Adam Weishaupt : biography
Johann Adam Weishaupt (6 February 1748 – 18 November 1830Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie .Engel, Leopold. Geschichte des Illuminaten-ordens. Berlin: H. Bermühler Verlag, 1906.van Dülmen, Richard. Der Geheimbund der Illuminaten. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1975.Stauffer, Vernon. New England and the Bavarian Illuminati. Columbia University, 1918.) was a German philosopher and founder of the Order of Illuminati, a secret society with origins in Bavaria.
References in pop culture
Adam Weishaupt is referred to repeatedly in The Illuminatus! Trilogy, written by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, as the founder of the Bavarian Illuminati and as an imposter who killed George Washington and took his place as the first president of the United States. Washington’s portrait on the U.S. one-dollar bill is said to actually be Weishaupt’s.
Another version of Adam Weishaupt appears in the extensive comic book novel Cerebus the Aardvark by Dave Sim, as a combination of Weishaupt and George Washington. He appears primarily in the Cerebus and Church & State I volumes. His motives are republican confederalizing of city-states in Estarcion (a pseudo-Europe) and the accumulation of capital unencumbered by government or church.
Weishaupt’s name is one of many references made to the Illuminati and other conspiracies in the 2000 PC game Deus Ex. During JC Denton’s escape from Versalife labs in Hong Kong, he recovers a virus engineered with the molecular structure in multiples of 17 and 23. Tracer Tong notes "1723… the birthdate of Adam Weishaupt" even though this reference is actually incorrect: Weishaupt was born in 1748.
Adam Weishaupt is also mentioned ("Bush got a ouija to talk to Adam Weishaupt") by the New York rapper Cage in El-P’s "Accidents Don’t Happen", the ninth track on his album Fantastic Damage (2002).
Activities in exile
He received the assistance of Duke Ernest II of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg (1745–1804), and lived in Gotha writing a series of works on illuminism, including A Complete History of the Persecutions of the Illuminati in Bavaria (1785), A Picture of Illuminism (1786), An Apology for the Illuminati (1786), and An Improved System of Illuminism (1787). Adam Weishaupt died in Gotha on 18 November 1830. He was survived by his second wife, Anna Maria (née Sausenhofer), and his children Nanette, Charlotte, Ernst, Karl, Eduard, and Alfred. Weishaupt was buried next to his son Wilhelm who preceded him in death in 1802.
After Weishaupt’s Order of the Illuminati was banned and its members dispersed, it left behind no enduring traces of an influence, not even on its own erstwhile members, who went on in the future to develop in quite different directions.Dr. Eberhard Weis in Die Weimarer Klassik und ihre Geheimbünde, edited by Professor Walter Müller-Seidel and Professor Wolfgang Riedel, Königshausen und Neumann, 2003, pp. 100-101
Notes
Early life
Adam Weishaupt was born on 6 February 1748 in IngolstadtEngel . in the Electorate of Bavaria. Weishaupt’s father Johann Georg Weishaupt (1717–1753) died when Adam was five years old. After his father’s death he came under the tutelage of his godfather Johann Adam Freiherr von IckstattAllgemeine Deutsche Biographie . who, like his father, was a professor of law at the University of Ingolstadt.Freninger, Franz Xaver, ed. Das Matrikelbuch der Universitaet Ingolstadt-Landshut-München. München: A. Eichleiter, 1872. 31. Ickstatt was a proponent of the philosophy of Christian Wolff and of the Enlightenment,Hartmann, Peter Claus. Bayerns Weg in die Gegenwart. Regensburg: Pustet, 1989. 262. Also, Bauerreiss, Romuald. Kirchengeschichte Bayerns. Vol. 7. St. Ottilien: EOS Verlag, 1970. 405. and he influenced the young Weishaupt with his rationalism. Weishaupt began his formal education at age seven at a Jesuit school. He later enrolled at the University of Ingolstadt and graduated in 1768Freninger 47. at age 20 with a doctorate of law.Engel . In 1772Freninger 32. he became a professor of law. The following year he married Afra SausenhoferEngel . of Eichstätt.
