BUHLE, JOHANN GOTTLIEB

Professor of Phnosophy in the University, of Güttingen, who, not being himself a Freemason, published, in 1804, a work entitled Ueber den Ursprung und die vornehmsten Schieksale des Ordens der Rosenkreuzer und Freimaurer, that is, On the Origin and the Principal Events of the Orders of Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry. This work, logical in its arguments, false in many of its statements, and confused in its arrangement, was attacked by Frederick Nicolai in a critical review of it in 1806, and is spoken of very slightingly even by De Quincey, himself no very warm admirer of the Masonic Institution, who published, in 1824, in the London Magazine (volume ix), a loose translation of it, “abstracted, re-arrenged, and improved,” under the title of Historicocritical Inquiry into the Origin of the Rosicrucians and the Freemasons. Buhle's theory was that Freemasonry was invented in the year 1629, by John Valentine Andreä. Buhlu was born at Brunswick in 1753, became Professor of Phnosophy at Güttingen in 1787, and, having afterward taught in his native city, died there in 1821.