Book Reviews: Michael Maiers Chymisches Cabinet. Atalanta fugiens deutsch nach der Ausgabe von 1708

This edition of the 1708 German translation of Michael Maier's Atalanta fugiens offers the opportunity to look once more at Maier's most beautiful book on alchemy (first published in Latin in 1617), and to linger over the extraordinary plates by Mattha¨us Merian the Elder. It also allows us an overview of Maier's career as scholar and erstwhile seeker of princely patronage. In his search for patrons, Maier was both spectacularly good at obtaining honorary titles (some of which he bestowed on himself), such as being named Leibartz and Pfalzgraf to Emperor Rudolf II, but not so good at being paid for his services, despite the fulsome letters of dedication included in his numerous alchemical works. Neither of his positions at the Imperial court involved a salary. Indeed his life seems to have been so occupied with writing and attempts to get paid that there was not a moment left for the actual practice of alchemy. And this, indeed, is the overweening effect of Atalanta fugiens: beautiful images, elegant emblems and explanations, even harmonious fugues (the music was not reprinted in the 1708 edition, and the words but not the notes are provided in this volume), but there is little sign of the laboratory or workshop. The stuff of this book is texts, beautifully combined and synthesized to create emblems bursting with a variety of meanings—moral, spiritual, cosmic, material—the more polysemous, the better. Michael Maier (1568/9–1622) was born in Kiel, studied in Rostock, Basel, Padua, and Bologna, and began alchemical studies in 1604. He travelled as far south as Rome, east through the Baltic, north to England, and became a Doctor of Medicine in Basel, but most of his life was spent between the Rhine, Oder and Danube in the heartland of alchemical patronage and publishing. He spent time at the courts of Emperor Rudolf II, Landgraf Moritz of Hessen-Kassel, and King James I, attempted to gain positions at several northern German courts, and considered settling in Frankfurt am Main. When he attempted to do so in Strasbourg, the city denied his bid for citizenship, because they believed “he must be a most unusual man”. He began publishing a flood of mostly alchemical works in 1614 and put out more than two a year until his death in 1622. Atalanta fugiens remains a kind of prototypical work of alchemy, no doubt mainly because of its plates. One wants to know more—if such can be known—about the collaboration between Maier and the engraver Mattha¨us Merian. Was it the printer, Johann Theodor de Bry, who brought the two men together or did they come to him? How much did the book sell for at the Frankfurt fair? In short, how did Maier, Merian, and de Bry conceive of this work—primarily as a work of alchemy, as an emblem-book, or as a picture book? No doubt any of the three would have made it a good investment for de Bry, but the combination of all of them would seem irresistible. Thomas Hofmeier, who has made a speciality of editing and re-publishing editions of rare and little known works of alchemy, especially those having to do with Basel and Switzerland, provides a useful introduction, and took the intelligent decision of having the engravings printed in their full and wonderful murkiness and depth. This edition is worth obtaining just for the indexes, which take up a full 96 pages of the volume. There is an index of Maier's publications, of persons, an extraordinarily detailed index of subjects, one of alchemical authors, and, best of all, an index of all the sources cited by Maier. Sources to which Maier alluded only by author or title are fully resuscitated and listed by Hofmeier in this volume, including citations of chapters and page numbers.