Was Johann Bessler an Undiscovered Genius?

A recent casual comment about Johann Bessler got me thinking; was Bessler a genius?  My first thought was to dismiss the idea because there was no proof that he actually built the perpetual motion machine despite all the evidence in favour.  Then I began to consider the facts and I came to the conclusion that if he wasn't a true genius he came very close and once his machine is verified I think the world will acknowledge that he was one.

Information coming from a variety of sources is suggesting that Johann Bessler was much cleverer than the fact that he was the son of a day-labourer might suggest. It was customary to label such people as peasants, but such inherently negative designations obscure the fact that many of them achieved successful careers in the service of their rulers and many of Bessler’s contemporaries in particular were employed by the State.


Much of the credit for their success in obtaining worthwhile employment must go to their school teacher Christian Weise who is well-known for his remarkable output of plays, novels, political debate, poetry and music as well as his successful career as headmaster of Bessler’s school.  If we are to believe Bessler, Weise regarded Bessler as his most gifted pupil and took a personal interest in his future. Weise’s plan for his charges, most of whom came from the poorer families in the surrounding area, was to equip them with necessary educational tools to obtain careers with the court.  Despite Weise’s high recommendation Bessler was sidetracked into the search for the solution to perpetual motion, and he followed a tortuous path to eventual success.


Øystein has made some remarkable discoveries which seem to indicate that Bessler had studied a number of ancient philosophies including Free Masonry, Euclid’s Elements, the Rosicrucians, plus he spent a considerable time in Prague, in the company of a Catholic priest and a Rabbi - a lethal combination at the time. Prague was a hotbed of esoteric thinking and the home Jewish Kabbalah, the centre of occultism, but also the seat of the Holy Roman Empire.  Johann Bessler absorbed information about these beliefs and adapted them to his own use and opinion.  We know this because evidence of their presence in his writings and the methods he used to hide information are only now surfacing.

When you add to this the various trades he accomplished expertise in, even before he studied the craft of organ building and musical notation, he was something of a polymath!

According to Wikipedia polymath is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas; such a person is known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems. That describes Bessler perfectly.  Gottfried Leibniz, a strong supporter of Bessler’s claims is widely regarded as a polymath, as is commander R.R. Gould, original biographer of Johann Bessler and the man who studied and repaired John Harrison’s extraordinary timepieces which won him the British Board of Longitude prize for dividing a means of establishing a ship’s longitudinal position at sea. 


These men were hailed as polymaths and lauded by all, why not Bessler?  Because his claims were and still are, believed to be impossible according to the laws of physics, despite the evidence that supported those claims.


Recent discoveries I have made reveal the extent of Bessler’s ingenuity and I will describe all of his extraordinary work and how the clues provide the information to build his wheel as soon as I have completed the document which will simply explain the design.  I cannot over emphasise the sheer ingenuity of his mind and the games he played with those who seek to decipher his clues.  In my opinion Johann Bessler was an undiscovered genius and I hope to prove it in the next few months.


JC