Muckers

Muckers, the popular name of a sect which sprung up at Königsberg in 1835. The movement seems to have originated in the dualistic and theosophic views of John Henry Schönherr (1771-1826) concerning the origination of the universe by the combination of a spiritual and a sensual principle. The most notable of his followers were two clergymen, J. W. Ebel (1784-1861) and Diestel, both of whom were in 1839-42 degraded from their office. Hepworth Dixon (in his Spiritual Wires, 1868) pointed out the resemblance of the Mucker sect to the Agapemone (q.v.) and the Perfectionists (q.v.). In 1874, at Porto Alegre in Brazil, a band of German Muckers, under a prophetess, were nearly all killed in conflicts with the military.