MUCK'ERS (Ger. .1/ucker, sulky person, hypocrite, from :\HIG. muckzen, inuch:fm. from OHG, mteek•a:Teo, to mutter; probably connected with Mr. for-in nigthe, hidden). The popular but, opprobrious name, meaning that they were hypocrites, of an extraordinary sect which sprang up at Kr,nigsberg, in Germany. in 1835. The movement seems to have originated in the dual istic and Gnostic views of .1ohn Selfiinherr (who was horn at .1Iemel. in 1771. and died at Krmigsberg in 1826) concerning the origin of the universe by the combination of two spiritual and sensual principles. His followers carried out his system much more completely than him self. The most notable of them were two clergy men, Johann Wilhelm Ehel and Georg Heinrich Diestel, the former an archdeacon. who founded a society to which women—some of noble birth —attached themselves. Sea lida I was thereby caused. and Ebel's, easily misunderstood expres sions as to the proper relations of the sexes were made the basis of charges against his elms tilt' and moral influence. 11 is followers were
accused of the grossest immorality, and a garden in Kihtigsberg where they met acquired the name of the Seraph's Grove. The subject was brought before the courts (1839--12), and the result was that Ebel and Diestel were degraded from their offices, and the latter was further punished by imprisonment. But the sentence was dictated by strong prejudice against the accused, on ac count of their religious views and peculiar ec centricities, and the evidence gives no support whatever to the charge of lice111.1011SIICSS. The matter was revamped without proper examina tion by \V. Ilepworth Dixon in his Spiritual Wircs (London, 181;81, and thus rendered fa miliar to English readers. For the facts con sult .1. I. Alombert, Faith l'ictoriouR, a life of Ebel (New• York. 1882).