Leonhard Thurneysser
Leonhard Thurneysser ( born July 22, 1531 Basel, † 1595 or 1596 near Cologne), actually Leonhart Thurneisser zum Thurn, was a scholar and miracle doctor at the court of Brandenburg Elector Johann Georg.
Life and work
As the son of a goldsmith, he developed an interest in mineralogy and alchemy. He learned the goldsmith and served beyond the medical professor John Huber as famulus and helped to collect herbs and prepare medicines. He used this knowledge later in his book "Historia ". In Huber Thurneysser also found access to the writings of Paracelsus, which influenced him deeply.
From 1547 led Leonhard Thurneysser a wandering life until he married in his native Basel in 1555. He was a member of the " Guild of the household " ( money changers and goldsmiths ). However Thurneysser went in 1558 to the road again.
1559, he worked successfully as Metallurg Imst in Tyrol and became an entrepreneur of a mine. Soon Thurneysser was with the Emperor Ferdinand I and his sons, as well as personalities such as the scholar Pietro Paolo Gerolamo Cardano and other Vergerio and as an expert in the fields of pharmaceutics, chemical, metallurgy, botany, mathematics, astronomy and medicine. The wife of Archduke Ferdinand II of Habsburg, ruler of Tirol Philippine Welser prompted Thurneysser to more journeys, including through the Orient and North Africa. He collected minerals, plants and medicinal recipes. After these travels, he no longer saw himself as a metallurgist, but now practiced as a doctor pharmacies.
From 1569 to 1570 Leonhard Thurneysser lived in Münster. The local Bishop John III. Hoya gave his personal physician Thurneysser the order set up a pharmacy, but the ideas of Thurneysser topped about the equipment the pharmacy the center of the bishop.
The first meeting between Thurneysser and the Brandenburg Elector Johann Georg took place in Frankfurt on the Oder, where Thurneysser healed the ailing wife of the Elector. Johann Georg thereupon appointed him to his doctor and took him to Berlin at a salary of 1352 thalers. For his work, Johann Georg asked him a part of the former Franciscan monastery are available, which is known as Grey Abbey today. Thurneysser also launched the construction of the glassworks at Castle Grimnitz.
Leonhard Thurneysser taught in horror monastery his apartment, his library, a printing company as well as its laboratories. Due to its self-made medicine, he quickly became a rich man, and he also sold astrological calendar, horoscopes and talismans to protect them from the evil. He claimed to know in the Mark Brandenburg places where sapphires, rubies and emeralds are to be found, also contains the silt the river Spree Gold. In his print he produced writings in a variety of alphabets and used for not only German, Latin, Greek and Hebrew letters even those with Arabic script. He established the first scientific Cabinet in Brandenburg, laid out a botanical garden and kept exotic animals on the farm.
A turning point in his life made a trip in 1559 to his hometown of Basel dar. Here he married his third wife, and took out a large part of his wealth to Basel. After violent disputes with his wife Leonhard Thurneysser returned back to Berlin in 1580, but lost it his possessions in Basel, confiscated and the woman were awarded. 1584 he left Berlin final and was baptized Catholic. A short time he lived in Rome; In 1595 he died impoverished in suspicious circumstances in a monastery near Cologne. On July 8, 1596 he was buried in the Dominican monks in Cologne Predigerkloster "ad latus Alberti Magni ".
Among the most impressive books from his shop at the same time one of his major works, his Archidoxa, a large-format book in the form of an astrolabe with tables of the planets, it - provided the proper use - should enable the user to forecast the personal fate or natural events to take. The graphic design took the eraser, wood pattern maker and artist Jost Amman. The full title of the second edition in the former spelling is:
Furthermore, he wrote in 1583 a similar writing an encyclopedia Magna Alchymia containing a dictionary of terms as they were used by Paracelsus. However, this font also contained his collection of mineralogical knowledge.
Works
- Archidoxa
- Magna Alchymia, 1583
- Historia unnd Description influentischer, elementischer and domestic natural Wirckungen all foreign and domestic Erdgewechssen, Berlin 1578, translated as Historia sive descriptio plantarum, 1584