Der Name der Unsterblichkeit

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This essay analyzes the various meanings and functions of Athanasius Kircher’s Christian name in seventeenth-century representations of his religious and scientific persona. While the young Leibniz – like other admirers – considered the given name’s etymology as a good omen which promised Kircher’s immortality in the Republic of Letters, in Kircher’s own eyes his name committed him to the heritage of the late antique church father Athanasius of Alexandria. At the same time Kircher was aware of the given name’s interpretation offered by Leibniz: both his autobiography and his learned oeuvre proclaim to have realized what his name had predicted and demanded. The article examines the practices and strategies of Kircher’s immortalization and self-immortalization, relating them to early modern concepts and theories of proper names. It tackles this issue until the time when Leibniz began to revoke his prognosis of Kircher’s athanasia, i. e., until it became apparent that he, too, had the makings of a polymath.