Anna Zieglerin and the Lion's Blood: Alchemy and End Times in Reformation Germany by Tara Nummedal (review)

Modern scholars are used to the image of a male alchemist—an enigmatic, knowledgeable figure, part magician and part scientist, be it John Dee, Cornelius Agrippa, or Paracelsus. Tara Nummedal's book focuses instead on an elusive figure of a woman-alchemist, Anna Ziegler or Zieglerin, who conducted her experiments at the court of Duke Julius of Brunswick-Liineburg in Wolfenbuttel. In this gripping book, Nummedal meticulously recreates the political and social world of sixteenth-century Saxony as well as the private world of Anna Zieglerin, a skillful storyteller and aspiring alchemist.

The tale of Anna is truly an unusual one. Even though Nummedal has argued in an earlier article that, contrary to popular perception, women-alchemists were not at all a rare occurrence and could be found at many courts in the sixteenth century,¹ it is safe to say that not many accounts of their art survived to this day. It is the numerous and detailed archival documents left after Anna's trial that make her case so exceptional.

Nummedal's book is divided into seven chapters. The first chapter is dedicated to the backstory of Anna Zieglerin, her husband Heinrich Schombach, and their friend, the alchemist Philipp Sommering. Before arriving at the court in Wolfenbuttel, they served at the court of Duke Johann Friedrich II in Gotha. Johann Friedrich's political discord with the Emperor was supported by a renegade knight, Grumbach, and the prophecies of an illiterate boy, Hanschen, who could supposedly converse with angels. Old grudges and false prophecies transformed their animosity into an armed confrontation, which ended in the execution of Grumbach and Hanschen and imprisonment of Johann Friedrich II. Although the trio of alchemists did not participate in Grumbach's plans, the dark shadow of Gotha loomed over them when they decided to move to Wolfenbuttel and marred their reputations. Chapters 2 and 3 describe political, social, and cultural life in Wolfenbuttel, which served as the residence of Duke Julius—a young Protestant ruler, working hard to prove his leadership qualities and develop his realm. At his court Anna, Heinrich, and Philipp would find countless opportunities for the application of their craft and—-just like Julius—would have to prove their wortḥ Chapters 4 and 5 shift the focus to Anna's own alchemical practice and theoretical work. Chapter 4 provides a careful analysis of the intellectual trends in alchemy and theology of the times and traces the sources of Anna's alchemical ideas, while the fifth chapter examines Anna's imaginative rethinking of the connections between one's physical body, the sacred history of Christianity (especially the Apocalypse), and alchemy. This chapter provides the readers with brief yet illuminating forays into contemporary theological debates, which help explain Anna's outrageous claims of becoming an alchemical and Protestant version of the Virgin Mary (123). Chapter 6 examines the demise of the alchemists and the political mechanisms behind their trials, while Chapter 7 expounds on the later transformations of and additions to the story of Anna's life. Nummedal's skillful and careful analysis of historical data and documents pertaining to the cases of Anna Zieglerin as well as her husband Heinrich and their colleague Philipp allow her to recreate the world of Duke Julius's court in minute detail and convey the allure of a courtier's life as well as its perils.

Anna's professional and private life becomes the focal point for several greater themes that defined sixteenth-century Germanic lands: the contested position of alchemy and its practitioners in the sixteenth century, the vulnerability and "porosity" of a nascent court, the precariousness of self-fashioning and the ambiguity of individual identities, the role of luck in one's ascension to power and status (or one's fall from...