The Necromancy of Joann Georg Schrepfer

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. We are
officially into Halloween episode. We sure are, I mean, if
it were up to me, like we say, we don't.

(00:22):
We don't keep any other um history calendar like Black
History Month. We don't really heed that too much because
we like to cover that kind of history all year round.
I feel the same about Halloween. We should just be
doing spooky things about bats and ghosts at every every
turn we possibly can. But now it is officially October

(00:43):
in Halloween time. I know not everyone wants Halloween all
the time like I do. UM. The person we're talking
about today, Johann George strip For, is a little bit tricky.
He's kind of a slippery snake in the historical record,
and like some of our other Halloween episodes, uh, the one,
we're not quite as fast to historical record because they

(01:07):
kind of don't exist, and the ones that do exist
have been purposely clouded by Johan and his followers and
his detractors. Everyone kind of told a different version of
stories involving him, and thus confusion. UM. One thing I'll
also mentioned we went with the spelling of Schrepford as

(01:29):
sc h r e p f e R. You will
also see it in lieu of that first e and
oh with an umlund over it. Just if you're going
looking for more information now, you might want to do
two searches to give the results for both of those.
UM guided that this morning looking for artwork, uh to
go on our social media, and still the best I

(01:51):
could do was artwork of a person who was inspired
by him, and not anything directly related to him. Yeah,
it's he's like I said, he's difficult to pin down.
There are also some um works of art that we're
done about him that are clearly fanciful, right, Like they're
like someone imagining what it was like to be at

(02:14):
one of his spiritual events. UM. The other thing I
want to say, even though this is for me a
jolly time of Halloween talk, Um, this one is one
of those episodes and I feel like we have had
to make this particular heads up so many times that
I should apologize lately. Uh. This is another episode where
we do discuss um death by suicide, So I want

(02:35):
to make sure if that's not for somebody that they
know to to hop right out of this one. Uh,
and it it comes up a good bit towards the end,
So I know that. But yes, uh, this is gonna
be some necromancy, some Charlatanism and some weirdness and some
people who don't want to believe that anything spiritual could

(02:59):
be disproved. Right. Yeah, So, as Holly just alluded to,
what we know about Johann George Schrepfer's origins is actually
pretty slim on details. He is believed to have been
born in Nuremberg in seventeen thirty eight, although sometimes you'll
see sources claim seventeen thirty nine. He didn't really receive

(03:23):
a formal education and was often described as having coarse behavior,
so it's generally believed that he grew up poor. We
really don't know anything about his parents, though he said
to have had siblings who he was not close to.
Shrepp for himself was known to also tell wildly differing
versions of his origins, and this was also true of

(03:46):
his eventual followers. It's just not possible to feel confident
about really any of it, even when you're looking at
articles written by historical scholars. The details are so different
and cases that I'm like, well, I can't go to
Germany and dig through the records, and I don't speak German,

(04:08):
so that wouldn't help anyway. So I'm just gonna have
to point out where there's disparity. At some point, Johan
is said to have started working as a cooper, although
that doesn't seem to be something he did for long.
It's also not something that comes up in every version
of his story. The Seven Years War started in seventeen
fifty six, although you will sometimes see that extended to

(04:30):
seventeen fifty four, as the French and Indian War began
that year, and it's one of the many conflicts that
overlap in this larger conflict. Additionally, sometimes the start is
given uh much earlier, on a much longer timeline of
being more than twenty years long, because it's origin points
involve other conflicts even before that. So as a crash course,

(04:51):
and we're doing this just to give you a sense
of what was going on in the world when Schrepfur
was alive. Here are the basic basics of the Seven
Years War, which had all of Europe's major power bases
involved Prussia and Great Britain, got into a fight with
France and Austria, and the Austrian Habsburgs were trying to
regain Silesia. All of this is tied into the War

(05:15):
of the Austrian Succession, which started in seventeen forty. It's
one of the reasons that the length of the Seven
Years War gets a little stretchy. But this war was
also pretty amieble like in its geographical spread. In North America.
Most of the conflict was based on this tug of
war between England and France regarding each of their claims

(05:37):
on territory and their trade potential. It also reached into
India and West Africa and the Caribbean, and if you
remember our episode on the Black Hole of Calcutta, that
was part of the Seven Years War as well. This
whole thing has been called the First World War on occasion,
most notably by Sir Winston Churchill, and that is probably

(05:59):
how it felt from a European perspective. For sure, all
of the countries involved were weakened financially by the whole
war effort, and they all lost a lot of men,
not just to the conflict but to disease, and that
of course would have been true of the civilian population
as well, especially the disease spread through the warfare. It

(06:20):
is unsurprising that in the wake of a massive and
lengthy conflict like this, there was a sort of sense
in Europe that the world had changed, but there wasn't
really a clear vision of what it had changed into
or what the future was going to look like. And
as a consequence, people were unsettled and seeking refuge or
guidance in the ideas of philosophy and religion and mysticism,

(06:43):
and Johann George Shreffer found a path in that uncertainty
to gaining his own power and wealth, although ultimately that
path would lead him to an early death. Shreft first
served in the Prussian Army during the Seven Years War,
though in seventeen sixty one he appeared in like Szig
and he lived and worked there from then on, so

(07:03):
it doesn't seem like he stayed in the military all
the way until the war ended later in the seventeen sixties.
In August of seventeen sixty one, he became a citizen
of Leipzig and started operating a wine tavern in the city.
Just a month later, he married a tailor's daughter from
Leipzig named Johanna Katerina Hair and then after several years

(07:23):
in the business, Johan left his first tavern. He started
running a coffee shop in the center of town called Vice.
Later's coffee were shopped and that was at the corner
of cluster Gas and Barfuscassen. If you look at that
intersection today you can see it's still pretty much right
at the center of Leipzig. That business wasn't when that

(07:44):
shrep first started from scratch. It had already been in operation.
It was well known when he took it over in
seventeen sixty nine that would become the epicenter of his
mystical demonstrations. At some point in his life, Schrepfer became
involved in free masonry, and as we've covered on the
show before, freemasonry grew out of Stonemason guilds of the

(08:05):
Middle Ages and then expanded to include members outside of
that vocation. Freemason groups, which were organized into lodges, were
spread throughout Europe and became numerous enough that they started
to organize in groups of lodges under Grand lodges. The
first of those Grand lodges was founded in seventeen seventeen
in England, and because of the widespread nature of the lodges,

(08:28):
some of them began to incorporate different symbolism and rituals
into their philosophies and meetings. There's really some debate about
whether Strepper really became a member of the Freemasons or
if you may have just been part of a group
in Nuremberg, but at the time he was showing interest
in the group in Leipzig. There were two primary branching

(08:50):
ideologies within Freemasonry. One was what's often called the Scottish
Lodge or the Templar Lodge, and that was considered the
group of rict observance. They sought to attain a full
understanding of the world and spiritual matters, was often referred
to as highest knowledge, and they were doing that through research.

(09:11):
And then the other was a group that was more
aligned with Rosicrucianism. This branch sought knowledge and understanding through
means that we might describe today as metaphysical or even paranormal,
and this could include everything from practicing magic to contacting
the spirit realm. Streppord was a lot more interested in
the more mystical ideology. Yeah, this is a very simplified

(09:34):
version of all of the things going on in freemasonry.
I feel like that's one of those topics that every
time it comes up we have to caveat that, like
partially because it was a secret society and it still exists,
but much more secretive at this point. There are a
lot of mock nations of it that are we only
know through various accounts that again contradict each other. Right,

(09:56):
Like that whole Templar thing, there's some that believe that
the Knights of tem Plar could somehow be contacted through
through various means and like regain power and um, there
was a lot going on. There's also the idea that
there were rose agrusions that joined the Freemasons to kind
of plant those more mystical seeds and like start this division.

(10:19):
I did not dig into all of that, just know
that there's a lot of stuff like that going on
in the backdrop of this story. At this point, though,
the main lodge of Leipzig, which was called Minerva zoom Zircle,
which is Minerva to the Circle in English. Um, and
Minerva was in the strict observance camp, which Shrubber found frustrating,

(10:40):
and he came to the conclusion that such a limited
approach to gaining knowledge of spiritual matters was a corruption
of the goals of Freemasonry, and that Minerva Lodge was
inherently unprincipled. So he started his own lodge out of
the coffee house, and the member roster of his lodge
actually grew pretty rapidly because, in breaking from the mainstream Freemasons,

(11:02):
Shrepford took in members who had been denied entry into Minerva.
He also admitted women into his lodge, which was absolutely
forbidden by Freemasonry at the time. That's a whole other
complicated issue. Uh. And because he was quite charismatic, Shrepfer
also managed to lure away members of the Minerval Lodge
who had been in good standing but also felt like

(11:24):
they weren't learning everything they could. He also publicly spoke
out against the Minerval Lodge. He claimed that his new
group was closer to the ideals of Freemasonry, and he
went so far as to write and distribute a pamphlet
about freemasonry. He distributed that all over the town. This
was considered a really aggressive thing to do because in

(11:46):
that pamphlet he disclosed detailed information about the Minerval Lodge
initiation rituals. These were considered Freemason secrets. He also accused
the Leipsig Lodge of taking money from members as part
of promoting them to higher levels of masonry, and of
lying to new members by promising them more knowledge and

(12:07):
enlightenment than they could actually deliver. I had to say
he was sort of a genius of a smear campaign, right,
Like he knew exactly how to position this whole thing
to be, Like, they are exploiting your desire for knowledge.
I will show you knowledge, and I'm not corrupt like them. Uh.
That smear campaign was not well received, but Shrefford continued

(12:33):
to escalate his accusations until he had gotten so aggressive
about it he was finally arrested for disorderly conduct over it.
He was also sentenced to what is listed in the
historical record as two hundred are sprugle if you speak German.
I hope I did not offend you with that, because
that translates in the kindest terms two lashes on the behind.

(12:57):
The literal translation that I got when running it through
an internet translator was a little less appropriate for an
all ages show for a clean rated podcast. Yeah. So,
in addition to that physical punishment, he also had to
sign a document that acknowledged his crime and its consequences

(13:18):
to be punished in the papers of the town. And
while presses did indeed run that document with shrepford signature,
he claimed that the signature was forged and that he
had never been punished. He continued to say publicly that
the freemasonry of the Minerva Lodge was illegitimate. But though
many thought he was being a nuisance and a pain

(13:40):
in the neck, he was able to acquire a letter
from the Grand Master of Freemasonry in Germany that validated
him as a freemason. Not only did this give validation
to his sort of separate branch order, but it also
meant that he could go to the Manerval Lodge if
he wanted to, even as he continued to speak out
against it. And yes, it is absolutely valid to wonder

(14:03):
if that document was legit. Coming up, we'll talk about
the nature of the meetings that shrep Fer's coffee house. First,
we will pause for a quick sponsor break. We mentioned

(14:24):
Johann Schrepfer's Coffee House Lodge and its policy to admit
people that Minerva Lodge would not. That doesn't mean that
it was open to anyone. Prospective members had to pass
a screening, which was conducted by Schrepfer himself. And this
is where we really have to start discussing what the
Coffee House Lodge was actually doing at its meetings and initiations.

(14:45):
We mentioned already that Schrepfer was interested in the more
mystical approach to attaining higher knowledge. So Johan's leadership of
these meetings at the coffee House quickly turned into demonstrations
of necromancy. For a quick point of clarification here, a
lot of times in modern pop culture storytelling, necromancy is

(15:08):
associated with things like reanimating the dead, But the real
definition of necromancy is conjuring spirits of the dead, are
communicating with the dead, often as a divination tool or
in a wider sense, using magic or sorcery. So when
we say Schrepfer was engaging in necromancy, that's what we're
talking about, the sense of conjuring spirits, not reanimating the dead. No,

(15:32):
this is not a zombie story. I apologize if you
were hoping from these conjurings have been called performances and
Shrepfer is usually described as a Charlottean, but his ability
to convince people who attended these meetings that they were
in the presence of other worldly spirits was pretty impressive.

(15:52):
In these ritual Schrepfer would show his followers either what
he called numatis or pneumatic necromancy, which he straight up
just called directly to spirits, or as an alternate elementary
or elementary necromancy, in which he used light to bring
forth spirits. Accounts of these ceremonies described seeing apparitions that

(16:15):
were clear as day to everybody present, although they had
a vapor like quality because Shepford would call up spirits
from other time periods. Their clothing was described as having
been appropriately period. Although how many of the people giving
these accounts were experts on historical clothing. That's certainly worth wondering.

(16:35):
I know, I'll see something in a movie and be like,
that looks great and it is super wrong. All you
need to do to know how not correct people have
various time period clothing is do a search for Victorian
dress on the Internet and you'll get a million Edwardian
things Like this isn't necessarily like a big important problem.

(16:56):
Let's you're doing it. I'm just saying it's worth questioning
the account of correct period dress in these spirits. Right. So,
attendees also marveled at seeing spirits in various emotional states,
including just obvious distress. Shrepfer put his conjured spirits into
three categories, which were good, medium, and damned. I don't

(17:22):
know why that scale tickles me, cracks me up, like
you're good, you're damned, Medium, like like is that partially damned?
I don't know what I feel like this inspired the
good place. I think you're not far off. It's a
similar approach. So these ceremonies began late at night, usually midnight,

(17:44):
and as the methodologies of set up are examined, things,
of course start to seem pretty suspicious. So, for one,
Shrepford would insist that no one could stand up from
the table where they were seated during these That was,
according to Johann, because they would be in sere is
danger if they did, and he could not control the
spirits if humans were up and moving around. One way

(18:07):
Stretford convinced people that he truly was conjuring the spirits
of the dead was by bringing spectral versions of famous
people to the seance table that includes prior podcast subject
Johann Friedrich Struancy and his friend Intervaled Brent, who were
executed in seventeen seventy two for manipulating King Christian the

(18:27):
seventh of Denmark by exploiting his mental instability. The trial
and execution had been widely reported throughout Europe, and so
this would have been a really thrilling and sensational duo
to appear in spectral form at these seances. Not only
did they appear to shred first followers, they also did
so while holding their decapitated heads. That would be um,

(18:50):
That would be a wower, very dramatic. Yes, Shrepford did
not keep these ceremonies confined just to his coffee house.
He actually traveled with them. He performed several such necromancy
rituals in Dresden in seventeen seventy three and seventy four,
and in some instances when he was doing these, he
would do tricks like send a spirit away on an

(19:11):
errand far away and then have them return with some
sort of evidence of their projection elsewhere, like a note
that was signed by someone known to be in another
town or city, to show his command of the spirit world.
Shrepfor once conjured a spirit that appeared to the gather
people surrounded by flames and pleading for the necromancer Shrepfor

(19:32):
to torture him no more. In that particular instance, Johan
said that it had been too dangerous a trick and
that he would never repeat it. He also would not
take requests. A person attending one of his ceremonies couldn't
in the course of the ceremony asked for a specific
person to be brought forth from the afterlife. Who was

(19:53):
called was generally entirely up to Shrepfor, and he would
also perform magic, sometimes out in the open of the countryside,
allegedly causing storms to run in or to cause stars
to shift their brightness. When a ritual or ceremony was over,
Shpford used familiar religious symbols and tools to wrap things up.

(20:13):
He brought out a crucifix that he said helped keep
attendants safe. He would bless the people who were present.
He would also use holy water, although whether this water
truly had been blessed is not known. He also used
these things to bring himself down from the experience. He
was said to have had to fight off demonic energies

(20:34):
as he performed his rituals, and the crucifix, he told
his followers was a way to help keep himself as
well as them safe. He made it clear that he
could be killed by this very dangerous work. I feel
like he's such a great showman. Uh and Johan's interviews
with potential new members. Remember we were talking about who

(20:55):
he let in was right in line theatrically with the
secret meetings. So these encounters with potential members would begin
pretty benignly with a little bit of chat. He would
ask the person about their thoughts on spirituality in the afterlife,
and he would claim then that the integrity of the
applicant was reflected in glasses of water which he had

(21:16):
had set out on the table between them. So he
would pick up the water and examine it, and if
it was cloudy when he looked at it, or it
tasted odd, he would proclaim that the person's intentions were
not genuine and they should not be admitted. But if
the water was clear and tasted correct to Shrepfor, they
were accepted and initiated because they were trustworthy. This whole

(21:38):
system was of course devised by Shrepfor It's not as
though you could point to any written ancient text and
see this weird water ritual, so no one could ever
claim that he had executed this examination incorrectly. As his
group of followers grew, Shrepfort made another bold move in
mid seventeen seventy four. He staged a coup at the

(22:01):
Minerva Lodge. He literally went into a meeting with a
pistol and forced the lodge master out at gunpoint, and
then appointed himself as the new master. And this worked.
We have talked about Shrepford drawing a lot of followers
while also courting legal trouble for harassing the Freemason Lodge
of Leipzig, But one of the things we have not

(22:24):
talked about a whole lot is his critics, and he
had a lot. This is not a case where modern
eyes can really look at what he was doing in
the seventeen sixties and seventeen seventies and say, oh, clearly
he was in Charlottan and people then were fools. You
can't have any sort of superiority about that because people
at the time we're saying that, and he was deeply controversial,

(22:45):
as you might imagine as someone who walks into a
private meeting with a weapon and takes over would be
and launching a public campaign of criticism against the existing
Minerva Freemason Lodge and then creating his own group of followers.
Shepherd had also established his own faction of defenders. By
the time he took over the Freemason Lodge, his followers

(23:07):
were ready to go up against any detractors. It's often
played out in writing and the papers of the day
as doubters sent spies to his ceremonies and seances to
try to get proof that this whole thing was a fraud.
There were accounts from some planted attendees that they recognized
some of the ghosts as people they knew and their
everyday lives. In one instance, a doubter quietly locked the

(23:32):
door to the ceremony room as he entered, which resulted
in the spirits not being able to get in. Yeah,
that was like a clear hey, you know why you
can't conjure spirits because I locked the door, dude. Um.
But his believers were absolutely not having this when even
when they were confronted with these cases where people had

(23:53):
obviously thwarted Schrepfer's performances, his believers dug in. They were
into hiredly certain that they had seen the veil between
the physical world and the spirit realm fall, and that
Schrepfer had caused it and was orchestrating these amazing things.
And the thing was, no one was able to come
up with a solid idea regarding how exactly he had

(24:15):
accomplished some of the things that they had seen. Even
the skeptics were a little troubled by this. We're going
to circle back to this in a moment. One very
common theory that's often discussed in all of this, particularly
in the case of Schrepfer's hardcore believers, is that he
was manipulating their state of mind in various ways. Often

(24:35):
the descriptions of the pre seance rituals involved things like fasting.
Then the attendees were given some refreshments, which Schrepfer provided.
One item that comes up repeatedly in stands out as
kind of odd is salad. But there was it was
also punched. There was a whole lot of punch. So

(24:57):
it's entirely possible that people who had eaten for a while,
we're then put into a very dark room and given
something intoxicating, they would probably buy into some things that
might not pass scrutiny in the light of day with
a clear head. They were not drinking a bunch of
punch on a mostly empty stomach. Listen, if I don't

(25:20):
eat enough protein on a regular basis, I see spirits.
I mean coming up, We're going to talk about the
claims that started to unravel shrep first public persona, and
we will get to all of that after we hear
from the sponsors. To keep stuff you missed in history
class going in sevent shrep Fer claimed that he was

(25:50):
a French nobleman and that his name was Baron stein
von Steinbach. When he visited Dresden to perform at court,
he was not appearing as himself. He had basically taken
on this other persona. This lie caught up to him
pretty quickly when a French envoy to Saxony heard of
the alleged French noble with connections to the spirit realm
and asked shrepp for for documentation of his French lineage.

(26:13):
This obviously fell apart, but Schrepfer is said to have
performed quite a thrilling and terrifying seance even after his
unmasking by all of this, but though he had supporters there,
he also had a lot of people that wanted him gone,
and this whole like pretending to be someone he wasn't
had not helped matters, so he soon left, dresseden and

(26:35):
went back to Leipzig. Throughout all of this, and even
when money was tight for a lot of people in
Saxony and Leipzig specifically, Shrepfer always seemed to be doing
okay financially. Most of his money at this point seems
to have been coming from high ranking believers who were
loaning him money with the understanding that he was using

(26:55):
it to further his work of achieving an understanding of
the highest knowledge and that he was going to share
that knowledge with them. There also appears to have been
a promise that he was using his clairvoyant abilities to
solve the financial problems of the region, but the debts
and the false promises were quickly outpacing his ability to

(27:16):
live up to them. Yeah, it's unclear if that weird
choice to pretend to be a French noble might have
been part of an effort in a money making scheme.
We don't really know, but on the night of October seventh,
seventeen seventy four, Shrepford is said to have performed a
seance at his coffee house, and his ritual had been
so powerful as to bring several spirits to the group.

(27:40):
So many spirits and in such strong manifestations, it was
said that Shrepfer suggested that instead of closing the normal way,
that everyone present leave and just allow the spirits to
disperse on their own. There are also accounts that he
had a dinner with some of his closest friends that night,
but some time after midnight, Johan suggested they all go

(28:02):
for a walk, and he told those that were with
him that they were going to be part of another
significant happening and indicated that it was singular and unusual,
like basically, we're going to go into the woods and
I'm going to show you something very special. They went
to a forest known as the Rosenthal and shrep Fur
peeled off from the group. Shortly thereafter, a shot was
heard and Shrepfer was found dead, apparently of suicide. Most

(28:27):
of the accounts of the people who were with Johan
in the forest that night indicated that he was, as
we just stated, dead when they found him, but there
were a few people who claimed he was not dead
but injured, and that he had vanished before them as
though he was crossing through the veil that he had
so frequently skirted, as he had in these seances. For

(28:50):
some there were hopes that the death was part of
what would be Shrepfer's greatest performance of necromancy, that he
would raise his own spirit from the beyond on. Surely
that would prove the depth of his enlightened knowledge. But
the evidence that Shrepford left behind was void of any
mystical promise. Quite the contrary, he had written letters to

(29:12):
his closest friends telling them that he intended to end
his life. He had also told his wife this. He
left behind a heavy parcel. It said it contained, he claimed,
the secrets he wanted his followers to know. So imagine
holding such a box full of possibility, and then the
disappointment of opening it to find underclothes and rocks there

(29:36):
was nothing in there. Now, this is another point where
we find two very different versions of this story specifically
related to this package of rocks and underclothes, although no
one seems to have any variation on the fact that
it contained those items and nothing mystical, But in one
version that parcel is opened before Shrepford's death, and that

(29:57):
is the moment at which he realized he had been
revealed to fraud and had no way out. We should
note too that though his death was ruled a suicide,
there have been from the moment it happens, people who
ardently believed that someone else was involved, and either that
he was murdered or that he was forced to take
his own life. Even after his death, Johann George Schrepfer

(30:20):
was an issue of debate. In seventeen seventy five, so
just a year after he died, theologian Christian August Crucius
wrote an opinion article about Schrepfer and his work, in
which he cited an account by an observer who remained anonymous.
He was basically saying, I talked to a person who
said this. Chrusis main concern was not even whether the

(30:41):
necromancer was the real deal or not. It was the
fact that he had blasphemously combined Catholic and Pagan rituals,
something Crutius saw as a harbinger of the Antichrist's coming.
But that publication was itself criticized as being extremist and
alarmist and lacking in real critical thinking. As discussion of

(31:01):
Schrepfer's work and Crusius's take on it continued, there emerged
a fairly popular take, particularly among intellectuals, that one Shrepford
had been a charlatan, and two his believers were people
who were gullible or people who were just playing desperate
to find a little hope, or in the case of Freemasons,
were people who fully expected some sort of enlightening and

(31:25):
mystical phenomena to be shown to them, because that was
kind of the promise. One of the great German words
that I came across while reading about this whole debate
among scholars and theologians was hocus pocus strika, which is
hocus pocus pranks. I love that word to some degree.
Shred Fer's brief blaze as a mystical leader, remember this

(31:46):
only happened over the course of a couple of years,
had kind of opened the door to discussing the idea
of magic and mysticism among intellectuals in a way that
was current and had real world implications. While no historians
would agree that Shepford was not actually conjuring spirits, there
is some debate about whether he might have thought that

(32:08):
he was. Some of his personal writing does, according to historians,
seem to suggest that he was trying to truly devise
a magical system that explained ways to connect with the
spirit realm. Yeah, there are some theories that like, even
though he was staging things, he saw those any actors

(32:29):
or tools he was using as kind of like ways
that he was helping to manifest things that he may
have believed. I don't know that I buy into that,
but it's an interesting way to look at it. Uh.
There are two artifacts associated with Shrepford that are part
of the collection of the Museum natural in Cabinet Waldenburg.
Through these items we get a little more information about

(32:53):
exactly how Shrepford convinced people that he had brought forth
spirits with his rituals we mentioned earlier in the epoch,
so that even skeptics had difficulty figuring out how Strepford
might be achieving some of the visual effects that they
saw in his seance performances. And the connection between that
mystery and these objects is through one of shred first friends,

(33:15):
Johann Heinrich Linked. The younger Link had a father with
the exact same name, and sometimes even in places you
would think would get it right. It's the elder Link
that shrep Fir's name is connected to. That's impossible though.
Johann Heinrich Link, the Elder died in seventeen thirty four
before Sherepford was even born. Link the Younger, like his father,

(33:37):
was a pharmacist. That's part of the problem with those
two getting confused. There is also another Johan Link that
spells his name slightly differently, that also worked in naturalism
and botany. They all three get very, very very mixed
up in the historical record. But Link the Younger that
we're talking about today was a member of the Minerva Lodge,
and Link is said to have met Schrepfer because Shrepford

(33:59):
needed the help of a pharmacist to prepare the various
things that he gave his followers in preparation for ceremonies.
But it turned out that Link was also a hobbyist
in the area of things like optics, and that is
how we discover two devices that were listed in Link's
personal catalog as having been used in spiritual demonstrations that

(34:21):
he staged with Schrepfer in the garden of his house.
The first of these objects as a magic lantern. This
is a sort of proto slide projector, consisting of a
metal box with a slit in it. The user would
insert a small painted glass plate into that slit. With
a light source inside the box a candle. An image

(34:42):
would be projected through a simple lens, and there was
also a small chimney shaped attachment to the tops of
the hot air from the candle could escape. The other
item in the museum collection associated with Strepfer and Link
working together is a geyster costom or ghost box. This
is a variation on lantern of magica. It's made to

(35:03):
look like a miniature coffin. It's very cool. Um. So
these two items pretty clearly point out that they are
using focus focus. Uh. There were though, people who theorized
that something like these objects was being used in shrep
Fers gathering. Uh, it just had never been proven. And

(35:24):
in that back and forth about morality and gullibility that
we talked about playing out in the press in the
years following Shrepfer's death, writer Frederick Nikolai had gotten pretty
close to describing this illusion, writing quote, as for me,
I think the whole thing is an artificial scam. If
the other circumstances agree, then I would have the suspicion

(35:45):
that a magic lantern was primarily used there. The following
circumstances also strengthened my suspicion of a magic lantern. The
spirits seemed to move without moving their feet, only as
if floating. By moving the image in the magic lantern,
one can let the operation float away, but not in
part any particular movement to the feet. For the same reason,

(36:08):
the spirits must have carried their arms and hands on
their chests. They also appear in different light. The faces
of the spirits looked like formed haze, which can even
be accomplished by means of smoke. The two mirrors in
which he often used to look give further reason for
this suspicion. These objects have given shep for an interesting

(36:31):
legacy that's outside of any of his mystical claims or controversies.
He's often cited as an inspiration for the phantasmagoria hard
theater trend that started in Europe and the decades after
his death. Talked about that trend on the show before
some promoters even advertised their shows as being shrep foresque

(36:53):
and it is an illustration of one of those that
will be on our social media, uh when we post
about this episode. Yes, yeah, Shreffer is a weird one.
It's very interesting to me because he is one where
if you do any reading on him, and there isn't
a lot in English language, most of it is in German.

(37:14):
But it's almost as though every person who has ever
written about him takes a very different approach to it
and focuses on like a different aspect of his short
but very fascinating life. Um. Like, some will focus a
lot on that claim that he was a French noble
and that he was using that. Some will focus more

(37:35):
on like the idea of him as a necromancer. Others
will focus more on him kind of waging this war
with freemasons. But they're all kind of happening simultaneously in
a very very just over the course of a couple
of years. So uh, it's a fascinating thing to try
to pull apart such a brief period of time of
one person that is kind of jam packed with so
much weirdness. Um. I have a couple of pieces of

(37:59):
listener male. The first one is from our listener Katherine,
who writes about Henry the Eight's armor. Sure, it's high.
I enjoyed hearing about the field of Cloth of Gold
in today's episode. I had never heard of it before.
When you mentioned Henry's armor, it made me think of
this video I saw years ago. A man in typical
Nights armor races through an obstacle course against a firefighter

(38:19):
and soldier wearing first light and then full gear armor.
It's surprising how nimble all of them are while wearing
such cumbersome outfits. Uh, and then attaches a picture of
her kitty who thinks nothing is better than completely messing
up the table cloth, unless it's maybe playing with an
ice cube. That cat is real cute and it looks
very autumnal. So I'm very very happy. Uh, Katie, thank

(38:42):
you so much for this one. I had mentioned in
that episode on field of Cloth of Gold or behind
the scenes, I don't remember which, that there is a
a museum video. I think I listed it in the
show notes for the main episode that you can go
see where someone has put on like that, that very
very articulated armor of his and they're showing just how

(39:04):
much movement it had. So I wanted to mention that
because it is fascinating. Yeah, I watched that video when
we got that email, and uh I had I don't
remember how many minutes long it was, but I was like,
what a nice little break to start my day watching
this uh um. And I am still talking about butterfly
so uh but this is one of such joy and discovery.

(39:28):
Several people have written to us to mention that, yes,
absolutely still happening, kids visiting uh monarch um, you know
science setups. I do want to mention because our listener
Anna wrote or Anna, I'm not sure which way she
pronounces it, that she gave a shout out to the

(39:49):
Detroit Zoo, which has apparently a permanent uh and excellent
butterfly exhibits. So if you're in that area, check that
one out. But my other listener mail is actually from
our listener Christine, who it's hello. I am so happy
to finally have something to share with you at the
perfect time. A couple of weeks ago, I was traveling
in Quebec and stopped at this roadside hotel. I was

(40:09):
walking my pup along the parking lot not far from
the highway and saw something yellow and black in the milkweed.
With a wasp allergy in the family, I am always
attuned to yellow and black bugs, but as I look closer,
my heart skipped a beat. I have known for years
that milkweed is important to monarch butterflies, but I have
never seen monarch caterpillars in real life, let alone at

(40:30):
a roadside hotel. There were four that I could see,
and I didn't look very hard. Check out the photos attached.
I've also attached to photo of what I think is
a cartoon, but you mentioned they don't tend to do
that on the milkweed. After a long long drive, seeing
these beauties completely brought me peace. I'm also sharing photos
from our travels of Dexter. My beagle puppy, who will
be one in mid September, says, by the way, did

(40:53):
you ever have T shirts made for people who have
listened to the entire stuff you missed in history class catalog?
I still have about two D fifty to go, but
I feel the will be an achievement I will be
very proud of the answer to that question is yes.
It's on our T public site and it says I
have my PhD in s y um. I think HC.

(41:13):
I literally am liked. Am I getting these letters out
of order because I will do it to and I'm
not looking directly at it. Um, but she shared her
beautiful pictures of monarchs. It's not completely unheard of for
them to put I don't think um one of their
cocoons on milkweed. It's just not as common as as
other things. But we have to talk about this beagle

(41:34):
puppy because Dexter is extraordinary. Beagles are very much beloved
in the fry household. That is my husband's favorite, favorite
kind of dog. He grew up with a beagle mix
that he absolutely adored named Digby. Um. So this dog
is weaponized, cute, It's the cutest thing on the planet
and dangerous because beagles are smart and they will take

(41:55):
your credit card and buy things, is what I think
in my head. Um, they won't. Really, Dexter's an angel,
I have no doubt. But Christine, thank you because that
is such a joyous little discovery moment and I love
the idea that people are are out looking for butterflies
more than ever now. Uh, if you would like to
share any such moments of discovery or information, you can

(42:17):
do that. It's easy as pie. You can just write
to us at History Podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
You can also find us on social media as Missed
in History pretty much everywhere, and you can subscribe to
the podcast on the iHeart radio app or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. Stuff you Missed in History

(42:38):
Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more
podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart radio app,
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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Necromancy of Joann Georg Schrepfer