FELGENHAUER, fel'gen-hau"er, PAUL: Theosophist and pantheistic mystic; b. at Putschwitz (district of Podersam, 45 m. w.n.w. of Prague), Bohemia, Nov. 16, 1593, old style; d. not before 1660. His father was a Lutheran minister of Putschwitz. He studied theology at Wittenberg and became deacon there in the Schlosskirche. Being obliged to leave Wittenberg soon afterward, he returned to Bohemia and circulated his remarkable views in writings, affirming in his Chronologie (1620) that the world was created 4,234 years before the birth of Christ, and that the end was immediately at hand. Persecutions of the Protestants compelled him to leave Bohemia. He was at Amsterdam in 1623, then is found in the vicinity of Bremen, again in Holland, and lastly at Hamburg as late as 1660. His manifold chiliastic and mystical tracts, wherein lie described the existing Church as an obdurate Babel, were eagerly read by people of the lower classes. Theologians more than once attacked his doctrines, particularly Georg Rost, court preacher of Güstrow, and the clergy of Hamburg, Bremen, Lübeck, and Lüneburg. He was imprisoned for a time by the authorities of Celle and Hanover. It is not known when or where he died. A partial list of his numerous writings is in Adelung, pp. 400 sqq.

CARL BERTHEAU.