JOHANN KONRAD

DIPPEL (1673-1734)  , German theologian and alchemist, son of a Lutheran pastor, was born at the castle of Frankenstein, near Darmstadt, on the loth of August 1673 . He studied, theology at Giessen . After a short visit to Wittenb erf he went to Strassburg, where he lectured on alchemy and chiromancy, and occasionally preached . He gained considerable popularity, but was obliged after a time to quit the city, owing to his irregular manner of living . He had up to this time espoused the cause of the orthodox as against the pietists; but in his two first works, published under the name" Christianus Democritus," Orthodoxia Orthodoxorum (1697) and Papismus vapulans Protestanlium (1698), he assailed the fundamental positions of the Lutheran theology . He held that religion consisted not in dogma but exclusively in love and self-sacrifice . To avoid persecution he was compelled to wander from place to place in Germany, Holland, Denmark and Sweden . He took the degree of doctor of medicine at Leiden in 1711 . He discovered Prussian blue, and by the destructive distillation of bones prepared the evil-smelling product known .as Dippel's animal oil . He died near Berleburg on the 25th of April 1734 . An enlarged edition of Dippel's collected works was published at Berleburg in 1743 . See the biographies by J .

C . G .

Ackermann (Leipzig, 1781), H . V . Hoffmann (Darmstadt, 1783), K . Henning (1881) and W . Bender (Bonn, 1882) ; also a memoir by K . Bucher in the Historisches Taschenbuch for 1858 .