Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...
– 1613, probably in
Hamburg
(male), (female) en, Hamburger(s),
Hamburgian(s)
, timezone1 = Central (CET)
, utc_offset1 = +1
, timezone1_DST = Central (CEST)
, utc_offset1_DST = +2
, postal ...
) was a German merchant,
alchemist
Alchemy (from Arabic: ''al-kīmiyā''; from Ancient Greek: χυμεία, ''khumeía'') is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscience, protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in Chinese alchemy, C ...
, mint worker, doctor, author, editor, and translator. He is particularly important as the author of , a work of
Paracelsian
Paracelsianism (also Paracelsism; German: ') was an early modern History of medicine, medical movement based on the theories and therapies of Paracelsus.
It developed in the second half of the 16th century, during the decades following Paracelsu ...
iatrochemistry which was published in many editions for well over a century.
Life
Conrad Khunrath was born around 1555 to the Leipzig merchant Sebastian Kunrat and his wife Anna. He had at least ten younger siblings, among them
Heinrich Khunrath
Heinrich Khunrath (c. 1560 – 9 September 1605), or Dr. Henricus Khunrath as he was also called, was a German physician, hermetic philosopher, and alchemist. Frances Yates considered him to be a link between the philosophy of John Dee and ...
, who became known as an alchemist in his own right. By 1562, Conrad, still a child, had enrolled at Leipzig University, though this seems to have been only ''pro forma''. In his youth, Conrad traveled around England where he learned the English language. He is known to have worked as a merchant from 1580; after the death of his father, Conrad also took over the cloth and vitriol trade. Subsequently, Khunrath expanded his professional activities into medical practice. His medications relied on
spagyric
Paracelsianism (also Paracelsism; German: ') was an early modern medical movement based on the theories and therapies of Paracelsus.
It developed in the second half of the 16th century, during the decades following Paracelsus' death in 1541, an ...
or alchemical processes he developed himself.
By 1594, Khurath resided in Schleswig. There he published the first edition of his magnum opus , as well as a number of ancillary works and later editions. From about 1606 Khunrath worked as coin controller for the mint in Hamburg, managing the upheavals of the
Kipper und Wipper
''Kipper und Wipper'' (german: Kipper- und Wipperzeit, literally "Tipper and See-saw time") was a financial crisis during the start of the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648).Volume 1, 1621Volume 1, 1623Volume 1, 1638Volume 2, 1638 )
* . Schleswig, 1596.
* . Schleswig, 1597.
* . Hamburg, 1600
Frankfurt, Leipzig, Halberstadt: Hynitzsch, 1680. Volume 1, 1860Volume 2, 1860 )
;As editor or translator
* . Schleswig, 1595.
* . Hamburg, 1605.
* . Hamburg, 1606.
Hamburg, 1607.