Johann Christoph von Wöllner

Johann Christoph von Wöllner (19 May 1732 in Döberitz, Margraviate of Brandenburg – 10 September 1800 in Grossriez near Beeskow) was a Prussian pastor and politician under King Frederick William II. He was inclined to mysticism and joined the Freemasons and the Order of the Golden and Rosy Cross.

Biography Wöllner was born in 1732 in Döberitz. His father was a pastor. A few months before Frederick II's death, Wöllner wrote to his friend the Rosicrucian Johann Rudolph von Bischoffswerder (1741–1803) that his highest ambition was to be placed at the head of the religious department of the state as an unworthy instrument in the hand of Ormesus (the prince of Prussia's Rosicrucian name) "for the purpose of saving millions of souls from perdition and bringing back the whole country to the faith of Jesus Christ."

Despite this statement, king Frederick William II of Prussia, with Christoph von Wöllner as Minister of Justice and head of the Office for the Worship, instituted the Königliche Examinations-Commission in geistlichen Sachen with the declared public purpose of managing and controlling any religious or spiritual activity in all the nation, and of applying the relative decree of 9 July 1788. The commission had also the legal power of confiscation on money and properties.

Among the most famous victims of this censorship, Immanuel Kant, with his 1793 first published script, titled Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason. The theologian Karl Friedrich Bahrdt saw himself forced to lay down his magisterium because of the new regulations.