Justinus Kerner

After attending the classical schools of Ludwigsburg and Maulbronn, he was apprenticed in a cloth factory, but, in 1804, owing to the good services of Professor Karl Philipp Conz, was able to enter the University of Tübingen.

In addition to his literary productions, Kerner wrote some popular medical books, dealing with animal magnetism, the first treatise on sebacic acid and botulism, Das Fettgift oder die Fettsäure und ihre Wirkung auf den tierischen Organismus (1822), and a description of Wildbad and its healing waters, Das Wildbad im Königreich Württemberg (1813).

[1] He also gave a vivid account of his youthful years in Bilderbuch aus meiner Knabenzeit (1859) and, in Die Bestürmung der württembergischen Stadt Weinsberg im Jahre 1525 (1820), showed considerable skill in historical narrative.

He was buried beside his wife, who had died in 1854, in the graveyard of Weinsberg, and the grave is marked by a stone slab with an inscription he himself had chosen: Friederike Kerner und ihr Justinus.

Die Seherin von Prevorst and its tale about Kerner's relationship with Friederike Hauffe — the latter reputed to have visionary and healing powers, and who had produced a strange 'inner' language containing Hebrew-like elements — made quite an impression among the members of the Harmony Society in 1829, who saw it as confirmation of the approaching millennium and of their religious views.