# Muckers > Mediated Wiki article. Canonical URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/Muckers > Markdown URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/Muckers.md > Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muckers > Source revision: 1283694323 > License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) For other uses, see [Mucker (disambiguation)](/source/Mucker_(disambiguation)). **Muckers** ([German:](/source/German_language) *Muckern*, i.e. canting bigots, hypocrites) is the nickname given to the followers of the teaching of [Johann Heinrich Schönherr](/source/Johann_Heinrich_Sch%C3%B6nherr) (1770–1826) and [Johann Wilhelm Ebel](/source/Johann_Wilhelm_Ebel) (1784–1861).[1] The word originates in the [Middle German](/source/Middle_Low_German) word *muckern*, which was used also to denote the clearing of stalls and stables. In some areas of Germany, the word was spelled *muggeln.* [2] ## History Schönherr, the son of a non-commissioned officer at [Memel](/source/Klaip%C4%97da) in [Prussia](/source/Prussia), was educated at the [university of Königsberg](/source/University_of_K%C3%B6nigsberg), where at that time the theological faculty, under the influence of [Kantian](/source/Immanuel_Kant) [idealism](/source/Idealism), was strongly [rationalist](/source/Rationalist) in tendency. The lad, who was miserably poor, was dissatisfied with a [philosophy](/source/Philosophy) which stopped short of an explanation of the "[thing in itself](/source/Noumenon)",[1] and, having been reared in the strictest [Lutheran orthodoxy](/source/Lutheran_orthodoxy), set to work to develop, with the aid of the [Bible](/source/Bible), a philosophy of his own. In the end he believed himself to have reached ultimate knowledge, and became the [prophet](/source/Prophet) of a dualistic [theosophy](/source/Theosophy_(Boehmian)) so closely analogous to [Gnosticism](/source/Gnosticism) that it might have been taken for a deliberate revival, had not Schönherr's lack of study in such theology precluded any such idea.[1] Among his converts was Ebel, who from 1810 onwards gained a great reputation in Königsberg as an earnest preacher of the orthodox doctrines of "[sin](/source/Sin), [grace](/source/Divine_grace) and redemption, and in 1816 was appointed "[archdeacon](/source/Archdeacon)," i.e. principal pastor, at the [Altstadt Church](/source/Altstadt_Church) in Königsberg. In the pulpit he was orthodox; but he gathered about him a select circle of the initiated, to whom in private he taught Schönherr's doctrines. Schönherr himself sank into the background, and eventually died in 1826. But Ebel continued his teaching, and was joined in 1827 by [Heinrich Diestel](/source/Heinrich_Diestel), also a [Lutheran](/source/Lutheran) pastor of Königsberg. They became [father confessors](/source/Father_confessor) to a wide circle of fashionable people in the Prussian capital. In view of their peculiar teaching as to "the purification of the flesh," which involved the minute regulation of the intercourse of married people, scandal was inevitable. Matters came to a head in 1835, when [Count Finckenstein](/source/Finck_von_Finckenstein), himself formerly an initiate, denounced the two pastors and accused them of immorality.[3] Diestel wrote two tirades against the count, who brought a successful action for [slander](/source/Slander). The group itself was dissolved in 1839. The evidence taken in the case was then laid before the [old-Prussian](/source/Prussian_Union_of_churches) Königsberg [consistory](/source/Consistory_(Protestantism)), and proceedings followed which became famous as the Königsberger *Religionsprozess* (1835–1841), ending in sentences of deprivation on both Ebel and Diestel. The charges of actual immorality were dismissed; but there is no doubt that some of their followers established practices akin to those of the [Agapemone](/source/Agapemone) and the [Perfectionists](/source/Perfectionism_(psychology)). Some of them migrated to [Brazil](/source/Brazil), where in 1874 at [Porto Alegre](/source/Porto_Alegre) a company of them came into collision with the military (see [Revolt of the Muckers](/source/Revolt_of_the_Muckers)).[4] ## Popular culture In Brazil the Muckers are remembered in popular culture. For example in 1993, when there were number of murders near [São Leopoldo](/source/S%C3%A3o_Leopoldo); the local newspaper *Zero Hora* ran a headline "Violence is Resurrected in the Land of the Muckers".[5] In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, two films were made in Brazil about [Jacobina Mentz Maurer](/source/Jacobina_Mentz_Maurer), one of the leaders of the Muckers Brazilian rebellion. The better known of the two films was made by [Fábio Barreto](/source/F%C3%A1bio_Barreto) in 2002 and is called *[A Paixão de Jacobina](/source/A_Paix%C3%A3o_de_Jacobina)* (*Jacobina's Passion*).[5] ## Notes 1. Chisholm 1911, p. 954. 1. *Deutsches Worterbuch von Jakob und Wilhelm Grimm* [Mucken](http://woerterbuchnetz.de/DWB/?sigle=DWB&mode=Vernetzung&lemid=GM07779#XGM07779), Trier Center for Digital Humanities / Kompetenzzentrum für elektronische Erschließungs- und Publikationsverfahren in den Geisteswissenschaften an der Universität Trier, Accessed 14 July 2015. 1. Chisholm 1911, pp. 954–955. 1. Chisholm 1911, p. 955. 1. Lesser 2013, p. 52. ## References - Lesser, Jeffrey (2013). ["Muckers"](https://books.google.com/books?id=HJW029DYOZoC&pg=PA50). *Immigration, Ethnicity, and National Identity in Brazil, 1808 to the Present*. New Approaches to the Americas. illustrated ed. Cambridge University Press. pp. 50–52. ISBN 9780521193627. **Attribution** - Endnotes: - Mombert, J. I. (1882). *Faith Victorious*. London. - Dixon, Hepworth (1868). *Spiritual Wives* - Tschackert, Paul (1906). "article on Schönherr". *Realencyklopädie*. Vol. xvii. 3rd. ed. Herzog-Hauck (ed.). Leipzig. p. 676. ## Further reading - Adam, Thomas (ed.) (2005). ["Muckers"](https://books.google.com/books?id=8uxfTF4Lm-kC&pg=PA783). *Germany and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History : a Multidisciplinary Encyclopedia*. Transatlantic relations series. ABC-CLIO. pp. 783–784. ISBN 9781851096282. - Bethell, Leslie (ed.) (1985). [*Brazil: Empire and Republic, 1822-1930*](https://books.google.com/books?id=MphAUFjzUuMC&pg=PA170). Vol. 3. Volume 5 of Cambridge History of Latin America. reprint, illustrated ed. Cambridge University Press. pp. 170–171. ISBN 9780521368377. - Gross, Ernie (1990). *This Day in Religion*. New York: Neil-Schuman Publishers. ISBN 1-55570-045-4. --- Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Muckers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muckers) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muckers?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.