VMs: Kircher correspondence hoax

[Rene Zandbergen <r_zandbergen@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear all,

in: 
> Re: VMs: Adreas Muller's hoax on Athanasius Kircher
I wrote:

> Once more, another nice book about Kircher is
> 'Il Mondo sotteraneo di Atanasio Kircher'
> by Anton Haakman (appeared in Italian and Dutch
> only), which also exposes Kircher's bluff. 
> It's a novel based on the true story of a modern
> hoax based on Kircher's letters. The names of
> the culprits have been changed. This activity
> may well have added to the protective attitude 
> of the Gregorian University w.r.t. the
> Kircher letters (in the past).

And I realise that it's probably worth explaining.

When I was trying to find out more about Kircher's
correspondence, I bumped into a set of references,
mostly articles by one John Fletcher (now deceased),
who seems to have been one of the few people who
had access to the full set of letters. There were
also hints of an upcoming publication of the corpus
of letters by one Olaf Hein. But there was 
absolutely no evidence that it had ever appeared.
He had founded the 'Internationale Athanasius Kircher
Forschungsgesellschaft e.V.' with seats in Wiesbaden
(Germany) and Rome, but this could also not be traced.
And I tried very hard, e.g. in the Hessische Landes-
biliothek in Darmstadt, and one should realise that
Wiesbaden is the capital of Hessen. 
I managed to find the addess of Hein and his 
Company via the publisher Harrassowitz (also
based in Wiesbaden), who published one of the 
books by Fletcher. I wrote him a letter and got
a nice reply, saying that his life's work (the
publication of the Kircher correspondence) had been
ruined by an unfortunate 'accident' at the printer's
office. End of story, so it seemed.

Then I also got acquainted with Michael John Gorman,
who _really_ was going to publish the Kircher
correspondence (which as we know happened a few
years ago). He told me a bit more about Hein,
and suggested I read the book by Haakman quoted 
above, to know what really happened. The gist
of the story is that Hein (plus one associate)
was just going to bind facsimiles of the letters
in expensive volumes and produce a few thousand
copies, which all major libraries in the world
would simply _have_ to buy. The price tag was
25 million DM for the lot. Hein made some 
expensive pamphlets, and some publicity videos.
He made fake letterheads abusing existing addresses
of Jesuit institutions in Rome, and called himself
'Commendatore'.
Haakman in his novel describes this venture in 
detail, but also talks about Kircher's own
bluff in translating hieroglyphics, and makes
a nice point about the parallel lives of
the two. For me, it was a fun personal experience
since I realised that Haakman had had the same
trouble of locating Hein as I had (in fact,
I was stunned to read that he also had found him
via Harrassowitz).

In the end, Hein really upset the Jesuits in Rome,
and was even sentenced to gaol because he was found
guilty of fraud (he had had to borrow money from
several banks and reused the same overrated
collateral for several loans). He managed to 
stay out of gaol because he had a note from his
doctor, saying that, due to health problems, he
would probably not be able to survive the 
conditions of imprisonment.

It's all quite incredible, isn't it?

The book is a must-read for anyone who is 
interested in Kircher.

Cheers, Rene

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