Jakob Böhme

Jakob Böhme
Jakob Böhme (anonymous portrait)
Born(1575-04-24)24 April 1575
Died17 November 1624(1624-11-17) (aged 49)
Other namesJacob Boehme, Jacob Behmen
(English spellings)
Philosophical work
EraEarly modern philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
SchoolChristian mysticism
Notable ideasBoehmian theosophy
The mystical being of the deity as the Ungrund ("unground", the ground without a ground)

Jakob Böhme (/ˈbmə, ˈb-/; German: [ˈbøːmə]; 24 April 1575 – 17 November 1624) was a German philosopher, Christian mystic, and Lutheran Protestant theologian. He was considered an original thinker by many of his contemporaries within the Lutheran tradition, and his first book, commonly known as Aurora, caused a great scandal. In contemporary English, his name may be spelled Jacob Boehme (retaining the older German spelling); in seventeenth-century England it was also spelled Behmen, approximating the contemporary English pronunciation of the German Böhme.

Böhme had a profound influence on later philosophical movements such as German idealism and German Romanticism. Hegel described Böhme as "the first German philosopher".