Will-Erich Peuckert's Pansophia

I don't suppose many English or American readers will have heard of Will-Erich Peuckert (1895-1969), but this German folklorist has written some of the most enchanting books on the history of magic. Many years ago I came across his Pansophie: Ein Versuch zur Geschichte der weissen und schwarzen Magie, and was instantly fascinated. Probably it had as much to do with Peuckert's unique writing style as with the contents: it gave the book a very peculiar atmosphere, which I still find almost impossible to define, but which caused me to recognize the book spontaneously as a Pilzbuch, a "mushroom book". Not only is it very very German, but although it's a difficult monograph about 15th and16th century magicians and mystics there is also something about it that, somehow, reminds you of a botanical collections of magical herbs or plants. I was not surprised at all to discover that Rolf Christian Zimmermann, in a long preface to one of Peuckert's books, calls him a collector at heart, and adds that he was in fact a very knowledgeable amateur botanist who could tell you the name of each and every plant, flower or weed.
Zimmermann also emphasizes that while Peuckert was a scholar of extreme erudition, all his work is somehow intensely personal, because he identified with his area of research to such an extent as to become almost inseparable from it. This is shown even in his strange habit of giving quotations (sometimes very long ones) without quotation marks, so that it's sometimes hard to be sure where Peuckert ends and Paracelsus begins. In 1935 Peuckert wrote a preface to Pansophie which shows how much he loved what he studied:

... I began this book with secret feelings of joy. ... I wrote it mostly for my students - as the history of our longing. As the history of a way of thinking that was right - like every way of thinking was once "right". ... I have devoted a good part of my work to the times that I have described here, and I do not regret it. I have seen what few others have seen; I have seen Faust and Luther and Weigel and Paracelsus and J. Boehme, the great movers of the German spirit; I have sat with astrologers, and have listened to alchemists for hours; I have been allowed to intuit magic as truth. I was allowed to grasp what I believed needed to be grasped; the way of research lay open before me, I was bound no more firmly than Paracelsus was bound in his magic. Only one star stood shining above my road, the star which determined his life: Alterius non sit, qui suus esse potest. I have been allowed to live beautiful years.
I want to be grateful to all the years. For these years, and for this road. It is the only one that fits us. Alterius non sit, qui suus esse potest.

"Let no one that can belong to himself, belong to another". These words are all the more touching if one realizes that they were written in 1935. Peuckert, who never compromised with Nazism, would soon be hit by a publication ban, and one of his books was burned in public. In 1945 he and his wife had to flee for their lives, and his unique library of ca. 35000 books was destroyed. After the war he lost his wife in a tragical accident, later lost his son as well (the Introduction to his book on astrology is dated "20 July 1960, the day I buried my son"), and toward the end of his life he could hardly read and could type only with his left index finger. In seems that those beautiful years were over for him, but across many decades we can still share in his love for a world that no longer exists.