of Hofkammer President Sinzendorf. Becher then subsequently helped create a Kunst- und Werkhaus in which foreign masters trained non-guild artisans in the production of finished goods. By 1672 he had promoted the construction of a wool factory in Linz. Four years later he established a textile workhouse for vagabonds in the Boemian town of Tabor that eventually employed 186 spinners under his own directorship. Some of Becher’s projects met with limited success. In time Linz’s new wool factory even became one of the largest and most important in Europe. Yet most of the government initiatives ended in failure. The Commerce Commission was doomed by Sinzendorf’s corruption and indifference. The Tabor workhouse nearly collapsed after just five years owing to the lack of government funding, and was then destroyed two years later during the Turkish invasion. The Oriental Company was fatally handicapped by a combination of poor management, government export prohibitions against Turkey, the opposition of Ottoman (principally Greek) merchants, and ultimately by the outbreak of war. The Kunst- und Werkhaus also folded during the 1680s, partly because of the regime’s unwillingness to import a significant number of foreign, Protestant teachers and skilled workers. Chemist and alchemist William Cullen considered Becher as a chemist of first importance and Physica Subterranea as the most considerable of Bechers writings. Bill Bryson, in his A Short History of Nearly Everything, notes: Chemistry as an earnest and respectable science is often said to date from 1661, when Robert Boyle of Oxford published The Sceptical Chymist — the first work to distinguish between chemists and alchemists — but it was a slow and often erratic transition. Into the eighteenth century scholars could feel oddly comfortable in both camps — like the German Johann Becher, who produced sober and unexceptionable work on mineralogy called Physica Subterranea, but who also was certain that, given the right materials, he could make himself invisible. References Sources Further reading Anthony Endres, Neoclassical Microeconomic Theory: the founding Austrian version (London: Routledge Press, 1997). Erik Grimmer-Solem, The Rise of Historical Economics and Social Reform in Germany 1864-1894 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). External links Johann Joachim Becher-Preises Engines of our Ingenuity: Johann Joachim Becker at uh.edu 1635 births 1682 deaths German alchemists 17th-century German chemists 17th-century German physicians 17th-century alchemists German scholars People from Speyer Academic staff of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz 17th-century German male writers Cameralists