This Christmas, NewScientist presents a palaeontological pantomime – a scientific spectacular set in southern Germany. Ourtale may be short on giants, ugly sisters and fairy godmothers but it does have heroes, villains and miraculous stones. The strange-but-true story takes place in Franconia, a land of lakes and mountains ruled by a wise and scholarly prince. Our hero is the prince’s doctor Johann Beringer, a most innocent and worthy man. The villains are a mean mathematician and a green-eyed librarian. The dastardly duo set a trap for Johann, luring him towards destruction with the help of wondrous stones that promise fame, fortune and scientific glory. Will Johann discoverthe plot? Or will he lose it? Take your seats for a festive fantasia of fraud, fossils and foolery.
Act one
The scene opens with Johann Beringer, chief physician to the Prince-Bishop of Würzburg and Duke of Franconia, gazing into his cabinet of curiosities. Among its treasures are crystals, ammonites and all manner of peculiar petrifactions. But in 1725, when our story begins, the good doctor has tired of his collection. Shark’s teeth and ammonites are ten a pfennig. Yet fossils are the talk of the time. What are they? How did they get to be there? What do they mean? Johann’s dearest wish is to find something so remarkable his name will go down in history.
In another part of Würzburg, two men are hatching a plot. Ignatz Roderick is professor of geography, algebra and analysis at the university. His fellow conspirator, Georg von Eckhart, is privy councillor and librarian to the duke’s court and the university. Envious of Beringer’s influence with the duke, they have a brilliant plan to make a fool of him.
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Act two
It is the end of May 1725. A young man knocks at Dr Beringer’s door. For some time, Beringer has hired some lads to hunt for fossils on Mount Eivelstadt, a rugged, rock-strewn hill outside the city. They have found plenty of ammonites and what look like petrified sea creatures, but nothing out of the ordinary. As Beringer unwraps this latest offering, his heart misses a beat. These stones are incredible. Two bear the recognisable forms of worms, sinuous figures crawling atop a bed of smooth stone yet a part of it. A third bears the figure of the sun, its brilliant rays shining forth. Beringer is entranced. His dream is coming true. The trap is sprung.
Intrigued by the “figured stones”, or iconoliths, as he calls them, Beringer sets his diggers to work in earnest. They are three lads – 17-year-old Christian Zänger, 18-year-old Niklaus Hehn and his younger brother Valentin. They dig all over Mount Eivelstadt and by November Beringer has 2000 marvellous stones. They bear the forms of birds and bees, butterflies and ants, snails and worms and lizards. There are plants, some with perfect flowers. Most remarkable are the frogs in the act of mating, spiders sitting on their webs, insects feeding at flowers, even birds with their eggs clustered beside them. Not all the forms are earthly. There are comets with fiery tails, miniature moons and suns (some with faces). And there are letters spelling out the name of God.
“He has noticed a few scratches and gouges in the stone but puts them down to a slip of the divine chisel”
Beringer knows he has something special. These are not like other fossils. They are entirely one with the stone – the same colour, texture and hardness. Other features puzzle him: the tops of the stones are highly polished and the figures neatly fill the whole surface, almost as if they were the work of a meticulous sculptor. None of the plants or animals looks the least bit squashed. Indeed, he says, “there is no slightest indication of any violence, but only splendid grace and elegance all over”. He has noticed a few scratches and gouges in the stone, but puts them down to a slip of the divine chisel. Surely these are testament to the majesty of God the creator? He will tell the world about them by writing a book.
Act three
Some months later. Eckhart is panicking. The plot has worked all too well. Beringer didn’t just fall into the trap, he jumped feet first, a willing victim of the deception. In a secret workshop Roderick has been carving lumps of limestone, adorning them with an amusing assortment of figures, birds still fleshy and feathered, flowers with every petal in place, assemblages of creatures that would never be found together, copying them from books in Eckhart’s library. It is hard work and he has had to rope in some helpers – including young Zänger, who polishes stones and plants them on the mountain for the Hehn brothers to find.
But if Beringer publishes his book, the game will be up. It will make him such a laughing stock, questions are bound to be asked. The plotters will almost certainly be exposed and then who will look worse, them or him? They must make him see sense.
Hoping to escape detection, the pair start a rumour. The stones are the work of a hoaxer! The doctor will have none of it: he dismisses the rumours as the work of a jealous rival out to discredit him, and ignores them.
Act four
Christmas approaches. The book is written. Lithographiae Wirceburgensis presents the stones in all their glory. Beringer can’t explain them but rules out some popular theories of fossil formation. He has read about the Spermatick Principle, which suggests the airborne “seeds” of marine creatures are sometimes trapped in rocky fissures and grow there. But Mount Eivelstadt is too far from the sea. Besides, how would this explain birds and lizards, let alone comets and Hebrew script? Could the stones have been deposited by the Great Flood? No – nothing so delicate as a spider’s web or flower could have survived such turbulent waters. Besides, theologians put Noah’s flood in May. “How then did the diluvial tempest miraculously deposit on the shores of Franconia a ripe and integral apricot, complete with pit, meat and skin, and a mature acorn appended to a small branch?”
Nor is he convinced by “light fabrication”, an idea proposed by a friend who suggested that images of natural and heavenly bodies are somehow projected onto rock and captured there. This would explain the Hebrew writing – there was a Jewish cemetery nearby – but Beringer can’t really see that any of these ideas explain his stones. One thing he is sure of: humans had no part in their making.
A new year. The book is printed. The hoaxers are horrified. They hadn’t intended things to go this far. Trouble isn’t long in coming. The prince-bishop finally convinces Beringer he’s been a little foolish. What wicked person has done this evil deed, cries Beringer, as he rushes off to buy up any unsold copies of his book.
Act five
In April 1726, the Cathedral Chapter of Würzburg starts a judicial inquiry into the affair. What do the diggers know? The Hehn brothers declare they have never done anything to any stones but brush off a bit of dirt. They say they were threatened by Roderick, who demanded they confess their guilt. They told him he was a liar, they said, for if they could make such stones, why would they be diggers?
Zänger is not so innocent. Yes, he took stones to Beringer. Some of them he polished himself. Some he left on the hill for the Hehn brothers to uncover. And was there any chance the court could get Roderick to stump up the money he owed?
Justice is swift and harsh. Roderick is banished from the realm. Eckhart is sacked and barred from the state archives, preventing him from finishing his own life’s work, a history of Franconia. Beringer abandons fossil collecting to spend more time with his patients. He hopes people will soon forget his foolishness. They don’t. For almost three centuries his name is linked to one of the most notorious hoaxes of all time.
But now our story’s almost done. Enter palaeontologist Paul Taylor of London’s Natural History Museum. To modern eyes the stones are ludicrous and obviously fakes, he says. But back then it wasn’t so easy to tell. “People didn’t understand the origin of fossils so the limits to what could be fossilised were much wider.” And while the figures look like childish drawings to us, many are strikingly similar to illustrations in books of the time. “He was a complete fool in many respects, but it’s impossible to put yourself back into his mind and understand just why he was so taken in.” And, besides, Johann got his wish: he hasn’t been forgotten.
