In 1931.