Wilhelm Matthiessen (1891-1966)

In the second volume of his Versuch einer Kritik der Echtheit der Paracelsischen Schriften (1898) Karl Sudhoff had described in detail the unpublished manuscripts of Paracelsus's theological writings. Thus Sudhoff was aware of the importance and influence of the theological writings for the understanding of Paracelsus. Originally he wanted to publish them parallel to his edition of the natural philosophical and medical writings. As an assistant to this project, Sudhoff hoped to win Wilhelm Matthießen (1891-1966), a young religion scholar, who had submitted a PhD thesis on Paracelsus as a theologian.

In 1923 Matthießen succeeded in publishing a first volume of Paracelsus' theological work with writings on the Vita Beata. The book must have been written under great time pressure, because it contains a number of serious mistakes such as omitting lines and even a whole page of the manuscript text. For unknown reasons this remained the only volume of a planned edition series and Matthiessen was never mentioned by Sudhoff again.

Subsequently Matthiessen became a widely read children's book author. During the Nazi period, however, he caught attention with a number of tendentious anti-Semitic books.