Christian Knorr von Rosenroth

KNORR VON ROSENROTH, Christian. b. Alt-Raudten, Silesia (Stara Rudna, Poland), 15 July 1636; d. Großalbershof, near Sulzbach, Bavaria, 4 May 1689. The son of the pastor of Alt-Raudten, he was educated at the Latin School in Fraustadt, and later at Frankfurt-an-der-Oder and Stettin. After studying at the Universities of Leipzig and Wittenberg, where he did a dissertation on Roman coins, he travelled through the Netherlands, France, and England. Through meetings with an impoverished Armenian prince in Amsterdam and a chief rabbi in Frankfurt, he became interested in Oriental Languages; but these became only one part of his strangely varied intellectual life. He was a student of chemistry and...