German poet and alchemist. He became the publisher of the literary magazine »Die Freistatt«, for which wrote renowned authors, who, at the turn of the century, had made the Munich district of Schwabing famous. Among them were, to name but the most well known, Karl Wolfskehl, Ricarda Huch, Else Lasker-Schüler Frank Wedekind, Franz Blei, Rainer Maria Rilke, Paul Scheerbart, Stefan Zweig, Thomas Mann and Hermann Hesse, with whom von Bernus had friendly relationships over the years. Only 23 years old he went public with his own literary works and met immediate success. In 1912 he met Rudolf Steiner and a close friendship developed between both of them until Steiner's death. From 1916 to 1920 he published the magazine »Das Reich« (»The Realm«) for which Steiner was one of the most important contributors. Over the course of his life Alexander von Bernus published over twenty volumes of poetry, he wrote novellas, shadowplays, theatre plays, mystery plays, prose texts and an important work in the fields of alchemy and natural science: »Alchymie und Heilkunst« (»Alchemy and the Art of Healing«).
Beside his literary work von Bernus dedicated himself to research in alchemy and the natural sciences. In the year 1921 he founded his own alchemical-spagyrical laboratory, in which, in decades of concetrated work, he developed more than thirty healing substances. Bernus continued the ancient tradition of alchemy – which had more or less fallen into discontinuity after Paracelsus – in a practical way, hence returning to the natural sciences their spiritual dimension. With the very effective healing substances, which where the results of his work, he proved to the 20th century that there is more to alchemy than superstitions from the middle-ages
Alexander von Bernus' life and work tell of a rich personality, and a combination of many talents. He was both, a withdrawn, and in his spiritual beliefs often lonely poet and researcher and a public figure. He was a member of the PEN and of the Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung (Academy of Language and Poetry), and he was always in contact with other creative thinkers of his time.
He died 6 March 1965.
Link to Wikipedia biography (German)
