Leseprobe

15 T he Life of the P hi l o s ophe r Jacob B öhme was published during Böhme’s life-time (Fig. 2). All others circulated in manuscript form through a net- work of dedicated followers. After 1618, the task of spreading his philosophy quickly absorbed Böhme’s energies: he sold his cobbler’s stall and dedicatet himself for a while to trading in other kinds of goods. Amongst the journeys he undertook for this new activity, he went to Prague in 1619, and was present when the Elector Friedrich V of the Palatine made his grand entrance into the city. Böhme reports on this in his correspondence – another important indi- cation of the fact that he was not the secluded “mystic” he has sometimes been portrayed to be. On the contrary, he was deeply aware of political events and of their impact, and his writings are never abstract meditations, but aimed at showing that the knowledge of the world and of the divine cannot be separated. In the year of his death, 1624, Böhme was hosted at court in Dresden. There, he stayed with the director of the court laboratory, Benedikt Hinckelmann. The exact reason for Böhme’s visit to Dresden is not known. In a letter, Böhme writes that his booklet The Way to Christ had been appreciated at court, to the point that it was seen as “a divine gift,” and was read daily ( Epistles 61.1). Yet, the publication of the booklet had been controversial, at least in Böhme’s hometown. Gregor Richter had launched a renewed attack against the “fanatical cobbler,” and authorities had again called Böhme to the city hall of Görlitz to justify himself. Böhme had ultimately been acquitted, but only because he was able to argue that although he had authored the book, he had not arranged its publication, for which the nobleman Hans Sigmund von Schweinichen had been entirely responsible. Having travelled back to Görlitz after his visit to Dresden, Böhme fell ill and died in the night of 16 November. Böhme’s fierce opponent, Gregor Richter, had died only a fewmonths earlier, in August 1624, having published in Görlitz a violent pamphlet against Böhme (Fig. 3). Richter’s condemnation of Böhme in speech and writing apparently ignited resentment against Böhme in his hometown, since the cross that his friends had erected to mark this grave was soon vandalized (Fig. 4). Today, Böhme’s tomb in the Nikolai churchyard is marked by a large stone featuring one of the most famous depictions of his philosophical system – the “Philosophical Sphere” – which captures in a single drawing Böhme’s main idea of the struggle of light and darkness (see p. 76, Fig. 6). Notes 1 Quoted in: Jecht 1924: 36. See further on Böhme’s biography: Fechner 1857: 313–446; Peuckert 1924; Jecht 1924; Weeks 1991; Penman 2014: 57–76; Muratori 2017 (online: www.springer.com/ de/book/9783319141688).   2 Muratori 2017. On the characteri- zation of Böhme as ‘mystical cobbler’ see Muratori 2016, especially Part 1.