Gottfried Bessler, a little speculation.

Following up my previous post, I’ve received a couple of emails pointing out that Gottfried Bessler, Johann’s brother, might be another potential source of information about Bessler’s wheel.  It seems to me that he could have had some knowledge of the machine’s construction, if so, its possible that he could  have passed it onto his children at some point.

Bessler says he first obtained assistance from a relative called Bessler, who worked as an artist, organ maker and turner.  In Johann Bessler’s account of Christian Wagner’s unscheduled examination of the wheel, which happened when Bessler had fallen and injured his head, he says that Gottfried allowed Wagner and Borlach to view and test the wheel. It seems safe to assume that he was referring to Gottfried when he called him his relative, and on the occasion of Wagner's visit, the original German refers to his assistant as “mein Matz” which has numerous meanings, but the most likely is “my little brother/toddler/squirt” etc.  In other words, a term of affection.  We know therefore, that Gottfried was his assistant from the beginning.

To show the wheel to the visitors, Gottfried must have had access to the machine.  As Johann was unwell and confined to his bed, the only way his brother was able to show Wagner and Borlach the wheel turning, was if he borrowed a key to get into the room containing the wheel - or he customarily had access to it anyway.

It seems unlikely that Gottfried could have assisted Bessler for two or three years without learning somethings about the wheel.  So if Gottfried knew how the wheel worked he probably had to swear on oath never to reveal it, and we know Bessler often used oaths to secure silence.  I imagine he might have been overawed by Johann enough to obey him. He was some eight years younger than his brother, about twenty-two or so and probably, happy to oblige his far more charismatic older brother.

But it is possible that he passed on what knowledge he had to his children, perhaps after Johann died. Unfortunately I don’t know if he had any, but I have contacted my source to see if he has any relevant information, but a brief search of various lists on line does not seem to help identify which of the many Besslers is the right one, if any of them are.  it is fairly certain that the information is available, but it may take a while to find it.

We know that apart from a brief visit to London, he lived most of the remainder of his life with Johann and their parents in, at first Kassel, and subsequently in Carlshafen.

There is one small detail which might be completely innocent, or it might be a hint at something of interest to Øystein? At one point in Apologia Poetica, Bessler makes reference to his blue-apron’d assistant,  which we know referred to Gottfried.   I did some research into the use of the term during Bessler’s era and there are references to Free Masons and their use of aprons and in particular, blue ones.  I’m not saying this is conclusive, merely possibly suggestive of a link.  It may also refer to apprentices, which of course also links to Free Masons, but also to indentured apprenticeships.

Blue aprons in modern times are closely linked to chefs  who wear them while learning to cook, and it is difficult to eliminate that relation from the one we seek which was evident over 300 years ago.

JC

Johann Bessler's Family and his descendants?

Someone recently mentioned the possibility that there might be a living descendent of Bessler's who might have inherited some information about the wheel.  I'm not convinced that there is a chance that this might be possible, but I don't like to rule it out. So what follows is the only information I have to date on his parents, brother, wives and children. It may be that someone might be more familiar with ancestry research than I, and find the limited information below of use in their research.
 
Elias Bessler, (he assumed the other names Johann Ernst at a later date) was the son of the day-labourer Andreas Bessler, and his wife Maria, née  Maucke.  He was baptised in Zittau on 6^th May 1681; his parents having been married in Zittau on 11^th February 1680.   Customarily, baptism took place no more than three days after birth.

His brother, Gottfried, was baptised in Zittau on 26^th May 1688.  There were three other children who all died early or were still born.

Dr. Christian Schumann, the mayor and physician of Annaberg,was persuaded to ask  Bessler to heal his desperately ill daughter. The girl recovered and became Orffyreus’s wife.  Her name was Barbara Elisabeth Bessler née Schumann.  She died 10.05.1726 at the age of 40 from tuberculosis 

Bessler had four children with Barbara Schumann, they were;

1. Name unknown, died before 1726.

2. Maria Barbara Elisabeth, born 5.1.23, married George Conrad Gercke in 1735.  He was a widowed preacher.

3. Johanna Maria Christina, born 9.12.23, died 4.2.24 - aged just three weeks.

4. Carl Friedrich, born 6.10.25. His Godfather was the Landgrave, but he wasn't present at the baptizing. Died 5.5.26  aged seven months.

Infant mortality rate was high in those days regardless of class.  Karl and his wife Amelie, had
seventeen children, fourteen of whom lived long enough to have names, but only nine reached twenty years of age or more. 

 
On January 31st in 1731 Orffyreus married Catharina Elisabeth Krone (born in 1713)
They had five children only one of which survived to adulthood.as below

1. Johanna Magdalena Elisabeth, born 6.4.31

2. Johanna Wohlradina [very strange name] Sybilla, born 15.7.34, died 16.09.43

3. Catharina Conradina 30.10.37

4. Magdalena Catharina, 25.11.39

5 Margaretha Maria, 25.7.45, married Amtmann Kurtzbube in Fürstenberg.

Catharina Elisabeth Krone was the daughter of Castle blacksmith, Johann Adam Krone, who died 14.6.50 in the age of 76.

Besslers father, Andreas, died 19.6.27 in the age of 87, he lived with Bessler for his remailng years as did his mother, Maria.

His brother Gottfried, died 3.5.65 and was buried  in "Orffyreischen Begräbnishaus" (Bessler's crypt) 

'docfeelsgood', a well known and respected forum member of Besslerwheel forum, sadly no longer with us, was convinced that the court blacksmith, Adam Krone might have passed on the secret of the wheel's construction to his children because there is a letter in which, in return for his daugjhter's hand in marriage, Bessler would share everything about his wheel.  There is no evidence that he did so, but just in case there is such a possibility the only potential source might be Margaretha Maria, who married Amtmann Kurtzbube in Fürstenberg.  I do not know whether Adam krone had any other children, but that is also a possble avenue of research.

I think the following explains that 'Amtmann' is a title. ' 

The Amtmann was usually a member of the nobility or a cleric. In towns, he was also often a member of the wealthy classes amongst the citizenship. He resided in an Amthaus or Amtshaus and collected taxes from the district (Amtsbezirk), administered justice and maintained law and order with a small, armed unit.  [wikipedia]

Alternatively a search for any descendants of his first daughter’s marriage to George Conrad Gercke might be worth researching.

Good luck to anyone who wishes to take on this task, please share anything you discover even if it results in a dead end.

EDIT - Some additional informationhas come in from a similar post I made on BW forum.  'Helmholtz' posted the  following.

"1. There was another daughter called Dorothea Christina Sophie who married Emanuel Christian Wolff.
2. One of her sisters married Johann Georg Musi, Hofgeismar, who still lived in 1792.
3. Not Gottfried but his widow died in 1765 and was burried in Carlshaven. I think it would be more interesting if one could trace Gottfried, not Crone, because Gottfried was familiar to Bessler, not Crone.

It was one of Besslers "Privilegia" that he himself as well as his descendants & compagnons should be remitted from paying taxes. When Bessler impregnated Crone's 17-year-old daughter, it might have been a good compensation to call him a compagnon not to share any secrets (why should he?) but the exemption of taxes."


JC

Bessler’s Codes Exist - For What Reason Other Than FYI?

I’ll be away for few days from the weekend but if possible I’ll respond to any comments about things in this post.

I have often argued that I thought that Bessler’s use of various pieces of code such as the atbash cipher or Caesar shift which he used to obtain the name Orffyreus from Bessler, indicated an interest in codes.  He also mentioned that  he had learned about the ‘Book of Nature’, and ‘The Language of Angels’, which are well known allusions to historic writings of a secret nature. His actual use of Hebrew hyroglyphics in one of his books at least supports his claim to have been taught some Hebrew.  I have copies of his panagyrics to Karl which include numerous examples of his favourite obsession with chronograms, including some dated, 1519,1619, 1719, 1819, 1919 and 2019!

There are numerous occasions where he uses alphanumeric codes, easily proven, and also alphabetic substitution which again are not difficult to see.  He also inserts the the initial capital letter of his three enemies, Gartner, Wagner and Borlach on several occasions within a single sentence with the initial letter accentuated. Often the sentence is less than complimentary and is clearly a way of critising the gang of three without actually naming them. I mention these minor examples to show his familiarity and habitual use of such systems for secrecy in writing.

Although these are quite innocuous pieces of code, when comments such as ‘those who seek answers should study this little book’, (paraphrased from memory) are taken into account, one starts to think perhaps there are other pieces of code which may contain more important information.  I have barely scratched the surface of the huge amount of information embedded in these four books, so why is it that so many people dismiss the possible existence of precise instructions for building Bessler’s wheel?

I think it is because no-one has published anything which has been derived from a  deciphered piece of code which even looks as if it might refer to some mechanical design.  To me this is obviously part of Bessler's plan; get people interested in codes, simple ones first, and then hope that they will search out the harder ones and eventually get his full meaning.  But he didn't want this to happen to quickly, hence the difficulty of getting to the truth.

Another possible reason is that since no-one believed him anyway, despite all the evidence that he was telling the truth, those people with a particular competence of code breaking were probably convinced that the physics teachers were correct, and what Bessler proposed and exhibited was impossible.

So given the likelihood that he did intend to publish coded information about the construction of his wheel, that may be why he expended an inordinate amount of time publishing his ‘Orffyreus Declaration of Faith’, containing 141 bible references, some of which don’t exist in any known bible?  Why did he duplicate five of them?  Why did he use 55 verses in chapter 55? I could go on, but why not visit my web site and see what an astounding document within his Apologia Poetica this is? I think he used the passage above to describe in his own words the way his wheel worked to complement his drawings.   See my work on the Declaration of  Faith by Orffyreus at...

http://www.orffyreus.net/

And for more examples of Bessler’s use of codes see my website at....

www.theorffyreuscode.com

The amount of time he must have spent divising and implementing such secret writing must surely have had a purpose, other than to impress or confuse his readers.  What possible purpose could he have had other than the desire to convey secret information to his readers at some point in the future, a future that might not be reached until after he had passed away.

JC

Update for August 2018 - Are there some missing Clues?

I have been finding the occasional half hour or so to work on my Bessler-wheel and I am confident it will be finished some time in September or October.  I’m away for a week in September but I hope to finish it once I return from my brief holiday.

I'm assuming that this latest construction will work - and my test mechanisms does perform exactly as I planned.  There have been minor construction problems which had to be overcome along the way but so far I have dealt successfully with each one.  They are not serious setbacks, typically, a case of rearranging some pieces so they don’t collide with other parts of the same mechanism.

Despite the apparent difficulties in understanding the clues and interpreting them correctly the concept is not complicated and Bessler could have provided easier clues, but then his fear of someone interpreting them too soon, prevented him.  This raises an interesting question.  Did he ever expect anyone to decipher his clues in his lifetime?  One would assume not, in which case, why did he think someone would be able to do so after his death?  Was there some additional clue that he hoped would assist in deciphering his clues after his death.  I mention this because I have not found any evidence that anyone attempted to solve the clues during his life time.

I’m sure that, in the event that he failed to find a buyer for his secret, he intended to leave enough information available after his death to allow people to reconstruct his machine and give him the acknowledgement he so desperately needed.  He commented on that very point in his Apologia Poetica and said he'd be content with post humus acknowledgement if he failed to sell his secret. That document was published in 1715, only three years after his first claim to have built a working perpetual motion machine, so even then he was considering the possibility of no-sale and what he could do about it. 

One can imagine the frustration he suffered, thinking that he could sell his secret quickly and get on with his future plans but then discovering things were not as easy as he had thought.  After only three years he was considering his options, and yet he continued for another ten years at Kassel castle without a sale.  No wonder he was described as ill-tempered and unpleasant.

In my book I surmised that since he sought permission to build a grave or mausoleum in the garden of his house in Carlshafen, it might have contained a clue, but unfortunately the latest estimate is that the garden is now part of a car park in town, so probably the gravestones which might have held a useful clue, have long since been obliterated or lost.

There is the possibility that the Maschinen Tractate drawings which he destroyed were intended to reveal the secret after his death because they would be found in his effects.  But as he wrote, the arrest made him destroy them, because once he was incarcerated someone might have gained access to his possessions, or his wife might have sold them, and the secret would be worthless.

JC