The Architect Read Free

“is that his actual portfolio of finished buildings is, um, somewhat limited due to his, um, political beliefs.”
    “Ah, then we cannot waste any more time on this nonsense,” Nesler cried in a sharp voice.
    “Mr. Nesler,” Dr. Enheim said, “I understand that you consider yourself to be the voice of reason in this assembly. But I fear you are forgetting one of the principal tenets of the Society. We are open to all. Surely if this Nachtman were to be interested in, were to be willing to submit a proposal, we should condescend to consider it. We must follow our own divine impulses and not let our egos impede us on the path to knowledge.”

II.
     
    Dr. Maxwell Körn had been born the son of a the German composer Arthur Carl Körn, better known as Hans Johann, a figure virtually unknown today but who, in the 1840s, had a brief celebrity for his work Salmoneus , a series of linked sonatas for arpeggione and piano. Little is known of his mother, though Körn himself stated her to be an extremely pious woman who, while in church, was often taken with fits of trembling. She died while he was still young, of an overdose of strychnine which had been prescribed by a homeopathic physician.
    Possessed of piercing black eyes and a mane of chestnut coloured hair, young Körn had an intensity about him that few failed to notice. When he entered a room all eyes turned to him. Even those who disliked him admired him, and those who liked him loved him.
    He studied under Professor Brockhaus at the University of Leipzig, and also under Schelling; was highly interested in comparative mythology and is said during this period to have been heavily influenced by the Philokalia , particularly those portions written by Saint Gregory Palamas. Undoubtedly these early Christian writers provided him with inspiration and set a foundation upon which the mighty fort of his philosophy would later be built.
    Through unhappy speculation pertaining to the Ottoman Empire, his father went bankrupt and was unable to support his son. The latter took up the life of a poor student, maintaining himself by translating, giving lessons in Hebrew and Greek, and writing newspaper articles.
    At the age of twenty-one, out of necessity, he published a short novel titled Die Toten Augen von Mars , which dealt with themes of spiritualism and romance, describing a visionary journey made by a young couple around the solar system and talked of the spiritual inhabitants of other planets. It was an immediate success, particularly amongst society women, launching young Körn, giving him entrance into fashionable Thursday evenings and opening the doors of the better clubs for gentlemen.
    For the next few years he lived the life of a bon vivant, became passionately fond of gambling and developed a taste for fine horseflesh. He wore a coat with a thick fur collar and bought himself a number of rare paintings by Altdorfer. He visited houses of prostitution, fought duels, kept mistresses, and spent greatly beyond his means, so that he was soon deeply in debt, was forced to hide himself. It is said that at times he went about disguised as a woman, at times resorted to wearing a false beard.
    No longer was he seen at the fashionable soirees or in his box at the opera. For most it seemed as if he had disappeared completely, gone up in a puff of smoke or been taken up on a gust of wind like a djinn. Unceremoniously, without pomp and to the muffled drumbeat of rumour, a veiled period of his life was inaugurated. Some say he worked for the Prussian secret service, others that he smuggled diamonds, while a few averred that he had become involved in the slave trade.
    According to his own accounts, he was studying under a master in Amsterdam, whom he was, for spiritual reasons, unable to name but who was a direct descendent of Paracelsus. After receiving certain occult initiations pertaining to the Order of the Hermetic Brotherhood from this gentleman, he left Europe, travelled in India,