hours before my death. JGSchrepffer." He reportedly bid farewell to his youngest child and put his purse and gold watch in his wife's skirt. Schrepfer gave his companions the sealed farewell letters and asked them not read these before they would have returned to the city. One of the witnesses did declare that Schrepfer had wanted to tell them something on the way. According to legend, Schrepfer promised them an event like nothing they had ever seen before and probably would never witness again. Schrepfer disappeared from their sight for a moment, the sound of a gunshot was heard and Schröpfer was found dead. Some of the witnesses claimed he had magically disappeared or that only a necromantic ritual would be needed to resurrect him. Within half an hour after his death, Schrepfer's body was brought to the nearby hospital, where an autopsy was conducted. His remains were buried in silence on the hospital's burial ground for suicides on the same day. The apparent suicide has later often been described as the result of Schrepfer's supposed delusions about his necromantic abilities, possibly partly due to the drugs he may have vaporized at his séances and which he must have repeatedly inhaled himself. He would have been perpetually tormented by evil spirits rendering his life miserable, or either he would have been convinced that he could resurrect himself after shooting himself to death. There are several serious indications that Schrepfer was actually murdered or persuaded and helped to commit suicide. Important evidence for murder was found in the fact that the bullet went through the front of Schrepfer's mouth, as if the weapon was forced between his lips by another person and the victim resisted by pressing his jaws together. There were also some inexplicable conflicting aspects in the statements of the witnesses and there were many possible motives to why he would have been killed. It seems like the affair was covered up. Wurmb wrote a letter to Elector Friedrich August III, nephew of Karl von Sachsen, stating that juridical investigation was impossible without implicating the prince. No further investigation took place. Aftermath and legacy Several of Schrepfer's associates – including Wurmb, DuBosc, Hoffman and Von Bischoffswerder – managed to become leaders of Rosicrucian circles a few years later and some of them were among the founders of the new Mason lodge Balduin in Leipzig in 1776. Von Bisschofswerder later