Anna Maria Zieglerin (1550 - 1575) is a German alchemist accused of murder, attempted poisoning and intent to burglarize. At her trial, Zieglerin claims she doesn't menstruate, is more pious than others and wants to be like the angels. She's convicted and burned alive.
Anna Zieglerin uses her life story to gain interest and position at court. According to Anna, she's born prematurely and swathed in a woman's skin anointed with balsam, where she is kept for twelve weeks until her body is mature.
When Anna is fourteen, her mother tries to marry her to Nikolaus von Hamdorff, a minor noble, but she refuses. Enraged by her rejection, he rapes and impregnates her. Anna conceals the pregnancy, gives birth in secret and throws the baby into the river.
When she's sixteen, she marries a nobleman who perishes in an accident nine weeks later. On arriving at the court in Gotha, Thuringia, her brother forces her to marry the court jester, Heinrich Schombach.
It is here she and her husband encounter the alchemist Philipp Sömmering, who calls himself Therocyclus. During the siege of Gotha in 1567, Zieglerin, Schombach, and Sömmering flee together to Eschwege in Hesse.
By 1571, they manange to secure patronage at the court of Duke Julius of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel in Lower Saxony. Sömmering partners with Schombach, and invites Anna to be his assistant.
Although barely twenty-one she's already familiar with alchemical skills from time at various courts. The Duke gives the trio the task of finding the Philosopher's Stone to produce gold and precious gems.
At this time the Stone is considered to be red, possibly due to the alchemical rubedo or redness stage, popular during the Renaissance. Rubedo marks the completion phase of the alchemical work.
Anna collaborates with Sömmering, but also has her own laboratory with at least one assistant. In a letter dated September 1573, Zieglerin details her ongoing projects, including the creation of the Philosopher's Stone, to Duke Julius.
"Your princely grace," she writes,
"... I am sending you this small lump; the greatest little stone [i.e., the philosophers' stone] I have set again in the wine so it does not entirely dissolve into the air ... in a short time I want to show Your Princely Grace something greater ... Tonight with the help of God in heaven we want to begin the two pounds of quicksilver."
She also publishes a twenty-page booklet in 1573 titled "Concerning the Noble and Precious Art of Alcamia," focusing on practical alchemy. Much of her work from Wolfenbüttel has survived, either through her own records or those, slightly skewed, of her trial.
Zieglerin creates an oil she calls "Lion's Blood," with various applications in gemstone crafting, medicine production, and potentially in the creation of the Philosopher's Stone. She outlines two techniques for crafting the Stone.
One involves the transformation of materials into a red oil, and the other requires merging two distinct stones to form the Philosopher's Stone. Like her contemporaries, Anna intertwines elements of Christianity in her alchemical pursuits. She anticipates a terrible apocalypse.
The dark side of progress, a sense of doom pervades intellectual circles. Anna believes alchemy and her oil can bridge the gap between natural and supernatural. In a departure from her peers, Zieglerin aims to create human life through her alchemical endeavors.
She asserts her Lion’s Blood oil will accelerate gestation and create mature fetuses after four to six weeks in the womb. Zieglerin writes:
"If you want to beget a child, then take nine drops of the above-mentioned oil for three days, one after the other, evenings and mornings. Also give your wife the same ... But when [she] is pregnant with the child, then give her once a day no more than three drops of the oil."
These children are considered to live forever and never get sick.
To give herself credibility as an alchemist when she enters the court of Duke Julius, she creates the fictional Count Carl von Oettingen. She claims he's the son of famous physician and alchemist Paracelsus, giving Count Carl a prestigious alchemical heritage.
According to her husband Heinrich:
" ... [Anna] also professed the Count could create a child with her every month, and if a child lay in its mother's body for six weeks or less, it was supposed to be finished and would be raised further by the Count with the tincture; and from such children would arise a new world."
The children would grow up faster than others, they were supposed to be female and not burdened with the flow ... and if the thing with Adam had not happened, they could well have lived forever, but now they will become as old as Methusalem and other patriarchs
Talk of Count Carl draws the attention of Duke Julius and Sömmering. Zieglerin tells people she learns everything she knows from Count Carl, and it's he who is performing many of the alchemic works.
Count Carl has apparently given her a powder to turn lead into gold. Anna Zieglerin and Count Carl are intended, according to her, to have many of the aforementioned Lion’s Blood children.
These children are all supposed to be girls, and like their mother would not menstruate. Zieglerin fully believes her story of the Count and continues to tell the tale of the mysterious man during her trial.
When Zieglerin, Sömmering and Schombach cannot provide the Duke with the Philosopher’s Stone, Duke Julius demands they repay the 2000 talers he's already given them. Sömmering flees, incriminating the others and leading to their arrest.
The three are put on trial in 1574 for "multiple crimes." These include murder of a courier, attempted poisoning of Duchess Hedwig and copying keys to the Duke’s chambers with intent to steal papers.
It's theorized their real crime is being unable to produce the Philosopher’s Stone, and their failed attempts at covering up the fact. Sömmering's reputation as a charlatan and fraud catches up to him. The three are tortured and all eventually confess to the crimes.
Sömmering and Schombach are both burned and flayed repeatedly with hot tongs, and then quartered alive. Zieglerin’s skin is pinched off, and she is burned alive while strapped to an iron stool.
Over a century ago A. Rhamm, the only historian to examine the trial and material in detail, mentions Anna in his 1883 book as a seductress. He claims her bizarre ideas lead her colleague Philipp astray:
"No less with her promises than with her affable personality, she managed to drag poor Philipp deeper and deeper into her net until he saw that he was caught in her strings and, too late, realized he was a con man who himself had been conned."
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