mheu, Historical Museum of the Urban Environment

Michael Maier

The alchemist Michael Maier was born at the end of the 16th century in the north of what is now Germany. After attaining a doctorate in medicine at Rostock, he became personal physician and private secretary to Rudolf II, grandson of Charles V, living in Prague. Maier benefited from the interest of the prince and later his successor in the occult sciences and alchemy. During his lifetime he published some twenty books on alchemy, some of them highly poetic and illustrated with magnificent engravings. The most well known, translated and republished many times, is his Atalanta Fugiens, an alchemical emblem book, first published in 1618.