Abraham von Franckenberg was born in 1593 into an old
Silesian noble family in Ludwigsdorf bei
Oels. He attended the Gymnasium in
Brieg and the University of
Leipzig and looked set to become a lawyer; however, he abandoned his studies in 1617 and was drawn to more
ascetic and
mystical ideas. By 1622, he was familiar with the works of
Jakob Böhme, and he met the mystic in person the following year. Franckenberg would continue to revere Böhme even after the latter's death in 1624, and was a friend to several of Böhme's other followers, such as the
Liegnitz physician
Balthasar Walther. He inherited the family estate in Ludwigsdorf in 1623, but passed it on to his brother Balthasar in exchange for the right to keep a few small rooms in the family home. He lived a very reclusive life and rarely ventured forth from this room – only in 1634 to attend to those suffering from plague, and in 1640 to challenge the rhetoric of Georg Seidel, a
Lutheran preacher from Oels whom Franckenberg regarded as intolerant. Tired of this and other confrontations, and mindful of the fact that events of the
Thirty Years' War were moving in the direction of Silesia, Franckenberg moved to
Danzig via
Breslau in 1641, where he lodged until 1649 with the astronomer
Johannes Hevelius, who introduced him to
Copernican astronomy. He spent the winter of 1642-43 in Holland, where he had several works by Böhme published. He returned home to Ludwigsdorf in 1649 and, the following year, met
Daniel Czepko. He was to read Czepko's
Monodisticha in 1652 and wrote two dedicatory poems for it. Around the same time, he met and began to influence
Angelus Silesius. He died on 25 June 1652 and is buried in Oels; his gravestone is covered with as yet undeciphered mystical symbols. == Works ==