Jacob Philadelphia | |
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 Image of the magician/scientist Jacob Philadelphia | |
| Born | Jacob Meyer August 14, 1735 |
| Died | 1795 (aged 59–60) |
Notable work | Little Treatise on Strange and Suitable Feats |
Jacob Philadelphia was a magician, physicist, mechanic, juggler, astrologer, alchemist, and Kabbalist. [1] [2]
He is believed to have been born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on August 14, 1735 as Jacob Meyer. [3] Dr Christopher Witt, the associate of Johannes Kelpius, was chiefly responsible for his education. Meyer's patron in England was Prince Henry, Duke of Cumberland and Strathearn, for whom he performed astrology, magic, and alchemy.
When he converted to Christianity, Jacob Meyer took the name of Jacob Philadelphia in homage to the home city of the American scientist and statesman Benjamin Franklin. He was also known by the names Meyer Philadelphia and Philadelphus Philadelphia. Meyer became a member of the occult Rosicrucian order. After the death of his patron in 1756, Meyer began to perform in public. He exhibited his skills in Ireland, Portugal, and Spain. In 1771, he performed in St. Petersburg for Catherine II of Russia. [4] Also, in Constantinople, he had Sultan Mustapha III as an audience. The year 1773 found him chasing away ghosts for Kaiser Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna [5] at a charge of 300 Thalers. In Potsdam and Berlin, he had difficulty with Friedrich the Great, who was alarmed after Meyer read his mind. Friedrich was also averse to Meyer's Rosicrucianism and subsequently banished the magician from Prussia.
Meyer was an early pioneer of phantasmagoria, a performance magic show with a focus on the appearance of ghostly figures. [6]
The Little Treatise on Strange and Suitable Feats was written by Meyer in 1774. In 1758, he toured England. Although he presented himself as being a scientist, many took him for a magician. In 1777 he refused to lecture in Göttingen because of an extravagant, satirical poster campaign by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg who libeled him as being a magician and miracle-worker. Among other things, the poster was designed to make people think that they would be forced into harmful situations if they attended the lecture. Lichtenberg's Avertissement placard became widely known and damaged Meyer's career. His final lecture was given in 1781 in Switzerland. In 1783, he made an application to the Prussian court in order to be licensed to form the Prussian-American Trading Company.
His date of death is believed to have been in 1795.
A biographical novel has been written by Marion Philadelphia in German about the life of Jacob Philadelphia. Its title is Der Gaukler der Könige (The Conjurer of Kings). [7]
Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel was a German astronomer, mathematician, physicist, and geodesist. He was the first astronomer who determined reliable values for the distance from the sun to another star by the method of parallax. A special type of mathematical functions were named Bessel functions after Bessel's death, though they had originally been discovered by Daniel Bernoulli and then generalised by Bessel.
Humboldt University of Berlin is a public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin, Germany. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative of Wilhelm von Humboldt, Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Ernst Daniel Schleiermacher as the University of Berlin in 1809, and opened in 1810, making it the oldest of Berlin's four universities. From 1828 until its closure in 1945, it was named Friedrich Wilhelm University. During the Cold War the university found itself in East Berlin and was de facto split in two when the Free University of Berlin opened in West Berlin. The university received its current name in honour of Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1949.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg was a German physicist, satirist, and Anglophile. As a scientist, he was the first to hold a professorship explicitly dedicated to experimental physics in Germany. He is remembered for his posthumously published notebooks, which he himself called sudelbücher, a description modelled on the English bookkeeping term "waste books" or "scrapbooks", and for his discovery of tree-like electrical discharge patterns now called Lichtenberg figures.
Abraham Abramson was a Prussian coiner and medallist. Born into a Jewish family, he later converted to Protestantism.
Abraham Gotthelf Kästner was a German mathematician and epigrammatist.
Johann Tobias Mayer was a German physicist. He was mainly well known for his mathematics and natural science textbooks. Anfangsgründe der Naturlehre zum Behuf der Vorlesungen über die Experimental-Physik, an 1801 physics text, was the most influential of its time in the German-speaking countries. Mayer's research in experimental physics and astronomy appeared in Annalen der Physik. He is not to be confused with his famous father, the astronomer Tobias Mayer.
Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin is a German chamber orchestra founded in East Berlin in 1982. Each year Akamus gives approximately 100 concerts, ranging from small chamber works to large-scale symphonic pieces in Europe's musical centers as well as on tours in Asia, North America and South America.
Lichtenberg's Avertissement, written by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, is a poster intended to deter the citizens of Göttingen, Germany, from attending the performance of Jacob Philadelphia in 1777. The performance was supposed to be an exhibition of scientific experiments; however, Lichtenberg considered it to be a magic show. He was angered by the alleged deception and posted the following satire in order to persuade people to avoid the performance. As a result of the extravagant claims that were posted, Philadelphia left Göttingen without giving any exhibitions.
Johann Salomo Christoph Schweigger was a German chemist, physicist, and professor of mathematics born in Erlangen.
Carl Georg Christoph Beseler was a Prussian jurist and politician.
Justus Henning Böhmer was an outstanding German jurist, ecclesiastical jurist, Professor of the University of Halle and also Geheimer Rat, count palatine and chancellor of the Duchy of Magdeburg.
Johann Christian Martin Bartels was a German mathematician. He was the tutor of Carl Friedrich Gauss in Brunswick and the educator of Lobachevsky at the University of Kazan.
Heinrich Wilhelm Brandes was a German physicist, meteorologist, and astronomer.
Georg Simon Klügel was a German mathematician and physicist.
Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer was a German biologist and naturalist born in Bebenhausen, today part of the city of Tübingen. He was a pioneer of Naturphilosophie, helped to establish organic chemistry (Pflanzenchemie) as a field, and developed an early version of recapitulation theory through the observation of animal embryos.
Johann Christian Dieterich (1722–1800) was the founder of the Dieterich'schen Verlagsbuchhandlung publishing house and a close friend of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. He published the first Musen-Almanach.
Johann Georg Schrepfer, or Johann Georg Schröpfer, was a German charlatan, independent Freemason and necromancer. He performed ghost-raising séances for which he secretly used special effects, possibly including magic lantern projections of ghosts on smoke, which inspired the phantasmagoria shows popular in Europe from the 1790s to the 1830s.
Johann Andreas Klindworth was an eighteenth-century mechanic and maker of astronomical instruments. He was also the ancestor of a well known and much respected family whose reputation comes up to our present day. He is credited as being the inventor of the month-going regulator of the Seeberg Observatory in Gotha, Germany, made about 1786.
Johann Friedrich Benzenberg was a German astronomer, geologist, and physicist.
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